Great Liners & How to Buy Them

It’s so much fun to sell beautiful plants but everyone grumbles when a plant isn’t quite right.  There are countless examples like Skyrocket Junipers that lost their bottoms, Green Giants with gaps you could throw a cat through, or perhaps it’s a Densiformis that wasn’t grown to be “dense” and ended up too narrow.  Whatever the issue, it’s very expensive to rehab a crop.  The cheapest, best way to ensure a beautiful crop is to focus on the liners.

               We’re going to talk about what it takes to make a beautiful liner.  I’ll show common strategies growers employ that educated buyers are starting to frown upon.  Finally, we’ll discuss the number one risk factor for quality and how to shortcut it as a production nursery. 

Beginning with the End in Mind

               A great liner is well-rooted and has good branching.  Today, I’d like to focus on branching.  The definition of “good branching” depends on the type of plant you’re growing.  Even within the species Thuja occidentalis, a round arborvitae might have good branching if it’s a plump little 6-8” ball while an upright should be single leader.  You’ll want to have a clear vision of what the plant should look like to be sellable before you ever begin propagation. 

               I typically see three main challenges facing nurseries in their propagation and liner beds.  First is Priorities.  The propagator has a schedule by which they have to get cuttings, they typically have limited greenhouses with bottom heat, and a limited crew.  This means they have to continually reprioritize their efforts to be successful.  The natural priorities stem from KPI’s like meeting the prop schedule, percentage of takes, and cuttings per labor hour.  You’ll notice none of those has to do with quality of the liners beyond viability.

The next challenge I see is physical accessibility of baby plants.  Because the liners don’t need a ton of room, products are generally set can-tight with few gaps to walk between.  This makes it harder to give individualized attention to plugs, 4” or #1 sized material, especially when there are so many competing priorities.  Anything that is more difficult or less urgent is sure to fall into a lower priority. 

Finally, many propagators are isolated both by geography and time from any actionable sales feedback.  There are often two or more years between when a propagator is doing their work and when salespeople receive feedback from customers.  Besides that, most of the feedback makes it as far as the grower and not all the way down to propagation.  Remember, it’s when the plants are liners that issues are easiest to prevent.  Without strong, effective, continuous feedback loops, any issues at the liner stage will go uncorrected until the plants hit canning and become the responsibility of another grower to redeem. 

               Quality body development starts at the liner stage.  It really comes down to trimming, proximity to other plants, and the duration of time the liners spend before being shifted.  Each of these is so important that it’s hard for me to choose one over the others so I’ll simply start at the first one I mentioned.

Trimming

               The attention put to trimming in the liner stage will set the trend for the rest of the plant’s life so you must be deliberate about what you’re doing.  I love the 2-4-6 theory for trimming most everything on a shrub nursery besides upright arborvitae and junipers.  This is where you buzz the tops at 2”, 4” and 6” develop full branching.  

When you trim that low, it keeps all the plants developing branches from the bottom, so it reduces legginess, promotes full branching, and actually buys more time for the grower to be able to hold the plants over without sacrificing quality branches.  Those lower branches and foliage depend upon sunlight and timely trimming will ensure they have it.  Even upright shrubs benefit as you’ve likely seen a Sky Pencil where the first three inches is one single stump while it really should be nicely branched from the bottom. 

               With regards to upright junipers and arborvitae, there’s an old school technique of whacking the tops at a young age to make them fill out more.  I’ve also seen double-stuck liners as a way of hedging a bet on viability while fattening them up.  I’m happy to say that both of these techniques are becoming loathsome to experienced buyers and growers alike. 

               When you whack the top of an upright, it naturally sends out more leaders.  Yes, this gives the appearance of fullness but it’s shortsighted for three reasons.  The upright wastes a lot of energy trying to promote the multiple leaders and this slows the plant from hitting height spec on time.  They’ll also open up like a banana peel with the first wet snow.  I’ve seen it happen and it’s not pretty.  Finally, a single leader upright gives the grower more options for value add trimming like spirals and 3-ball poodles.  Tying the leaders together with those brown twist ties is not the same as starting with a single leader in the first place.

Wintery regions like Chicago prefer single leader arborvitae because of their durability.  Growers should also prefer single leader arborvitae for the speed and versatility.  The foliage fills in naturally as well.  The best time to remove co-dominants is when they’re liners before the other leaders have the opportunity to sap the plant of nutrition that you’ll ultimately cut off anyway. 

Proximity

               Another branching issue occurs in the liner phase and is called legginess, light bottom branching, or even narrowness depending on the circumstance.  This issue stems from the plants being too close together for too long.  You can mitigate some of this through a strong trimming technique as height of the plants is a major contributing factor.  Plants that suffer from this most commonly are uprights (arbs/junipers), broadleaf evergreens (boxwoods/hollies), and dwarf alberta spruce.

               Uprights that are too close together can lose their branching at the bottom.  This is basically impossible to correct except by shifting them into such a large size that the gap at the bottom is small by proportion.  Talk about chasing quality issues and it still doesn’t finish as nice as a normally branched upright.

               Broadleaf evergreens that are too close can result in what I call the upside-down pyramid look.  That’s where things like Green Mountains or Green Velvets end up with short little branches at the bottom and longer, fuller branches at the top.  It’s a goofy look and discriminating buyers will typically consider them to be park grade.  You can get the bottom back, but it requires a trim and flush which cost both money and time. 

               Dwarf Alberta spruce might be the most unpopular plant on a nursery, but box stores and retailers ship them by the thousands in #1, #3, and #5 with some venturing into #10 size.  When you lose the bottom of these, you end up with a little Christmas tree stump that is unrecoverable.  Because the vast majority of these are sold in smaller sizes, growers are not even able to chase quality through shifting into larger sizes.  Lose the bottom branching and it will hit your bottom line for sure.

Timing

               There’s a common refrain between Sales and Production with regards to nursery stock.  Sales whines that Production didn’t grow a sellable plant.  Production retorts that it was sellable when Sales should have sold it two years ago.  I’m only half-joking here as gluts in the market can force production to maintain crops well past their expiration date. 

               One beautiful thing about liners is their ability to slow down their growth because of the constriction of their container.  If you use root-pruning containers, it’s even better.  I’ve seen liners held back two and three years that were still perfectly viable.  Strong trimming techniques helped tremendously.  The plants looked upset for sure but cheered up once they were shifted into #3 containers. Can you imagine how much more money was spent maintaining those liners than would have been spent if they were shifted when they were ready?

Closing

By setting proper branching at the liner stage and shifting materials at the right time, growers can finish their crops earlier and with a higher percentage of sellable plants.  If they miss the timing, trimming, or spacing, they’ll spend money to make the plant sellable that will likely not be as beautiful as it would have been with proper management.  As a grower, it’s important to calendarize all the activities of the liner division, prioritizing trimming and quality.  It saves the company money on COGS and also helps them sell the material earlier.  For such a modest price, it is well worth the investment. 

I recently visited a high-quality liner grower who had the Taylor junipers that my customer was looking for and they were absolutely cherry.  He had his trimming, spacing, and timing down pat but there was another problem.  The liners I was looking for were sold out.  We were too late in ordering. 

In today’s article, we’ve talked about the importance of developing and maintaining high quality liners.  Naturally, a strong sales plan is important to maintaining the timing.  The flipside is what happens when a grower does a great job.  The high demand makes it hard for buyers to secure the liners they need.  I have a solution for finding great liners and how to buy them.

Are you curious how I can guarantee beautiful plants are ready, available, and affordable when you need them next?  I’d love to chat about it.