How to Transplant Trees

welcome back to my channel today what i wanted to do is talk about transplanting trees and this one in particular so what i'll do is uh explain how to do it and i'm going to move this little plumeria from here over to the lawn this this spot out here is a lot better for the plumeria where it can get probably about 15 to 20 feet tall so it'll be a better spot right here all right let's get to it so what i wanted to do is figure out how much root ball that i'm going to need to transplant this tree so in a nursery when you go buy a tree it's already in a container and it was raised that way but if you're going to dig a tree out you got to figure out how much root space and soil that you need so for a tree that's small say four inches in diameter and smaller what you'll want to do is you'll measure from the soil level from the root crown and you're gonna go six inches up and at that point at six inches you're gonna get the diameter i don't have my diameter tape so i'm gonna um do it by measuring with pi now this this uh trunk is roughly eight inches in circumference so now what i do is i'll get the eight inches and i'll um divide it by pi so i get my trusty phone here and i'll go the eight inches and i'll divide it by pi which is 3.14 and it equals 2.5 so what i'm going to do you're going to need 10 inches of root ball for each inch of diameter for tree trunk so 2.5 times 10. so 2.5 times 10 it'll be 25 inches is what i'll need so what i'm going to do is measure it out now that i figured out what size i want the root ball to be which is 25 inches i'm going to measure out from the tree 25 or actually 12 and a half inches i'll tie a line to the end of it and tie it to a stick and i'll make a circle for my mark of how big i want the root ball to be 12 and a half inches because um it's going to be a 25 inch root ball so here we go so first thing what i'm going to do is i'll put a little string around the tree and i'll tie a bowline so it'll it'll move freely now here we go okay so once i got that tied in now i'm going to measure so roughly from the center of the tree and i'll go about 12 and a half inches out so so about right here so what i'm going to do is i'll get my string and then i'll connect a stick to it and what i'm going to do is i'll mark what my root ball size should be and then i'll work from that spot outward so now i get it tight might be a little bit off but here we go so now what i'm gonna do is i'm just gonna trace around the tree i can try to keep it tight okay oops and there we go let me get over here that kind of i went off a little bit there that's roughly how big my root ball is going to be now got to start digging so um here's some of the tools that i'm going to possibly use i got this drainage spade i used to know it as a balling spade but i guess nowadays they call it a drainage spade maybe a cheap pair of loppers round a point shovel a flat shovel for you know scooping piles and things and possibly a pulaski so when you're going to be cutting roots what you want to do is make sure that they're clean cut so it's good to sharpen your shovels and some of the tools you're going to be using so what i'll first start doing is um i'm gonna go all the way around the tree with the shovel and i'm gonna make my my first cut and i'll try to just see if i can do it if i'm gonna try to stay as true to that marking of mine might be a little bit off but it doesn't really matter so much now when you're digging you don't have to go straight down you want to judge what the roots are doing the density of the roots so if the roots kind of start lessening lessening toward you know as you're going down then you can you can have your root ball taper inward so you don't have to have so much soil when you're moving it so first what i'll do is i'll do this first cut to try to get many roots as i can at the edge and then i'll start using a falling spade there okay now the depth should be i'm going to go about maybe 18 inches deep now each tree will be a little bit different that you work on depending on how many roots you find as you go downward so [Music] all right so i've uncovered the root ball about 13 inches deep i don't think i'm going to go any deeper than that because what i was noticing is that the irrigation here is kind of only kind of drenched a certain amount of soil you can see how this is like wet and here's all the root balls and then all the roots and then underneath it's really dry so there's a lot less so what i'm going to work on is cleaning up the dry areas and kind of sculpting it and it'll probably be maybe a 13 inch deep root ball [Music] so now i've got the root ball about what i want so uh i don't have a dolly or anything so what i'm gonna do is i'm going to just make a little bit of a ramp here stick a shovel under it and drag it to where i want to plant it so now that i i wrapped it with just some regular saran wrap to try to save the root ball that was falling apart what i'm going to do is i'm going to put a rope around it and i want to use it as a handle so i could lift it so i could put the shovel in place so let me see if i can do that so what i'm going to do is get it ready here i'm going to choke it and then when i choke it i'm going to lift the root ball and then i'll put the shovel underneath okay there we go so now with the shovel and the rope hopefully i can maneuver it out of the hole and get it to where i was hoping to bring it so my my rope fell off so i'm just going to readjust it a little bit more but this time i'm just going to tilt back the root ball there we go put it on the shovel and now what i'm going to do is i'm going to throw my rope around the probably the top portion of the root ball on the back side kind of hold it in place it'd be heck about that easy if i decided to do it with a like a a dolly all right here we go all right so now i got to dig the hole so now that i got the root ball and and everything ready i'm going to dig the hole where we're going to plant it the root ball is about nine inches deep so we're going to make the hole only about eight inches deep and the root ball was about 25 inches wide so what i'm going to do is probably make about a 40 inch hole so i'm going to measure out 40 inches and uh i actually have 20 inches now 40. i'm going to measure out 20 inches right here and then i'm going to start cutting the grass out so here's my 20 inch mark i'm just going to do a slip knot here so what i'm going to do is just make a little mark like it's 20 inches all the way around and then what i'll do is i'll cut out all the grass okay so now i've got the edges of my hole where i want it to be so now what i'm going to do is uh i'm just going to take the top layer of grass out and i don't really want to go super deep i just want to get the top layer you know some of the roots and i just want to clear this out of the way and i want to set it i wanted to set it aside from my my good dirt pile because what i don't want to do is have it inside of my hole when i'm trying to plant back i don't want all the green in there i'd rather have it a clean um soil so what i'll do is i'll just take these little chunks at a time and i'm going to set them off and what i'll probably do when