Hi, Tim:

Cool that you're moving trees onto your property! Getting trees to survive in the city has been a passion for me for mucho years. I'd love to help you transplant a tree while we're visiting.

Your Instructable on tree transplanting moves me to comment:

1) It's important that the big roots of a rootballed tree be cut cleanly with a clean sharp pair of loppers, and that smaller roots be cut cleanly with a clean sharp pair of clippers. Torn root bark and crushed roots give opportunistic fungi and bacteria easy inroads into the tree's vascular system. Plus just as with pruning cuts above ground, a tree can heal a clean-cut root much more easily than a ragged one.

2) Trees have two kinds of roots: structural roots, which help secure the tree in the ground, and fine feeder roots, which collect oxygen, water and nutrients from the soil. The feeder roots are usually within six inches of the soil surface, while the structural roots can be substantially deeper, as you saw with your orange tree.

When a tree blows over in the city it's usually because its structural roots were cut, destabilizing it. When a city tree dies back it's often because its feeder root system was suffocated either due to soil compaction or due to a construction-caused change of grade. Or it may simply have run out of adequate soil volume to sustain the tree.

2) Be sure to dig the destination hole just deep enough that when the tree settles in, the soil level will be at the trunk flare (where the base of the trunk widens). Covering the feeder roots with too deep a soil layer will suffocate the tree.

Also make the hole nice and wide, to encourage the tree to grow new roots into the loose aerated soil around the root ball.

3) Once the tree is planted, cover the soil with 2-3 inches of mulch, keeping the mulch a few inches away from the trunk. This keeps the soil from compacting (which suffocates the feeder roots) and helps retain moisture.



4) Keep exposed roots covered with a moist cloth during transport, and keep the root area in the new location well watered for at least a couple years. If there hasn't been substantial rain to do the job for you, a slow trickle from a hose for about an hour once a week is a good way to water deeply without oversaturating the soil.

In case you want to try it out: the latest greatest arboricultural wisdom is that the best way to transplant a tree is once again bare root -- but not the way they did it in the old days. Nowadays the transplant tool of choice is an air spade or air knife, devices which use compressed air to excavate the root system fast and efficiently and with minimal root damage. Substantially more of the root system can be preserved, and the total weight of the transplant is substantially less than when a big soil ball is transported along with the tree.

Here's a couple photo descriptions of air spade transplanting.

Libby

We water it and go home. It's 2 am.That day is cloudy and rainy.Perfect for a new tree in a new place!I hope it thrives. Will let you know how that goes!My east coast arborist pal Libby Shaw says: