There are generalities and there are specifics. I think the general advice is 2x by 1 x, but soil structure could very well change that. I have seen in Gardener's World (British Show) where the host will mention that because their soil structure won't fully support the plant they are putting in, they go above (below?) and beyond the recommendations to make sure the plant has a good start. Personally, I don't even do the 2x the width. While I don't have sugar sand, I do have very sandy soil, so it has been my experience that the plants I put in don't need help in spreading out into the surrounding soil. Instead what I tend to do, is dig the hole a little bigger than the pot, place the rootball inside (after spreading/cutting any circling roots) and then I 'knife' in the edges of the hole filling in the lower area with the surrounding soil. I then fill in the rest of the hole with compost. Given the extreme draining conditions of my soil, I know it won't be long before water has dragged the compost down into the soil.

So, your plant is sitting on "surrounding soil" and compost surrounds it?

I think digging depth is also influenced by how much work you want to do. The french intensive method has a person dig down two feet and replace the bottom foot with a 50/50 mix of original soil/ compost-manure, with the remaining soil mixed with 2 parts compost-manure. I had some good results with this method and watered 3x a week, but it is labor intensive.

Irma, I don't think you can go wrong if you mix the soil with a 50/50 mixture, that is, 50 percent potting soil and 50 percent current soil. I think you can dig as deep as you wish and as wide as you wish with this mixture. Clearly, much depends upon how much moisture the plant needs and what kind of fertilizer and watering you do.

My soil is very sandy, but I find that after the first year the plants normally are able to establish large root systems and do well. I use organic fertilizers and also time-release. The organic does not burn the roots easily and leaves, well, organic matter, afterwards. The time-release gives the plant plenty of nutriments for the first year.

Years ago, David McLean brought in a scientist from IFAS, who debunked the entire 2x, 1x hole. He explained it thusly:

The soil in the ground is compact. The soil in the can is compact. Why then would you put a layer of loose soil around the compact root ball when you put it in the ground? Roots are amazingly strong. If you've ever seen them popping up through concrete, you'll agree. Putting loose soil around the root ball does not encourage growth, rather it tends to slow it as the roots get, and I'm using his words here, "lazy".

Worse than that, if you dig a very large hole for a very large tree, all that loose soil will make it easy for the tree to tip over in a storm or strong wind. A smaller hole will reduce the amount of shaking and prevent new roots that have ventured out from the original can-shaped root ball to pull free of the new soil.

His recommendations, and the ones I've followed for a dozen plus years, are to dig a hole only a couple of inches wider than the plant and an inch or two less deep - plant high, as it's going to settle slightly over time. For anything in a pot 7-gallons or more, shove a hose down into the hole after you place the plant and fill it with water to get any air bubbles out. Then backfill with the soil you took out of the hole. Do not top-dress and do not fill the hole with anything other than the original soil.

I'm hesitant to say much here simply because Florida conditions, and therefore, recommendations, can vary so much with the rest of the country. But.....using soil amendments in the backfill of woody plants is now thoroughly discredited in most of the country. The reasons are twofold: First, in order for that tree to survive and thrive in its new location, its roots are going to have to extend far, far beyond that little tiny backfill area. so on that basis alone, it makes no sense to make this little tiny area of soil "real good". Second, the result of using two dissimilar soil types right around a new transplant can cause drainage anomalies. I'm going to leave it there for now, again because Florida stuff can be so different. But that said, if one wishes to amend a large area-say, your entire eventual yard or some such paradigm, that is still a good thing. Just not little tiny areas around new transplants.

Also, hole depth presents some interesting issues. The number-one mistake made by those planting trees is to plant the plant too deep. The root flare-that area of swollen tissue where trunk meets root system, should be at or just slightly above finish grade when job is done. If one were to loosen the soil very deeply, thinking this will give the roots an easier time of it colonizing that area, the plant is now set to sink once the soil takes on water, resulting in......the plant being planted too deeply. So leave a hard, undisturbed bottom on your tree-planting holes, please.

If any of this varies significantly from FL practice, I understand that. But honestly, your own U-FL researcher Ed Gilman has done as much as anyone in the field to debunk some of the old ideas.

+oM

Tom - thanks for reminding me of the guy's name. Yes, it was Ed Gilman who came and spoke to our class. He must have said, "Always plant high" a dozen times before we stopped snickering.

