The notion of "big subject" is subjective and depends on the plant and its perception by the gardener.
Where to put a large plant?
The first question to ask yourself if you wish to acquire a large plant is where you want to plant it. The location of a large tree in a small garden can pose several problems, because of its proximity to the house: leaves falling into the gutters, the possibility of the tree falling on the house, the roots lifting the asphalt or piercing the pipes as it can be the case with the fig tree or the pine tree, ...
How to choose a big subject ?
Large trees are expensive and represent a real investment. So it is very important to choose it well, that is to say to make sure :
- that it is adapted to the climate ;
- that it is also adapted to the size of the container that will eventually receive it;
- that the heart, in the case of palms, is a beautiful soft green. It is quite normal for the old leaves to be damaged, or even burned by last winter's snows, but the heart must be of good quality.
Planting a large olive tree in your garden
Before bringing home an olive tree, you must first make sure that its foot is not carrying a fungus called verticillium wilt.
Then, we look at its general appearance: the absence of dry branches, the presence of young shoots, and the absence of small piles of sawdust revealing the presence of a bark beetle (a small beetle that makes holes and galleries under the bark).
Foliage and transplanting
A beautiful tree with a lot of foliage is very aesthetic but can be adapted to transplanting; the more leaves there are, the more the tree suffers from evapo-transpiration. If this evapo-transpiration is higher than the water absorption capacity of the root system, the plant will have to face a water deficit that will be detrimental to its recovery.
In this type of situation, one should not hesitate to cut back up to 90% of the leaves.
When to plant a large plant in the garden?
For palms, the vegetative rest period is in summer. It is therefore advisable to plant them at this time of year, tying up the heart to limit evapotranspiration.
Conifers are ideally planted in the fall, a season when the soil is still warm. For other large plants, spring or autumn is preferred, even if the subjects are in containers, because these are the two periods most favorable to the recovery of the root system and the plant as a whole.
