Tree Care and Maintenance Part 2 - Tree Planting | Episode 7

Part 2 of our Tree Care and Maintenance Series.   In this episode Brad and Shaun discuss all aspects of tree planting with retired forester and Master Gardener Caroll Guffey including species and site selection, bare root vs container grown,  planting techniques, and much more!  This episode is  part two of a three part tree care series.   Check out our website for more helpful info around the homestead!

For more helpful info on tree care check out these resources!
Tree Pruning Resources
Tree Planting Resources

Find lots more great educational content on our website at www.uaex.uada.edu

Transcript

Around the Homestead Podcast

Tree Care and Maintenance – Part 2

Transcript

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Welcome to around the Homestead podcast, where we share information on topics 

from gardens to goats,

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our aim is to provide small farmers and landowners valuable education on projects that may arise around the homestead.

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Whether you have been on the homestead all your life or you had just began the farm lifestyle,

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we hope you garner helpful tips to make your lifestyle most rewarding.

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Now here are our host Brad McGinley and Shaun Rhodes. Well, hello, and welcome to the round, the Homestead podcast.

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Good to have you back with us for our second episode and a three part series on tree care and maintenance.

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Today, we're going to continue our discussion with Mr. Carol Guffey, retired Extension Foster and Grant County Master Gardener.

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We've been talking about tree pruning in our last episode.

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And Carol, today we're going to talk a little bit about tree planting,

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and I really want to start off with just the basics here, like we did with pruning.

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Really, what is the best time of year to plant a tree? Well, you know, it kind of gets back to exactly what we're talking about the the pruning.

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You know, if I had to pick a month to plant trees, it would probably be March, you know, February, February, March and January.

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OK. But. You know, if you can get those trees that are pretty well,

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that are dormant and you put them in the ground and in March and we start getting some rains and warm weather,

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I mean, they hit, they hit the ground running. They just they start putting down roots and start growing.

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So again, you can, depending on the type tree that you have, you can play it year round.

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But most of our trees are bare root, and we can talk a little bit more about that in a little while if you want to.

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But most of them are our bare root, so we want to plan them when they're dormant,

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when they don't have leaves on them and when they're shut down and they're just kind of hibernating more or less,

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then that's the best time to plant them. But now if you have if you have trees in containers that are container grown or grown in a

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nursery where they're lifted and brought out to your site and you peel back the same day,

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you know you can plant about any time. If it didn't grow and see the trees have a much more of a problem getting moisture.

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So you have to really water them a lot more for if you plan them winter when you're actively growing.

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But again, if I had my choice, you know, February,

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March would be would be the the two months that I that I picked, you know, to do most of my tree planting.

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Yeah, and I think the most important thing that I wanted to bring up as far as planting trees that would get a lot of times is, you know,

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choosing the right tree for the right site because I know you and I have gone

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out and we'll talk a little bit here in a little bit about some tree issues.

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I know you went out and looked at a lot of trees last year that were dying

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and some of that was just simply, you know, a factor of the wrong tree being in the wrong place.

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You know, something like that. And so what are some factors that we need to think about when we're we're choosing a tree?

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Well, yeah, that is one of the biggest problems that I've seen through my career is not having the right tree for the right place.

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And you know, we love our trees and we want to, you know, we want that beautiful shade tree in our yard.

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But invariably somebody is going to plant a tree that wants to be 40 foot tall under an 18 foot power line.

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And then then we're mad at the tree companies because they come in and have to prune that.

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So again? Remember, don't just look at what kind of flowers a tree has on it or what.

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You know how pretty it is and in the, you know, in a container that are sitting in the parking lot at the big box store or whatever.

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Do a little research and see how tall that tree wants to be and.

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Is that going to fit your purpose, you know, in 20 years? Is that is that little one inch tree that you planted now in 20 years

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It's going to be 40 foot pole and it's going to be.

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Impacting the power line, or maybe you plant a tree that you want to shade tree, you think, well, it.

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I'd like to have a nice oak out here about 20 foot from my house, but that tree wants to be 100 foot tall.

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And in 20 years, it's starting to impact your house, the foundation, the roof or your concrete patio or something like that.

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So again, did a little research and think about that and think about what the tree is going to be like when it's mature because nobody

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wants 100 foot tall tree 20 feet away from their house because the land is going to be following the house and and again,

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eventually somebody is going to have to deal with that problem. So just keep that in mind.

