Hi! I’m Dave Epstein, and this of course is Growing Wisdom. We’re at a home today where the homeowner has a young child and they said to me, you know we want to move this Japanese maple, coz they want the kid to be able to run around and the tree is really in the way today. So it’s cold, we have a couple of frost, it’s a good time to move this tree. So, we’re going to dig this up we’re going to move it to its new home, we’ll replant it, we’ll water it and we’re going to leave enough room so that maybe in 5 or even 10 years it has enough room to grow.
So, when I move a plant I actually like to dig a new hole first so that as soon as this comes out of the ground it could go right into its new home. That leaves the roots expose for the least amount of time on a day like today it’s critical, but if you’re moving things when it’s a little bit warmer of course a little more important.
Don’t dig to deep, you want it to be twice as wide as the rootball is. Now that tree is fairly small it is not going to be a big rootball. All right, so we dug our hole and now we’re going to take our tree out. The goal is to take as many roots as possible and you want to start digging around the drip line of the tree that’s as far as the branches reach, so not very far. Try not to cut any root if you can help it. Your goal is go underneath the tree and literally lift it out gently.
At this point, a wheelbarrow, burlap, unfortunately, thanks, I have this bag so I’m just going to put it in this heavy duty bag here and carry it over. Luckily, we’re not moving this very far. So I’m mixing some compost to the native soil. You don’t want to put 100 percent compost in ever. I'm just going to take our tree and put it in. We’ll check as I put a shovel across the hole, that let’s me know the soil line. That soil line should be even with the flare of the tree, which it is, so this tree is at the right depth.
The other thing I want to do is I want to look at the tree. We’re actually turn this tree about 90 degrees and show the front and put the back of the tree facing the neighbors. In comes the new soil, packed it down as you plant. At this point, I’m going to stand back, I want to look at the tree, be sure that it is not too deep, be sure that it is upright. So I’ll going to go back to the tree, we will going to pack that soil again.
Notice you can see the flare right here, we don’t want the soil up to here. It shouldn’t look like a stick, sticking out of the soil. So the last thing I’m going to do is, I’ve already started to water a little bit, but I’m going to create a little bit of a moat around the base of this tree. That will just help to keep the water in there. Tough for me to tell you exactly how much to water but don’t let it dry out. And if you notice the soil level fall a little bit just add a little more. Keep it nice and moist until the ground freezes and this will come back next year. And we will come back next week with another set of tips and helps here in GrowingWisdom.com.
