Update to my previous post where I discovered the root flare was 11 inches below grade.
I continued to excavate and discovered another flare root much less deep. It’s about 3 inches more shallow than the one I found first. This means there is no perfect soil level. I am thinking of sloping the grade to do partially expose all flare roots.
Then I found a girdling root. One of the great villains of this sub right in front of me. I will cut it but I’m minimizing the stress rn.
Here are shots of what I’ve done. Would love advice on soil level. Right now it’s pretty low I wanted to get a good shot of all the roots. I will probably add at least an inch of dirt.
Original post
https://www.reddit.com/r/arborists/s/3buRRJKaN5
by boxer_doggggg
3 Comments
Better. You can add some dirt back and then some airy wood-based mulch like pine bark. The upper roots are probably well-developed adventitious roots from after it got buried too deep. They’re big enough now you should leave them in place. Yeah I agree there’s no ideal soil height here. I would probably fill up to the top of the lower roots (leave a little showing) and leave the higher roots as-is.
I am totally boggled on this one. Why would someone go out of the way to plant it that far too deep? I am going to assume where the 2 different trunk sizes are where a graf is. Orange trees are often grafted to a different root stock. Is this tree planted in a colder zone than orange trees typically grow in? It’s not unusual to plant the graft a little below soil level to protect it from cold temps or from wind.
What kind of soil do you have? Where I live I have very sandy extremely fast draining soil. Trees with tap roots in my area have very little to no root flair on naturally grown trees because the tree has to dig deep for moisture and the soil is airy enough to make deep tap roots possible. If I remember correctly orange trees are a tap root type of tree.
You did a great job, obviously. But given that the tree looks fairly small, I wonder if you’d do better to just pull it up and start anew? What you’ve done seems like it’ll be a significant trip hazard going forward…