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Some of the other things that if you're building a house, building a new house, some some of the work that you do as part of building.

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That's the most problem that I've seen in my career is is soil compaction and changing up the way you know,

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we we want to go out and build a house right out in the middle of the forest and keep all the trees around it.

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But then we change the drainage and then we drive. We put a waterline in and then we put electric line in.

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And pretty soon we've done a lot of root damage. So or we change the drainage especially, oaks, they don't work.

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They don't like water in the summertime. They can tolerate water this time of year.

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But you know white oak doesn't want to have water on it all summer long.

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So some of the things that we do when we're building our houses is affecting the trees,

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and it may be a better thing to come in and remove a few more trees knowing that

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they're probably going to die in four or five years anyways and then come back.

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And after we're done with her with our construction plant, new trees, we're where we want in the rat tree.

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There's going to tolerate the conditions that we've created by bringing in

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fill dirt and pouring concrete and putting asphalt down and things like that.

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You know, one thing on that, I guess this is more of an issue, Carol,

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but a lot of people don't understand the long term effects of things on terms that I have found.

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You know, it's it's hard for people to get their head around.

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Something that happened five years ago might be what's affecting this tree now.

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Oh, and you're exactly right, Shaun.

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You know, I've I've went to a lot of tree calls in my career where we have a new subdivision and the builder says, and you know, they're not again.

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They build houses. They're not tree care professionals. So they say, you know, we can do that.

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We can put this water waterline here and we put this gas line and we can put this driveway in.

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It's not going to affect the trees. And you come back in five years and look at the subdivision and almost every tree

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is dead because they've come in as part of their part of their construction.

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They'll come in with the bulldozers and scrape away a lot of the topsoil and move, move some of the the branches down.

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And and, you know, open up this this site down to the bare earth, which is good for building a house.

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But these tree roots that only 100 foot tree that we were talking about earlier, those tree roots probably go out 300 feet.

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Yeah. So anything that you do on that side is affecting a lot of the different trees and in like, say,

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trees are long live so they can tolerate for a few years some damage and still stay in there.

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But you come back in five years, and that's when you really see the construction damage starting to take place.

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And I've seen this entire subdivisions where every tree finally after four or five years,

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they all finally succumb to all the work that's been done in the initial site clearing.

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And the builders say, Well, that's not me. You know, that was five years ago. I built that house, but it actually probably is, you know?

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Yeah. Related to that. Yeah.

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That's a good point, Carol. You know, also thinking about choosing trees, you know, try to avoid those trees that are weak.

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I know we bought our house and we had a big ole Bradford pear tree and the, you know, in our side yard.

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And it's kind of like Johnny Cash one piece at a time.

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You know, this ever storm takes off two or three limbs, you know, and now it's nothing but just to stalk and going to have to take it out, you know?

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Yeah, I mean, of course, in a tree care profession, we don't like Bradford pears.

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I mean, again, I'm sorry, that hurts somebody feeling they're beautiful, you know, when they're full bloom.

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But the joke in a tree care profession is, how do you prove to Bradford pears like six inches above the ground?

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You know, you practice, you print it off and you put another tree, a better tree in there.

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But you know, again, that's that's that's that's one of those things that you as a homeowner need to realize

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is do a little research and their extension has some some information on their website.

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But there's a lot of different information I'm looking at at putting the right tree in the right place.

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And and, you know, if you all know treated with white flowers, you know,

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you can find that and you can find one that only grows six foot tall instead of one that's going to grow twenty five foot tall.

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So again, do a little research and find out what kind of tree tolerate or what kind of conditions you have,

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and make sure that the tree tolerates that. Because again, you don't want to put a tree like a Bradford pear or even like a silver maple.

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Some of those trees or a willow, you know those are beautiful growing trees,

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but you don't want them were the the impact from broken branches and splitting trees will affect you because again,

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that's their that's the way they grow. Bradford Pear.

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If you were to really do a lot of try to maintain it the way it needs to be, you would take all the forks out every year.

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And again, that's what Bradford pears do. They go up about three foot tall and fork, and they go up another two foot and fork.

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And you know, all it is is a bunch of forks, and you would really take those out if you were pruning a tree properly.

