I planted this 3in1 cherry tree. I dug a hole 2x the width and slightly deeper than the pot the tree came in. Then I backfilled with native soil. Created the ring of mulch. Is there anything wrong with my methods?
by SponsoredByChaos
I planted this 3in1 cherry tree. I dug a hole 2x the width and slightly deeper than the pot the tree came in. Then I backfilled with native soil. Created the ring of mulch. Is there anything wrong with my methods?
by SponsoredByChaos
16 Comments
Bonus pic is a spider on my poblano plant
It’s too deep bud
Hard to say without knowing how it all started and went. When was is planted, was it watered routinely in between rain and during droughts etc.
My guess is it was not watered routinely and was sited in full afternoon sun and got scorched.
Might be a bit deep, but doubt it would kill it in one season. Perhaps too much or too little water.
Cherry trees in my area are the first trees to drop leaves in late summer due to drought stress, where they look to have had their fall leaf drop 1 to 2 months early.
Potted trees are 3-4 inches too deep it the pot itself, so if you align soil level with level of soil in the pot it will be too deep. My conspiracy theory is this gets more people to buy trees since they die. Peel back the extra roots and soil to find root flair first. then plant this root flair 1-2” above soil line with native soil. add a small layer of compost then mulch
Yes.
When you backfill, the soil is fluffed, and over time it will compress and thus the tree will be too low as it already appears to be. Slightly raising is better than having it sunken in. For those who aren’t experienced I’d say aim for it to be at least 1-2” higher than the surrounding soil (depends on soil type, but if mounded worst case is keeping it moist early on, far better than it drowning).
You can absolutely dig it back up, be careful as best you can but you can and should redo it, at this point the roots haven’t really spread out anyways.
Also just a personal preference, but looking at your soil it may be worthwhile to work the soil with your spade to break it up a bit, looks like big old chunks and really hard to tell how well it was planted or how deep.
Also unsure what is going on with the tie line around the trunk and what look like roots coming out the side? Are those old roots or from the tree? If their old, then you want to remove them as best you can, if from the existing, well that’s more of a problem, maybe you totally messed up the rootball, and you need to make sure roots go under the ground.
Did you remove the pot ? Did you water a lot ?
My two cents: (not an arborist, but I’ve planted many trees over the past 6 years). As others are saying, yes planted deep, try to find the root flare and have that at or above ground level, yes cut the zip tie, and please remove those plastic tags that say what the tree is. Also I wouldn’t recommend any thing to stabilize it, that twine looking stuff can and will choke the trunk of the tree. Any well planted tree almost never needs help staying up right. Other than that, keep the mulch away from the trunk to avoid rotting over time, make the mulch into kind of like a bowl shape to help retain some water, and don’t just water where you planted the tree, water the grass surrounding it too.
the people on this sub think Trees are all made of Origami and will die to any single stress factor in existence
Remember to clip that zip tie. It’s not tight now, but it’ll eventually girdle it.
Plant it low and it won’t grow,
Plant it high and it won’t die
The tree stakes are too tight. No room for growth/movement and you want the tree to move with the wind to get stronger
Did you feed the friend a nice bug or anything?
Too deep. The point where the trunk turns into roots should be at surface level.
String ties. These will only rip/burn/scrape the bark. Stakes are ONLY to stop the tree from rocking in the pit. That MF doesn’t have enough leaf to be rocked by the wind. You do not need stakes. Nix the string.
Tooooo deep
Plant it a little higher than the ground, fill back in, mulch for moisture