If you plan to move it with a ball of dirt and roots, select a good, sharp shovel and dig around it with the back of the shovel toward the trunk. Make good clean cuts of the roots you encounter. After you've severed all the lateral roots, trench out around the line you've cut to enable you to undercut the tree. Again, strive for clean cuts to the roots. Once you've completely undercut the tree, roll up a small tarp half way and work this under the loose rootball. Carefully rock the tree toward the tarp side and you should then be able to unfold the tarp the rest of the way. Now you can lift/drag the tree to the new spot where you already have a hole ready to go. Slide it in place, make any adjustments needed for proper planting depth (Rootflare at grade level), backfill and water.

+oM

find out the proper time for transplant in z7 .... hopefully someone will chime in .. or call the local nursery and ask ....

dig the receiving hole.. about 2.5 feet wide.. and one shovel deep ....

dig about one foot around from the trunk ... shovel backward .. if you wrench the shovel.. and we want to avoid that.. we want you wrenching AWAY from the trunk.. trying to keep the rootball intact

.. and then dig again about 1.5 away ...with the shovel in the proper way ...

then go back.. with the concave shovel facing you to the one foot part .... and excavate the soil between the hole ... until you have the tree standing there with a cylinder of soil ....

then try to gently slice under the tree ... and have it fall into the shovel..

carry to new hole... fill in halfway.. insuring it is planted at the same level .... water well ... refill the rest of the hole.. tamp in sufficiently ...

timing is everything... do it at the right time .. and you should be all set ...

this is what happens in pure sand.. and i rarely lose any ... because of timing ... note that on this 8 foot tree.. how small the roots are ... your 2 footer wont need all that much ....
{{gwi:331094}}

mulch well .. and keep it properly watered for the rest of 2008 .... insert finger... water deeply and infrequently.. too much water can be worse than not enough ... in some cases ....

ken

Now would be a fine time to transplant your tree! In zone 7, a deciduous tree is best transplanted anytime after it looses its leaves in fall, throughout winter, and even in early spring.

As long as the ground isn't frozen, and as long as you can be out there digging the hole, almost any time in the winter in Z7 is good. I would try to avoid just before a forecast for freezing temps for several days, or for strong winds, not that I think the freeze will matter too much to the top of the tree, but it's hard to not have the fresh water you have just watered the tree with not turn into an ice-cube, no matter how well you mulch, if it will be freezing for several days. And strong winds will dry the ground out (Mulch Well!) and may rock the newly planted tree out of the ground. If the new area is fairly windy, then staking may be indicated. Follow all the normal good planting practices.

Although not as frequently as in summer, you will still need to check the root ball for dryness, especially if it's been windy - stick a bare finger in the dirt, and water when the top few inches are dry - unless you are lucky and it is raining in your area. As the weather warms in the spring, keep checking more frequently, and water when needed, for the next 18-24 months. Mulch the area around the tree with the mulch of your choice - pine straw, pine bark, aged hardwood mulch, etc. - no deeper than 4", no mulch in the 2-4" next to the trunk, and as widely as you can, even up to 10'. If the new area is sloping, you might want to avoid the pine bark - it tends to float away in heavy rains.

One last suggestion - save the dirt as you dig it out of the new hole in a wheelbarrow, buckets or on a tarp; a wheelbarrow is easier, but you may want the wheelbarrow to help move the tree - as you will need to use it to fill in the old hole, after you have back filled around the tree in the new hole. For whatever reason, sometimes the dirt you have dug out of the new hole isn't enough to back fill around the tree and fill in the old hole as well, so you may need a bit of extra dirt from somewhere around your property.

in my experience.. the soil removed is never enough to refill the hole.. because of all the soil attached to the sod you have to remove first ....

if you dig the hole an extra 6 inches deeper.. and lay the sod in the bottom.. upside down ... and then plant the tree ...

you end up with enough soil ...

guess how many years it took me to figure that one out... lol ... too many

ken

If you do lay the sod upside down in the bottom of the planting hole, then leave the top of the root ball a little high - when the sod breaks down, the root ball will sink slightly. Mulching can bridge the initial difference between ground level and the top of the root ball. If the tree is initially planted with the root ball top at ground level, then it would eventually be below level, but if left high, it should come to rest at ground level. You can also put the sod in the old hole, and deal with the slight dip in your lawn (supposing that's where it is) at a later date, when it shows up, IF you care about a perfectly level lawn! If you are like me, you can peacefully ignore it.

Laying the sod upside down will make sure it dies. HOWEVER, if you have Bermuda grass (a.k.a. wire grass, h*ll grass, etc., etc.) growing in your lawn, remove the BG roots from the sod before placing it in the hole - they will survive and grow just fine, as they can normally grow deeper than 24"!