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So again, this their growth habit is it lends itself to these ice storms are terrible, and in the spring, the wind storms are just terrible on

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Bradford pears. And again, that's why we don't like them, because any time a branch drips down in the springtime, it's going to injure the trunk.

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And then again, you're going to have decay. So it it just compounds the problem.

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Yeah. Literally, the one that we have is it's just a big stalk left out just because in five years,

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it's just, you know, it's just come off one piece at a time. Yeah, you know that that's just the way they function.

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You know, that's their growth habit.

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And and again, by going there only per day for about a week anyway out of the year when they're blooming and if a frost comes in,

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that knocked them all off. So. Yeah, that's true. Sometimes you might just get a day or two, and that's the only time people really notice the rest.

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You know, I out there in the yard, but that one week, you know, they're there.

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They are absolutely beautiful. But you're right, Carol.

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We do have a lot of great resources. I would encourage people to go to our website, which is uaex.uada.edu

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We have a great factsheet there by Dr. Jim Robbins is an extension horticulture specialist.

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He is called landscape trees for specific uses. And he goes through a lot of different, you know, common trees.

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And yeah, he has the size, you know, the mature size of each one of those species.

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And he also has some remarks about what color they are in the fall,

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what kind of they have good blooms or are just a lot of great information for you for for that,

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you need to check out if you're thinking about planting trees. So, but you know, you talked earlier, Carol, about, you know, bare roots.

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So there's several different ways you can go buy tree, you know, bare root container grown, balled and burlap.

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Let's talk a little bit about some of the differences between those and what's the

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right thing for each situation and just kind of the differences between those.

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OK, that's a good that's a good point, Brad.

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We really have three different types of trees. We have bare root,  container grown and then balled and burlap.

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Bare root is the most common. And if you look in at our forested land, you know, our our timber company lands,

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they're almost all planted with with bare root seedlings and all the plantations that you've seen that, you know, we're 40 years old and down.

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They were all planted with bare root. So again, it's the most common and it works.

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It's the cheapest because, you know, the invariably the plants are smaller.

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We don't, you know, you don't have a 20 foot tall bare root tree, you know, you have a one foot two foot tall bare root tree.

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And what? Those trees are grown in a nursery and they're lifted when the trees are dormant, which is, you know, starting like in December, January.

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And then they're they're packed different ways, you know, they're there.

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Sometimes if you're talking about a, you know,

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you can buy thousands of pine trees and they're going to be packed in a bag or a box if you're talking about an individual tree.

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A lot of times they're shipped to you and they'll be wrapped in in a bag, maybe with some type of medium that keeps the roots moist.

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And then you as soon as you get them,

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you turn around and plant them on another another common that we see a lot in the spring or container grown, and you'll see, you know,

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you'll go by your big box store or your farm supply store or something,

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and they'll be they'll be tree setting out in plastic, one gallon and five gallon containers out in front.

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And in most cases, that's container grown tree.

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Now I have occasionally will not occasionally regularly found trees that let you go about that,

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that big box store and and you get those trees, and when you pull them out, they're actually packed in mulch or some other medium.

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What what that is? That's a bare root tree. They dug that out.

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They put it in there and they packed it.

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And you're kind of thinking that that's a container grown tree, but it's not actually the containers, just the bag, you know, takes place of the bag.

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It's what is holding the tree in there.

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And so a true container grown tree is a tree that's grown and it's planted in that container, and it's grown for a year or more in whatever container.

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And you'll notice that when you pull it out,

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a lot of times the roots have kind of grown to the edge of that container and they've grown down or starting to grow around.

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So that's that's one of the things that you have to deal with.

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But anyway, container grown trees are a little more costly than our bare root.

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And again, that's probably that's the most common ones that you see at the big box stores or farms supply stores sitting out front in the spring,

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starting probably next month, you'll start seeing them sitting out.

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Again, with this, you can get a little bit larger tree. You can get maybe a one to two inch diameter what we call a caliper, you know,

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the diameter of the tree at the ground level where you can get a one or two inch a bigger tree as opposed to maybe a half inch on our bare root trees.

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Again, they are a little more expensive.

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And then finally, the balled burlap are the most expensive, and you can get trees, you know, six inches in diameter, even larger in some cases.

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But they are very expensive, and probably for most home owners, it's it's going to be too much of a chore to actually get that,

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at least for one person to get about a balled and burlap tree out of it into and out of a truck and into the ground.