i'm done with the hole is i'll i'll knock some of the soil off and keep some of it but for the beginning part of this i just don't want to have it in my my clean dirt pile okay so now i've cleaned out the grass and i'm getting ready to dig the hole now my root ball was only nine inches deep but i'm going to plant it high one inch just in case after you plant it might settle so i'm only going to make this hole eight inches deep by about 40 inches wide i want i want a little bit of a a little bit wider so i can firm up the soil once i put it in and then it kind of breaks up the soil a little bit so when i uh when it grows it the roots will do a little bit better so what i'm first going to do i put the stick here that's going to be my gauge i want it to be flat you know how some people might dig a hole and leave mounds of soil at the edge well that's not so good because you got to have the right grade so uh what i'm going to do is i'll go down 8 inches this will be my pilot hole and i'll measure it from from my 8 inches down i'll get my measuring tool and i'll i'll stick to that level let me see yeah right here let's see how deep i got here all right all right so now i'm going to get the measure measuring tape i'll bring my stick here and yeah i've already i've already passed eight inches so what i'm gonna do this will be right here this is gonna be how deep my hole is gonna be i'm measuring from the bottom the bottom of the stick to the bottom of the hole i don't want to over dig the hole because if i over dig the hole that below part can like settle in a time maybe the whole root ball will go even in the root ball since i moved it it could have some settling so my goal here will be to keep it this depth all the way around alrighty all right so now that i have that pilot hole there um a lot of times i find it's easy since i've already made that hole to just start digging from that point and working my way away from it i don't have to take really huge scoops it makes the hole a lot easier to dig and then i can keep the the grade that i'm trying to keep a little bit easier you know so all right so now got the hole at about eight inches deep so now it's time for me to go put that tree inside the hole so i'll come over here and i'll pull it on over and hopefully i get it see so okay so gotta try to be gentle so i don't smash the complete root ball and here we go okay slowly try to rock it in slowly there we go yeah that uh cellophane really helped so now what i got to do is just set it in the hole where i want it okay cool i get the rope on it now i'm gonna have to pick a face so i'm thinking i have i'm gonna rotate it right here okay now i'm gonna have to as i fill in i'm gonna have to adjust the root ball because i've got it tilted backwards so what i'm going to do is i'll slowly start throwing soil around shift some underneath and pack it in so let's start doing it now i'll work on the back side first i like to use a tarp on grass so you don't have to try to clean up the grass as much then i'll just use a regular apparent soil so first i'm working off the back here so because what i'm going to do is i'm going to tilt it upward and definitely i'm going to take the the paper off i'm not going to leave it that way i just want to make sure i don't let the roots go loose until it's time so i'm gonna get to this back side here lift the root ball up and i'll pack it in once i get some in there i'm going to use my shovel tip to pack it in i'll do maybe one lift all the way around so see the the root ball is almost level and that's kind of what i'm after i don't want i don't want the um whole trunk straight i'm more after the root ball but placing it back the way it was okay so uh let me get a little bit of this packed in here i'll do one ring on the bottom and then i'm gonna take the plastic off okay so already i've already put a ring of soil at the base here and so what i'm going to do is with my foot i'm going to firm it up i'm not going to completely compact it but what i'm trying to do is to push out any air pockets you know fill them in so when i uh um when i'm completed there's none you have air pockets what can happen is it can dry root balls out or let water sit that happens and it can kill the roots so now that i've done that bottom area and i filled it in now i'm going to take the plastic off and then i'll continue to to fill in the um the root ball so hopefully it stays in place i kind of was tough with it so there we go there well now that i got that off i'll just kind of peel it off slowly there we go there all right so now i'll continue to backfill and i'm going to do it in lifts so a lift is where you throw a soil and then firm it up with your foot and i'll just continue to do it let's see now that i've gotta run around it with my shovel i'm gonna spike it up a little because there's some clumps i'm gonna try to break those up a little bit all the way around try not to hit the root ball i didn't get this far over here so i'm just going to spread some and now i'll do the same thing with my foot i'm going to firm it up again like so after i've filled in all the the outside edge and firmed up the soil i created a berm around the tree now that berm's important because um we transplanted it we cut a lot of roots and we want it to stay out of shock so right now what i'm going to do is just fill up the berm and uh then i'm gonna have to pay attention to it i don't want it to be uh like i don't want to let it go dry there we go then you'll fill up the berm and i'd say you'd probably want to water it maybe a couple times a week during the cold season maybe once but in the summertime you probably want to do it at least three times a week or if it shows like signs of wilting you definitely want to put some water on it so that's a video on transparent planting small trees and some of the concepts behind it remember that if it's a tree that's four inches in diameter and smaller that the root ball should be ten times the size of each diameter trunk of trunk diameter and you'd find that by measuring from the root ball six inches high now if it was a larger tree if it was a tree that was greater than four inches then you would measure a foot from the base a foot up and get the diameter at that point and if it's a greater diameter then it could be as many as 12 inches of soil per each chunk diameter so for larger trees a bigger root ball that could be expensive and you'd probably need heavy equipment small trees um just the basic ideas of that root ball size is like 10 times for each trunk diameter six inches off the ground so uh that was a transplanting video comment like and subscribe um if you like what we do hit that notification bell and by all means share our videos with people who like our kind of this kind of stuff all right take care we'll see you next [Music] time [Music] you

Channel: Bino H

Views: 16,231

Keywords: Transplanting Trees, How to transplant a tree, tree planting, landscape, how to landscape, rootball, how to dig up a tree, how to plant, how to remove a tree, tree transplant, transplanting, trees, moving trees, bino h, how to plant tress

Id: Bw3fcwi-qG8

Length: 23min 19sec (1399 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 29 2020