Growing Arborvitaes from bare root plants

We are always growing Arborvitaes as they are very popular. People come and buy them as privacy or hedge plants so they rarely buy 1 plant. It is not uncommon for people to buy them 10, 20 or 30 at a time. For this reason we think Green Giant and Emerald Green Arborvitae should be a plant to focus on when starting a backyard plant nursery. You will want to grow a lot of them in most parts of the country!

It’s still early for us to be planting in mid March but we had a grower who had some great Green Giant Arborvitaes to sell. So, we bought 100 and they were super nice. Good size plants, averaging 18″ to 24″. Very nicely rooted and very healthy.

When considering whether to grow Arborvitaes from bare root plants or rooting your own cuttings we choose to do both. Bare root plants can be sold faster but we can also use every cutting we can root.

Bare root plants are typically going to come to you in a box, wrapped in plastic and often with some shredded paper or moss around the roots. You will want to open them up and make sure they are still plenty moist. Since the plants are dormant you have time. maybe a week but should get them planted ASAP, make sure the roots stay moist. You can keep them even a little longer before planting but sooner is always better! If you can’t plant right away, you should heel the plants in by covering the roots with soil and keeping them watered.

Growing Arborvitaes in containers.

 

We like to get ready by gathering our containers, getting our tools together and getting some of our potting soil ready. For now our potting bench is sheet of  5/8″ plywood with 2″x4″s under it on some heavy duty saw horses. This is enough space for up to 4 people to work potting up plants and a good size scoop of potting mix. We take all the plants out of their box and drop their roots in water in a wheel barrow. No problem getting 100 at a time in the wheel barrow. Keeping and even soaking the plant roots in water is a must but only need to be done while working. Don’t let the roots dry out. When growing Arborvitae or any plant its good to give them the best possible start.

Planting Arborvitae

Growing Arborvitaes is essentially the same as many other bare root plants. In addition to following our basic Backyard Plant Nursery Tips, here are the basic steps to follow.

• Give each plant a slight root pruning – clipping the ends of the roots helps promote root branching just like clipping the tops of plants. Use your outdoor plant scissors for this, not you pruning shears.
• Put a little soil mix in the bottom of your container
• Hold the plant at the right height and fill around the plant. Do not bury any branches or leave any roots exposed. You want the planting height just right and you want the soil about an inch lower than the rim of the container. This helps the container hold some water.
• Over fill the container and then tap the container to settle the potting mix
• Firmly tamp the soil
• This is the time to sprinkle the top of the soil with slow release fertilizer. Only use a slow release fertilizer, see the fertilizers we recommend in our Backyard Nursery Resources Guide.
• Sprinkle some weed preventer on each potted plant to try and reduce your weeding.
• Water thoroughly and put these plants out to grow.

 

Here are some of the Arborvitaes potted and ready for growing. These 18″ to 22″ plants are in trade gallon pots. Arborvitaes are so popular we recommend growing them when starting a backyard plant nursery such as we recommend in Growing Our Retirement. You can make a great income growing Arborvitaes and many other popular plants, right in your backyard.

What containers should you be growing arborvitaes in?

In this case because the plants where so large we decided to plant about 1/2 in trade gallon pots and 1/2 in trade 3 gallon grow bags. Why are we growing them this way? The thinking here is we will sell some of these in about 12 to 18 months as smaller plants. The ones in the larger 3 gallon grow bags will take longer as we will sell these when they are about 3 1/2′ to 4′ tall.

Advertisement

Placing Arborvitae in the nursery

The plants have now been all brought to the nursery growing area. You will notice they are on weed mat fabric. You must use weed mat fabric or you will have weeds taller than your plants! We also ended up staking these Arborvitaes up with inexpensive bamboo poles and plastic clips. They need to be held straight until they get a litte stronger.

How long should you plan on growing Arborvitaes for resale?

This certainly depends on how much time and space you have for  growing  out your Arborvitae. Looking at prices at stores like Walmart we see smaller plants selling for around $22.99 and the larger 3′ to 4′ plants selling for $40.00. We like to be a little less expensive than the Big Box stores even though people prefer to buy from a local grower. So, we will target $20.00 and $35.00 prices for our plants.

Working backwards, it will take about one full season for the smaller plants to grow and fill out. To be sale ready, they will need to grow a little and the trunks need to develope. These look like they will be ready in 12 to 14 months. The Green Giants planted in the trade 3 gallon pots will probably take 24 to 30 months to be ready. They will fill out and reach 3.5 to 4 feet tall.

Is growing Arborvitaes profitable?

Looking at this 100 plant project let’s look at the numbers. The bare root plants cost us $2.95 each including the shipping. Since we planted 1/2 in smaller and 1/2 in larger pots the average container price was $0.80. Dirt and fertilizer is $0.50 so the total cost is $4.25 or $425.00 total for 100 plants. We expect almost every plant to live since they are healthy but we did receive a few extra too.

If we sell 1/2 the plants for $20.00 and the other 1/2 for $35.00 we will then sell all the 100 plants for $2,750.00. Subtracting the $425.00 in costs the profit should be $2,325.00 The total time to plant these was about 4 hours and maintaining them until sold and time selling them will take a few hours too. We think a very nice profit from growing Arborvitaes. It is a profit that is hard to beat, very repeatable and can be done at even much larger scale. For that reason we have over 500 Arborvitaes growing at any one time and plan to increase that. In addition it makes sense to plan on offering some even larger plants. Putting 50 to 100 per year in trade 5 gallon containers makes a lot of sense to us.

Growing Arborvitaes and Spruce Trees are real cornerstones to Growing Our Retirement as they are good sellers, easy to grow, and easy to sell.