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But what happens is in the nursery, those trees are grown, they'll come in and dig up a root ball,

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you know, but they'll dig around that tree and create a pretty good sized root ball.

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They'll pick that up and set it in burlap and pull the burlap around it.

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And then usually they'll put a wire cage around that to the hole that root ball together.

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And then you move those to the site and you take the burlap off,

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at least down below ground level and you take all of the the wire cage off after you've put the tree in the hole.

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So again, that's the most expensive course. You can get a lot bigger tree, but it's very expensive.

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And that's probably more for professional landscapers to use because again, you make a big show and you bring it a six inch tree and in over night,

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you know you've got a six inch tree where if you plant a bare root seedling, you've got over night,

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you've got a one foot tall tree and you've got an instant instant shade tree, almost of them balled and burlap.

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But they are very expensive exactly what you're talking about thousands and thousands of dollars.

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You know, the bigger the tree, the much more expensive when you're talking about bare root

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being in some cases, you know, less than a dollar, you know, early or, you know, less than $10, for sure.

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And a container roll, you know, you're talking 10, 20, 30 dollars, depending on the size of the tree.

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Yeah. So let's talk about planting techniques next, you know, OK, so you've gone and decided you're going to get a tree.

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What's the proper way to actually plant this tree?

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Well, it kind of depends on what kind of tree with it, with a bare root tree like, like if you buy ,

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you know, a thousand pine trees and you're planning in your pasture for timber production.

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You know, they'll they'll take a small shovel or dibble, you know,

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maybe eight inches and just make a slit where the brutal slide down in it and

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close that upward where it's there's nowhere that can get to those roots.

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But if we're talking about a most trees, a container grown tree or even a bigger bare root tree,

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what we want to do is say, for example, we have a gallon pot, it's maybe a foot in diameter.

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We want a dig our hole at least twice it.

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We want a two foot diameter hole to start because that loosens up the soil, and it's going to allow the root to grow into that soil.

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Other, you know, if you don't, if you just make the. The whole exact diameter of the root ball.

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The tree is, in many cases, not going to grow out into that,

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it's just the roots are going to circle around and they'll live there for three or four or five years and then all of a sudden it just dies.

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So again, we want to we want to prepare the ground, make a bigger hole than what we have the container or the root ball in.

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And then what I usually like to do is I'll take in the middle of that hole right in the middle,

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I'll build me a cone up and that will allow those roots to kinda a place to set

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So you'll set them on that cone. Spread them out where they're where they're more or less evenly spaced.

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And then we'll we'll fill in.

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And and during this time,

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you want to make sure that you don't have the roots exposed to the air because that kills more trees and anything young trees is,

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you know, you pull them out of the bag or you put them out of the container. Knock all the soil off and set them out there.

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And an hour later, you finally get your hole dug.

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Well, that tree may be dead by the time you put it in the ground,

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so you want to make sure that those roots don't dry out and don't don't stay out in the sun, you know, get them in the ground as quick as you can.

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Dig the hole first and then come back and take it out of the bag or out of the container and put it in the ground.

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Put this all back down, and you really want to plant them just a little bit shallower than what they came,

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you can kind of see where that is out in that in that container.

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And you want to plan it just a little bit shallower.

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Most people make the mistake of planning on deeper thinking that they'll grow out more roots and stuff.

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But usually what happens is, is you're putting soil around the trunk, and that's not a good thing.

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You don't want a lot of extra soil around a truck because that that inhibits some of the function of the tree.

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So plan on this to enter to shallower than what they came and water them as soon as you get it into ground,

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water it and for the rest of the year, you know, at least once a week, they needed about an inch of water.

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And if we have rain, that's fine. But if we don't have, we have a week.

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We don't have rain, then you need to be watering them.

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You know, what about I was thinking while you're talking there, what about if somebody has a tree that they, you know,

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that they've seen somewhere on their property and they want to transplant it, you know, to their yard or something like that?

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Can they be successful with that? And I know my mom for years, she wanted it.

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She just she wanted a dogwood so bad in her yard.

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But if you think about dogwoods, she was never successful with that because Dogwood is really an understory tree.

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You know, in its native setting, so it it never worked well in the full sun in the yard.

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So can you be successful with transplanting a tree from one part of your property to your yard or somewhere where you want some shade at?

