planting trees on lot lines

[ericlp]

I've been thinking about getting 25 or so of those trees. Did you get them off of craigslist? I saw someone in that area trying to sell them. Now that I think about it. I might not need so many trees. I got about 60' to plant in and if I made them 3' wide that would only be 20 plants. I want a thick hedge for a ton of privacy. I could stagger each one 2' back and forth so they are not all straight in a line.

[unknownjulie]

yep, off craigslist, and it says "nonprofit". They were a dollar each. I would say it's worth the drive up to hamakua. I suppose if you are only getting a smaller amount, it might be worth getting ones that were already rooted more strongly, but that's hard to figure out if they are in dirt. With the bareroot, I could see the actual starts of the roots. I gave about 30 extra ones that I had, to my neighbor, and he says he had good luck with them, but he has an improved lot, with soil.

[Rene Siracusa]

You can order podocarpus and lots of other trees for boundary and windbreak planting through the State Dept. of Land & Natural Resources nursery in Hilo. $1 each, I think. The office has the lists of available trees, order forms, etc. It's located on Kilauea just Puna side of the arboretum - look for the hedge of native white hibiscus.

Re legal status of boundary trees: not a special status as in some states. Any part of the tree that crosses the property line can be chopped or sawed by your neighbor. This may leave a mature tree too heavy on one side (yours) and cause it to topple over, or if too many branches are removed the tree can be stressed to death. If the trunk encroaches on your neighbor's property, they can chop away. So the best policy is to plant your trees 4-6' inside the line. You can plant smaller things closer to the line as fillers - especially if they are shrubs that thrive and bush out on regular pruning.

[unknownjulie]

I wanted to update this thread. My trees are not doing well. Only a couple really look like they are thriving, and even these are not growing much. The rest are just treading water. I may need to try a different tree to plant I still have hope, but it's been a long time now.

[kalakoa]

Before you give up on the "treading water" trees, spread about 2 wheelbarrows of mulch around them, maybe 12-18" thick, with some chicken manure mixed in.

A little nutrition and some extra water retention will almost always fix the problem; I've been able to save at least three out of four this way.

[unknownjulie]

Thanks for the advice. I planted 50% of them with mulch, and I did fertilize. I may have fertilized too much, so am holding off for now. (used miraclegrow) Would have prefered to use organic, but with the amount of time I had, did not. If I have some time, I'll try what you've suggested, but I am not sure exactly what the problem is. This jungle certainly is hard to tame.

[unknownjulie]

I just sold my lot, so I wanted to update this post about the trees. About half have died. The rest are still very small. I have had to spray weed killer periodically around the trees to give them a chance. If I had to do it all over again, I would only buy 10 large podocarpus and plant each in a large mound of mulch and cinder. I also planted some other cuttings into rotting tree trunks- and these seem to be doing better than anything.

[Hotzcatz]

We have a couple of houses in town and in each case, there is a hedge right ON the property line. Had I not liked the hedges, I do have the option of cutting half of them off which would, as mentioned before, probably kill the whole thing. One house has Russian olive which gets too big to be a decent hedge, IMHO. It grows too fast and needs too much maintenance and without pruning, it becomes a hedge too tall to maintain. It also cuts off the view, although that may not be much of a consideration on flatter topography which doesn't have as much of a view. The other house has mock orange which is a better hedge choice since it can be kept pruned into a hedge with much less effort. If either of these houses had podocarpus as a hedge planted directly on the property line, I would have shaved off every branch and trunk part that strayed over the property line. Podocarpus gets way too big and way too pyramidal, IMHO, to make a decent hedge. Farmers use it for windbreak occasionally but they have larger areas to work with. Podocarpus is going to go about fifteen feet out from it's trunk, isn't it? That will turn a 100' wide lot into an effectively 70' wide lot if it's planted on both sides. But, also, as noticed, plants on lava don't get as big or thrive as much as plants in soil.

A smaller hedge plant such as mock orange, rosemary, etc., something that will stay pretty short, if that is planted directly on a property line, it's probably not going to cause a fuss. If something huge such as podocarpus or Norfolk Island pines are planted on a property line, then that could cause problems. In the case of Norfolks, possible damage to someone else's property if they fell the wrong way.

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"I like yard sales," he said. "All true survivalists like yard sales."
Kurt Wilson