I think - and that's how this should be taken, me thinking out loud - that amending the soil at planting isn't about ensuring the long term health of the plant, but more about helping the plant to settle in to its new space as it sends its roots out to get established. As I heard it described at one point, a plant purchased from a nursery has spent its life confined to a container and fed rather nutritious soil and fertilizer. It has been spoiled rotten. Plopping it into nutrient barren soil and saying, "Grow!" is a good way to send it into shock. By amending the soil a little at planting, you give it time to spread its roots into soil that gradually gets 'worse' instead of a wall between goodness and desolation. Mind you, I have only planted one tree that had a pot was greater than 5 gallons in size. Being on a super tight budget, I go small and watch the plants grow. Some of my tallest plants came to me as 8-12" saplings and are now as tall if not taller than me (6' 3"). But part of it all I think also depends on getting the "Right Plants for the Right Places." For the most part I avoid plants that require a vastly different soil than what I have naturally. My plants should be able to survive on neglect, more or less, and the addition of mulch and organic matter is just a bonus to them. There are a few exceptions, my bananas and blueberries for example, but the vast majority of my plants' care should fit this description.

I do, however, get the reasoning behind not digging wide holes, it always struck me
as odd that you would loosen the soil around a tree that is supposed to
support a nice canopy, it's like building a castle on sand, just not
very sound in thinking or foundation.

Well, I guess I disagree with that notion-that somehow a loosened soil is going to remain so for such an extent into the future that a now small but eventually large tree's stability is going to be compromised. Soil compacts quickly, even without human interference. A wide hole is still a good part of proper tree planting, but I will allow for one significant deviation from this, and it is apropos of FL conditions, that being one of more or less pure sand. Sand basically has no structure, and roots can ramify through it at will, so in the case of a lot of the planting you guys do, it may be OK to not worry over-much about hole width.

But I simply cannot think of one physiological aspect of this that makes the addition of organic material, or any other material for that matter, into that tiny backfill area of any value to a new transplant whatsoever. I think Michael, that in a sense, you are ascribing human-like emotions to these plants. They don't "care" in any sense that we could understand, whether they had been pampered, and additionally, the life of a containerized plant is just as likely to be one of abuse, skipped waterings, constricted, winding roots, and a host of other maladies. Containerized plants are easily the format most prone to root anomalies. There's a whole new industry geared towards solving the issues surrounding containerized nursery stock, that of "rootmaker" pots, "air pruning" and the like. This is not an ideal circumstance, with the plant suddenly dumped out into harsh reality. If anything, it's just the opposite. and it doesn't get a lot better when we move to B&B plants. Very often, the root flare, that critical area which must be still visible at time of planting, is buried via soil cultivation in the nursery row, such that if one simply uses the top of the root ball to indicate proper planting depth, one is apt to be planting that tree much too deeply. We've already removed as much as 18 inches of soil off the top of a B&B root ball, looking for the root flare. This is the reason-soil was periodically heaped up atop the future root ball while the tree was still in the nursery row. Then that plant was dug for sale, with the now newly-added soil seeming to be part of that root ball. I better quit here. I could write all day about this stuff. But to simplify-believe me or not- wide holes good, deep holes bad, with some provisions for soil type. I certainly do agree with you about planting species which are well-suited to existing conditions, so far as long-term, woody plant species are concerned. This isn't about "gardening" but rather, the establishment of more or less permanent woody plants in the landscape.

+oM

Hah hah. I most definitelydon't think the plants have feelings, though who really knows? If they do it is probably some sort of stoic outlook... to be a palm tree stuck at the edge of a beach constantly 'staring' at the oc... hmm...

Anyways, the impression I got was that it had to do with the nutrients. Much like a tree might 'attack' and break into the older teracotta sewage pipes because it detects nutirents and moisture, if the surrounding soil is lower in nutrients, the plant will be slower to establish itself in the surrounding soil until all the nutients in the rootball have been used up. I can't remember if I read it or heard it, but one gardener was relating how he had completely filled the 2x hole with compost and after a year the roots of his tree had not gone beyond the compost and ended up dying from lack of water because the roots were 'confined' to such a small area by its 'desire' to stay in the nutrients. This was years ago, before I was even really thinking about planting anything, much less developing a landscape. If it has been debunked, then it has been debunked. But there are often cases where the debunkers (is that a word?) have been debunked. I am not saying how I do it is 'The' way to do ot, I am just saying it has worked for me thus far.

And I guess it is worth noting that all my plants are in beds that have had organic matter added to them over the years, so that could very well be the real secret to my success and I could very well just be adding unnecessary extra organics that don't do much. I guess this is something I will have to test some day by planting two plants, one without amendments and one with and see how they compare.

Let's see if we can agree on some things. A major mistake when planting is to have the root ball or system too deep. It's better for it to be a little above ground. I think we agree with this for the great majority of plants.

A system that I follow when planting is to fill the hole with water before I put the plant in. That way the soil has settled and is more or less compact. In my experience with our sandy soil in Florida, amending the soil beneath the plant with some organic potting soil does not hurt the plant. Also, amending the soil around the plant somewhat, shouldn't hurt the new plant. One, of course, must be careful with amendments. It's easy to do damage by putting in too many amendments.