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Yeah, that I mean, I've seen the same thing and have, you know, I don't know how many hundreds of dogwoods I've looked at,

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or maybe thousands of dogswoods I've looked at in my career that that homeowners homeowners wanted in the middle of the yard.

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But yeah, to get back to that point, you can. You can be successful.

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The tree needs to be small.

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You know, you're not going to dig up a four inch diameter oak tree that's in understory and bring it out and put it in your center,

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your bare yard with no other shade and be successful.

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So if you can find a tree that's that's grown in the open, you know it.

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It's naturally growing out in a field or edge of a field, and it's getting full sun.

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You're more likely that tree's not going to be stressed near as much, but again.

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The smaller the trade, the better, if it's ten foot tall, you're not going to get it,

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if it's if it's, you know, two foot tall, you have a pretty good chance of moving it,

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but you need to move a lot of soil with it because again, those root systems are going to extend two or three times half of the tree.

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So you would want to, you know, if you've got a two foot tall tree,

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you would probably want it, you know, at least a two foot diameter root ball to dig up.

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So again, can you do that? That's that's one of those things, if you can do that, yeah.

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Again, when you moving trees like that, you need to have the hole prepared ahead of time.

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Take it in there, set it down add soil back.

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And we really did cover that. But you don't want to add any soil amendments.

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You know, don't don't add compost into the into the hole and don't put fertilizer or something like that in there on any a tree.

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The first the first couple of years, just you just want that tree to put out roots.

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You're not trying to fertilize it. You're not trying to make it, you know, grow apples the first year or anything like that.

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So you can you can move some of those trees.

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But again, like you said, keep in mind the growth habit of the tree.

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Everybody wants that beautiful dogwood in the middle of the, you know, that's the only tree, the specimen tree that they have in their front yard.

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but dogwoods don't grow that way. If you if you see where they grow in nature, they're in understory tree, they like shade.

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So if you've got a shaded yard, you can probably put a dogwood there. But if you've got a bare yard, dogwoods are not going to be successful.

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They may live. Sometimes they live three or four years, but you know, they're not happy there.

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That's not where they want to be. So there's the trees that will tolerate for shade that have white flowers.

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So that that's one of those things. You can do a little research, look on an website and get something that will meet that site.

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But dogwood is not a good, open growing tree. It needs to be in any understory.

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So there are other trees that are like that, too. So again, look up the growth habit of the tree, look for the trees, grow it again.

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If it's growing in understory, it's not going to be very happy.

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If you put it out in the middle of the shade, I mean a middle of an open yard and it gets full sun.

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The Sun is going to really going to really work on it. So. You know, just one more thing, Carol, on that topic is.

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I would stress is don't be afraid to bare root trees, like you say, if they're handled properly,

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I see them do as good or better than a lot of those container trees in the long run.

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Oh yeah, I certainly agree.

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I mean, I plant, you know, a lot of fruit trees and things around around my farm and and I almost invariably buy a bare root tree.

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I mean, a lot of times it's because you can't, you know, if you own a certain variety of Apple,

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you may like go down to the local feed store and get that variety of apples.

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So you may have known. That's true. And again, those those trees come shipped to you.

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In most cases they have. They have some type of of medium that goes around kind of keeps the roots moist and they're wrapped in in plastic bags.

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And it's don't, you know, try to have your trees.

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It come when you're ready for them. You know, you don't want to order a tree and then put it out in your garage for three or four weeks.

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You know, soon as you get them that day or the next day, put them in the ground, but again, bare root trees.

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That's invariably what I plant, and I have very good success with them.

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And again, a bare tree, if it's planted right, it never knows that it's moved, you know, it hits the ground running.

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Sometimes our container trees, they're shocked because we take them out of it,

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you know, out of that container, put them in the ground so they may stand there.

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The first year where a lot of times the bear fruit trees, they just take off and the balled and burlaped

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If you get to that point, they're very bad about not doing anything above ground the first year,

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you know, they're trying to reestablish, you know, those 50 foot roots that you cut off of them.

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So they're just, you know, if you can just get them to live the first year or two

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that's all you're looking for them on some of the containers in the balled and burlap trees where the bare root trees again their smaller trees,

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but they can't hit the ground running and they never slow up. So.

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That's what my preference is,

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is from the cost and ease of planting and also the the varieties that you can get are much more available, the more in the bare trees.

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You know, another thing on that as far as planting is, I always tell everybody wants to fertilize their trees when they plant them.

