As I had mentioned earlier we bought out 2 acres from someone that wanted to be a tree farmer but did not know what he was doing. He thought that he could just put the buckets and barrels of trees into the ground and sell them in a couple of years at a profit. On Saturday my wife and I went out to the land to transplant trees that were still small and in buckets, this is the story of one of the seven trees we transplanted.
Because of the type of bucket and the overgrowth around it we decided to tie a rope around the bucket, tie it to the back of Redford and pull it out. We got the rope tight and then I proceeded to dig around the bucket with a small bladed shovel until it was free from the surrounding ground.
This is what it looked like when we got it out of the area
The barrel was too heavy to cut with the snips so I got out the generator and the circular saw and cut the barrel apart.
The roots of the tree were one tangled mess, there were one or two that made it out of the bucket, but that was it.
We wound up cutting the root ball apart with the circular saw to get the roots to spread out in the ground.
I do not know if this tree will make it or not, but we will do what we can to get it to take in its new spot. We spent 11 hours transplanting 7 trees and according to my pedometer I walked 15,557 steps doing so, it was a long but good day out on the land.
-- My green thumb came only as a result of the mistakes I made while learning to see things from the plant's point of view. ~H. Fred Ale
4 comments so far
Jimthecarver
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107 posts in 665 days
hardiness zone 8b
posted 109 days ago
Wow….you have quite the project going.
I’m looking forward to seeing your progress.
Being a boy at heart…I love the train.
-- JTC
Radicalfarmergal
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3982 posts in 1403 days
hardiness zone 5b
posted 109 days ago
I am glad you are trying to rescue those trees. They must be pretty tough to have survived such root restriction. I hope you have good survival results to reward your hard work, but as you suggest, the work can be a reward in itself.
-- "To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves." M. Gandhi
MsDebbieP
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13910 posts in 2141 days
hardiness zone 5b
posted 108 days ago
you are a tree-hero. I think I heard the tree gasp as its roots were freed. Now… if nature will do its thing and remind the roots about what they should be doing.
Crossing my fingers!
-- - Debbie, SW Ontario Canada (USDA Hardiness Zone: 5a)
sharad
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1544 posts in 1357 days
hardiness zone 11
posted 108 days ago
Wish you good success in your efforts to save the trees after doing so much of hard work. We will be watching your story.
Sharad
-- Bagwan-- “If someone feels that they had never made a mistake in their life, then it means they have never tried a new thing in their life”.-Albert Einstein