Properly planting your tree is critical to maintaining a healthy tree for years to come. Incorrectly performing one or more steps can set your trees growth back years and might eventually lead to its death.
- To start you’ll want to make sure you aren’t digging into any utility lines beneath the soil.
- Follow that up by checking for mature tree size and make sure to give it enough room to grow vertically and horizontally without any interference.
- Dig a hole as deep as the root ball and 2 to 3 times
as wide as the root ball. - Check the drainage to ensure this is a good planting site. If necessary modify the hole for better drainage or change the planting site.
- Remove the tree from the container and place the tree on the ground.
- Remove soil from the top of the root ball until the top of the main root system is visible. You should see several pencil thick roots emerging from the trunk. You may have to remove up to 4 inches of soil.
- Remove any small roots above this point and any roots that circle around main roots as they can cause significant damage in the future.
- Backfill the hole to this new soil line with the root ball placed inside with 50% native soil and 50% soil amendment.
- Assure that the root ball is not covered with soil above the top of the root ball.
- In the High Desert be sure to stake the tree.
Removing the soil is a critical step to providing your tree with the highest chance of survival years down the road. Failure to do so can result in roots choking each other out when the tree ages like the tree below.
Reblogged this on Wolf's Birding and Bonsai Blog.