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And, you know, we just don't want to do that. And I believe that water is very important.

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I think, you know, maybe more than anything is that water goes through there right away and kind of helps

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settle that dart around those roots that eliminates that air pockets to as much as water,

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you know? Yeah, that's right, Shaun. You know, we want to, you know, can't overstress that water needs the most important thing.

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And having that hole prepared, you know, dig a bigger hole out than what the root ball is, but again, put that same dirt back in there.

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Don't don't bring in a bunch of compost in and fertilize.

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You never fertilize a tree in the hole to start with,

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but don't don't bring in a bunch of really good soil because what you're doing is creating an environment that the tree roots are happy.

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They are. They don't want to move out into this a rough clay soil that we have, so they won't spread.

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And you're just about planting in a bowl, you know?

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And so they're happy there. But again, they're going to outgrow that, that good soil that you've put there.

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And if they're not spreading out into the surrounding soil, then they're susceptible to being blown over in the wind and things like that.

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But again, for for the first couple of years, I would recommend any fertilization at all.

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All I would recommend is watering.

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And then after that, if you want to put a little bit of fertilizer on them, we usually recommend like one pound per inch in diameter.

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So if you have a two inch tree, that's there's going to be two pounds of fertilizer, you know, that's very little.

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And you really want to spread that out away from the trunk. You don't want any.

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You don't want anything affecting the trunk. You don't want to put dirt around the trunk.

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You don't want to mulch around the trunk. You want to have that that trunk or that tree free because there's a lot of gas exchange and a lot

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of things that take place there that if you if you pile them out to it or add more dirt to it,

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the trees aren't going to be happy and unhappy trees usually don't last too long.

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That's a good point. You know, one of the next things on the list was mulching and kind of hit on it just a little bit there,

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but is it a good thing to mulch a tree, you know, soon after you plant it?

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And if you do. You talked about not getting it up to the base and call that volcano mulching.

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What's the proper technique to to mulch a tree. mulching is good.

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I mean, mulching keeps the ground, you know, it keeps moisture in the ground, and it's a good thing keeps the roots cool.

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But again, we don't want that mulch up next to the tree.

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So if you're mulching because you don't want to be battling the grass, then you probably need to put down some type of weed barrier,

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you know, around the tree, some type of fabric to prevent the grass from coming up.

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But don't use the mulch for that purpose. Use the mulch to keep the tree cool and keep the moisture in the ground.

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But again, if if you're mulching right up next to the tree and I've seen it, you know, a lot of places have seen a lot of landscapers do it.

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You know, that's going to cause problems.

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And one of the things that happens is if you put six inches of mulch up next to the bark of that tree, in many cases, it'll put roots out.

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It'll start growing new roots and they're in that mulch and you know what mulch did.

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It breaks down as soon as we start putting it out there it starts breaking down.

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So if you don't keep adding mulch to it in six months or or a year, the mulch is down to two inches,

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you know, but those roots are sticking out there for inches above ground and so that they're going to die.

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And again, there's a lot of a lot of things that take place right at that ground level of that tree that if you put mulch on

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or add too much dirt to is going to affect the tree and it's going to impair the tree from from growing properly.

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So again, mulch is a good thing. Sometimes in our flowerbeds or things like that, we use most prevent grass and weeds.

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But in this case, you can't prevent that grass and weeds from growing up next to the tree with mulch.

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You're going to have to do something else, you know,

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either come in and hand weed it or put down some type of of weed barrier fabric to keep the grass and stuff growing from growing up.

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But again, we can't we don't want that mulch next to our tree trunks.

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Well, that's a good place to end it there on our second in this series on tree care and maintenance.

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We appreciate Carol being here again with us today.

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He'll be back with us for our third episode in this series, or we'll discuss common tree problems, insects, diseases and that sort of thing.

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In the meantime, I do encourage you to visit our website, which is www.uaex.uada.edu

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There we've posted a lot of great resources on tree pruning.

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Planting, just general tree care and maintenance I'd encourage you lot of great information.

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I would encourage you to check that out. Until next time on around the Homestead podcast, we'll see you around the farm.

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We hope you enjoyed this episode of Around the Homestead podcast to learn more about today's topic.

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Be sure to visit our website at uaex.uada.edu

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Be sure to join us next time on around the Homestead podcast.