[site]

Back to tree planting. How many people here ar digging soil off the top of a root ball to find the root flare? We do. sometimes the digger (or rough handling with pinchers at the nursery) will pile as much as 6" of soil on top of the root ball. Like I say to the guys- deep plants are dead plants.

[Stonehenge]

If we don't see any fine feeders at the top and it appears caked on, we'll work our fingers in there to break up the loose stuff that has been piled on.

I was trying to transplant a few trees last year - started nice and wide, starting working my way down and in to dig out the root ball....kept digging and digging and not finding any roots. By the time I had each tree removed, I discovered each was planted approx 8-12" too deep.

Needless to say, the transplanting didn't go very well, either.

[Lanelle]

I was looking at some street trees planted downtown by someone else and the same thing. I had to dig down several inches to get to the flare and a good portion of the root ball was planted above the surface and then piled high with mulch.

I'm not too optimistic about them. Wonder if the city arborist has seen them yet?

[mdvaden]

We almost always remove some potting material or soil off the ball top anyhow.

As we listed in our site's tree advice page, our current practice is to do a double twine removal.

We remove the twine on the burlap.

Then we dig into the ball at the base of the tree and look for a second one that may remain from previous nursery activity.

We've seen enough 2nd sets of twine on stock we buy, and from other installers, to make this a routing installation practice now.