New hedging dying?

Hi folks,

I'm a newbie here so please be gentle! I'm the first to admit I'm a complete amateur at this gardening thing too.

About 3 months ago I employed a family friend to plant new hedging around the edge of my large corner garden. He planted about 50 griselinia littoralis about a foot apart, directly into the edge of the lawn. The plants were about 25cm in height when planted.

I have been watering them with a hose regularly and about 3 weeks ago I added chicken manure pellets for feed.

About two thirds of the plants are doing well and looking healthy with good growth (50cm now) but the other third are wilting and going black. I can't understand how this can be as the ones that look like they're dying are next to ones that are thriving. It hasn't been particularly hot or dry here in NI but it has been very windy over the last 4-5 weeks. Could this be a factor?

I'm now in a dilemma of whether I replace the dying ones now or just remove them and hope that growth will form something looking like a hedge eventually! There's no issue about the cost of replacing them, it's more that I don't want to do that if they'll just die again because I don't know what the problem is.

Any and all advice appreciated! Thanks.

 

Hello Caroline123456, welcome to GC That is pretty close spacing, so if I was you, I'd take out the casualties and have a good look at the rootballs. That will tell you a lot about the reasons for their demise. If the roots are bone dry, despite the watering, then it's nothing too sinister. Just overcrowding. If they're black and squishy, then it's overwatering, but I'd think that that's unlikely..
If it won't leave a huge gap in the hedge, I'd leave the survivors to get on with it

 

Hi,

If the plants are not infected etc as @noisette47 says, then we would be tempted to remove every other one so you have a spacing of 2ft apart as they are very large and strong plants.
Some good detail of them here - Griselinia Archives

The ones you remove should be potted up and kept to replace any others that may die off.

You can replant some of them to replace the ones that have already failed, but worth replacing the immediate soil they were in.

Think we would be temped to remove any grass near to the base of the plants, say 200mm, as the grass may be taking most of the water away from them.
Also do not go mad with feeding, some Fish Blood and Bone is typically used in the planting hole or around the top of the soil after planting and that should last the season.

 

Were the plants potted when you bought them or bare root?

 

Thanks noisette47, interesting you mention close spacing. The planting instructions were 3 plants to a metre. I have some literal digging to do tomorrow now, I'll report back!

 

Thank you ricky101, I'll have a look through those archives tomorrow. The planting instructions were 3 to a metre so they might be too close as you suggest.

 

I don't know as I didn't buy them myself or plant them. Does that make a difference?

 

Only thing I'm thinking is if you buy a lot, it's a lot cheaper to buy bare root. Except it's not the bare root season. So I'm wondering if they were bare root, half of them might have been about dead before they were even planted. 3 months ago would put us in mind April, so the bare root window would have closed about a month before. Recent enough that some sellers would still chance it.

Were the plants already green and leafy when they went in? Bare rooted plants should be dormant so if the plants looked healthy from day one, then they were probably potted.

The other thing that springs to mind is you mentioned feeding them chicken manure pellets. How much have you given them? I find it great as a general purpose fertilizer but it can be a bit harsh. I don't know anything about the specific plant you have but some plants tolerate it better than others. Chicken manure is alkaline. Before I knew this, I killed off my favourite blueberry bush with it.

 

They were all green and leafy when planted so I'm assuming they must have been potted. I dug down about 4-5 inches beside each plant and sprinkled a handful of pellets in, covered back up and watered. Gosh I hope I haven't done the wrong thing now :(

 

Fingers crossed. But worst case, remember we learn far more from our mistakes than we ever do from our successes.

 

Aw thank you, that's a good way to look at it. I'm not the best gardener which is why I got someone else to do the planting. Just hope it's not going to turn into a £600 misjudgement!

 

I wouldn't give up on it just yet. It's not unusual for plants to suffer a bit when you first stick them in the ground. I've had plants appear to be way past salvation, then suddenly show new growth. In fact I have a few examples of that out the back right now. We decided to redesign one area. I dug out all the plants I wanted to save, fully expecting to lose some because they really don't like being uprooted in midsummer. I was convinced I'd lost most of them. Some of them appeared to die completely,no sign of life, just brown sticks. Then a couple of days ago some of those brown sticks grew new leaves.

 

Hopefully we can keep you on the right path !

Adding the chicken pellets that way was not the best method as there was a good chance you would be disturbing the new roots of the plants and some of the pellets would make direct contact with the roots, and as they are very concentrated they might 'burn' the young roots.

Just sprinkle things like that onto the top of the soil and just lighty scratch the soil surface so the product does not blow away etc and water in, avoiding any deep hoeing or digging.

Looking at those plants, this time of year most are selling them as potted plants, though it does sound a high price for 50 x 25cm ( 1 ft ) high plants even with labour added on.

If you can show some photos of both the healthy and dying plants it really does help us see your problem better.