I've buried sod under newly planted specimens on a sandy soil, where the customer thought it was the thing to do. Otherwise, I wouldn't, as you are putting topsoil down deep where it doesn't belong. I suppose under some conditions there might even be some backing up of water draining through the planting hole where it encounters the different texture of the sod.

Use transplanting with a soil ball only if the particular kind of tree being moved is extra sensitive to drying of the roots (this may be possible with Gymnocladus, I don't know). Otherwise bare-rooting is preferable as you can get more of the roots, transplanting quickly there will not be the same level of mortality of small roots as in commercial practice involving stacking, hauling and storage for long periods. Using soil to protect the roots is the only advantage of transplanting with an intact soil ball, since these soon become heavy and tend therefore to be dug under-sized most of the outside of the root system is lost, same as with bare-rooting (and storage).

At this point I would wait until end of winter/early spring, so that the plant doesn't sit through months of cold weather with a damaged/disturbed root system. Moved just before the opening of dormant buds at branch ends in spring it will immediately produce new roots from the cut root ends.

Thank you for all the advice.
When I dig a hole for a tree I usually remove all the bermuda grass which leaves very little soil behind but I have saved soil from all the gopher hills in my 1.5 acres of yard. I chopped one of those things in half with a shovel and that must have made it's relatives mad. They made a mess of my yard.
Guess I need to sharpen my shovel to cut that tap root. It's going to be hard to wait for spring to see if it survives.
Thanks again.

Save the dirt as dibbit suggests. Remove all the dirt from the sod. Do not put the sod upside down in the bottom of the hole--during dry periods moisture comes up from the subsoil into the rooting zone of the tree. The upside down sod will produce at least a partial barrier that will make it more difficult for the moisture to move upward through the soil. Of course if you water regularly until the sod rots and the roots penetrate it into the soil below, there should be not be too much harm. Again, as dibbit says, God bless him, as the sod rots the support under the tree at that point is reduced and here could be a little subsidence. Again, probably not a big problem, but not something you need.

--Spruce

i guess i made a general statement.. based on my locale ...

IN MY SAND .. i figure any humus put in the bottom of the hole is a plus .... and that is what rotting grass eventually is ...

on the other hand... i normally .. cut the sod ... and use it to develop a moat at the surface.. so i can apply a few gallons of water to the sand, which becomes water repellent in late summer ... so i actually don't do what i said ... lol ...

and to be clear.. when i used to do it.. i did not put down an intact carpet of the sod at the bottom .. it was broken up .. and interspersed with native soil ...

anyway ... mother nature is very forgiving... if the timing of the move is proper ....

ken

Well, actually, Spruce, Dibbit is female - a nickname from my older sister who couldn't say Elizabeth. For various reasons, I kept it.

I appreciate your kind words of praise, - I am happy to feel I have learned SOMETHING as I try to grow things!

TDSmith, if the new tree is near a water source, I would expect that it would be watered, and that the sod, if put into the hole, would break down in rapid order. If you do remove all the BG roots as you dig out the hole, you are right - you will have little sod left, and not a whole lot of dirt from that sod. But while the soil from gopher hills is probably not top soil, it should be fine for backfilling around the root ball, and a good mulch will speed the process of changing the sub-soil to a better quality of soil. If you have any compost, a thin layer of that (an inch or so) around the root ball, extending out a few inches beyond it, under the mulch, would help the process along much quicker.

Bboy, digging in clay soil it can be very hard to have the moisture levels be right to get a good crumbly soil to nicely backfill. If it's a bit too wet, it sticks together in soft sticky clods, which can be laboriously broken down into smaller lumps - sometimes. And if it has had time to dry out a bit too much, you still have clods, but now they are hard clods, which may or may not be able to be powdered into finer soil. It makes backfilling and making sure there are no air-pockets a bit of a challenge! Which is one reason I mulch - I figure the balanced moisture will help in re-establishing an even soil structure, as the clay melds back together. Waiting to plant something after it rains can be frustrating - but is sometimes necessary. Other times, esp. earlier after the extremely dry summer, I could dig even after an inch of rain had fallen - the soil was now perfectly diggable, instead of cement! I don't know if TD is digging in clay or sand, or, lucky person, in loam, but...

dibbit:

You are a treasure--I think you have had your hands deep into the dirt, and have learned from the experience, at least as much as I have, and I have been at it for over 60 years. I apologize if I made any assumption that you were male--trust me, there is not a sexist molecule anywhere in my body. But I do admit to generally using "he" when I have no contrary evidence.

--Spruce