Box hedging

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by Kathy Holmes on May 16, 2006 07:08 AM

Hello! I am very proud of our little garden, which recently won an award for the work we do with the children in our care. I have just planted a little hedge of box plants around the playhouse garden. Most of the plants are doing just fine, but about one quarter of them have gone brown and dried up. They are all in the shade of a sugar maple tree. They have all been fed and watered just the same. Does anyone know if it is ikely that they will all die horribly or whether one should simply expect to have a certain percentage of plants expire right at the start? Any advice would be very gratefully received. Thank you so much!

by weezie13 on May 16, 2006 07:30 AM

Hi Kathy,
Welcome to The Garden Helper's Forum,
We are veryyyyy glad you found us...

Congrats on the award for your work...

Just going to let you know I was going to move
your post into the TREES AND SHRUBS section,
I'm sure you'll question will get answered in there a little bit better...

In the meantime, some questions for you until some gardener's slip thru..

They are all equally under the shade?
Does one recieve a morning sun, evening sun, or none??

Are any of them on like a slope? If yes, are they on the top side of bottom side of the slope???

Could any of them be planted a wee~bit deeper than the rest??
Or have any of them *the stems/trunks* been weed~wacked??

What kind of fertilizer did you feed them,
how did you feed it to them, granular, water soluable in a hose like system, with a foliar feed?

If yessss, was it on a hot day, and was the soil dry????

And how long have they been planted???

They'll get us off to a great start if you can give us some of those answers, helps us alot to get to the bottom of it...

*and sneakin' in a picture or two wouldn't hurt either..*

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Weezie

Don't forget to be kind to strangers. For some who have
done this have entertained angels without realizing it.
- Bible - Hebrews 13:2

http://photobucket.com/albums/y250/weezie13/

by Kathy Holmes on May 16, 2006 09:50 PM

Hey Weezie - thank you very much for getting back to me so fast! The plants were all put in during one afternoon in late March - sunny but not too warm. The failing plants are in a little more shade, for most of the day, but do get full-on early morning sun blasting, and may be perhaps a little lower - but only a matter of a couple of inches as the garden dips a little towards the paving area. As I was planting with a little helper (3 year old :-) we may have been a little ramshackle with exact depths and amounts of granular feed but it wouldn't have been by much. do you think I may have 'burnt' their roots with too much feed? I can't find anywhere to tell me if they might have fallen victim to a pest... Another thought is that they're surrounded by new bark chippings. Might something have leaked from those and have affected new baby roots?

I am new to this technology - I will try some photos a.s.a.p

thanks again Kathy

by Sir Ts Princess on May 19, 2006 12:21 AM

If your feed contained nitrogen, it is possible that you did burn the roots. While these plants can use nitrogen when they are yellowing, my family has only used small amounts of it on top of the soil (not next to the roots) and watered in well. Another way to feed them nitrogen is to mix the granular nitrogen with water, then water them with the "fertile" water. Try just giving the brown ones some extra water, and no food. But...that's about all I know about these plants. I do know that generally they are pretty hardy. Best of luck...Ali

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