I live on top of a sand hill in Central Florida. The soil has little nutrients and does not hold water well. It will dry out quickly. Thus, I believe adding some organic matter to the soil helps many shallow-rooted plants. Also, I think that my plants do well with some organic fertilizers. To clarify, most of the plants I have are flowers. I'm not talking about live oaks, although I have them also.

Maybe we can agree upon how to water when we first put in a new plant. I was taught that deep watering was important. I'm sure this will also vary with what we are planting. A nursery man told me one time to follow the one, two, three format for watering. That is, water new plants once a day for one week. Then every other day for two weeks and then every three days for three weeks. After that, look at the plant to see what it needs.

There are lots of variants here--what kind of plant, how much sun it receives, the temperature, the rainfall, the wind...

The stuff I'm talking about is really only for planting long-term, perennial, probably woody plants, probably trees. My municipal flower beds have gotten a lot of compost over the years, the soil is "crunchy" and woods-like, and things do grow well. If anything, I have found that some plants would be better garden subjects if they grew a little less well-the drought-tolerant species and those flowering better in poor soils, etc. But here's the deal, as modern arboriculture has it, for planting trees:

First, wide, shallow hole with sides that taper toward the top, is the model of tree-planting hole that research has found to be best. I'm pretty sure that Ed Gilman at U-FL would be one source of much such info. The proper planting height is such that the "root flare", that area of swollen tissues where trunk meets roots, is at or slightly above grade-yes, I too think we agree on that point. Now believe it or not-I know I had trouble with this at first-some reputable studies have found no benefit to mulching, no better survival rate, no better growth increment, not even better moisture status for the tree. I still usually like to mulch my woody plantings.

Now again from this same model, the number-one job of a newly-planted tree is to regenerate a root system. Here, studies actually show faster root system expansion in a low-nitrogen soil environment. So that would appear to make fertilization at time of planting, of a tree, to be a rather dubious practice. And finally, even in the example you cite above, I feel certain that that individual didn't really know why the tree died, just that it had. He provided a reason, but the circumstances suggest another, or two, possible different scenarios. First, the compost he placed in the hole was of a markedly different texture than the surrounding "native" soil. Water movement through soil is mediated largely through particle size and shape. Sand is full of sharp angles, is relatively-speaking, huge compared to silt and especially clay, and individual grains of sand actually can lodge against each other, creating large spaces for air and water to move through. The compost, since I can't see it, could have had better or worse drainage characteristics than the sandy soil. This can do two things-first, it can cause the hole with the different material in it to become bath tub-like, the water draining out of that stuff slower than out of the soil around it. Or, it can do the opposite, draining more quickly, leaving the critical area in close to the new transplant drier than the surroundings. But there's simply no reason to think it was a nutrients thing. Heck, for that matter, most compost tests out very low in things like N,P and K. It is more beneficial due to it's soil texture-modifying characteristic over a large area, and its charge of beneficial soil microorganisms. If one would "retrofit" already-planted trees, I suggest the best possible use of compost then would be as a top-dressing.

I remember-since I'm getting quite old-my first landscaping job back in the mid 1970's. I cringe now thinking about us, placing large B&B trees in the ground, probably oblivious to planting height, and then dumping a bag of peat around the ball and backfilling! Almost every single aspect of tree-care has changed drastically, since right around 1980. But please do check out Gilman's stuff. It's all over the U-FL site. I think you will find that there's real reason to be suspicious of there being any benefit to amending planting holes and/or backfill soil when planting trees.

+oM

Like I mentioned, I read or heard the account years ago, probably from some documentary on PBS or something that I was watching out of boredom because I was still very much a techie at the time. But it was definitely before I came to Florida, so it's likely he wasn't in Florida either. I agree on the plant above the soil, though it is hard for me to really judge that point with the smaller plants I work with. With the bareroots I try to plant them so that the junction of the roots and stem are just at the surface of the soil and then I keep an eye on as the weather moves the soil around. So far I have only lost one tree this way, a Sparkleberry, and I'm not sure that was due to method or what. When I dug it up, I found no roots to speak of beyond the main 'tap' roots.
In the end, I am not in a position really to dispute what the correct methods are for much. I can relate the things I have learned and what works for me in my yard, but I always keep in mind that I have so, so much more to learn before I even think to 'know what I'm talking about'. :)

I do the same thing with very small tree transplants-use the top root as the guide for planting depth, placing such that that root is at or just slightly below finish grade. The root flare is not always very pronounced on such young stock. As far as losing a plant or three, that's just a part of planting many plants-100% survival is a rarity. And we don't necessarily always know why one or more plants failed. In fact, we hardly ever do. That's all I'm saying about that gardener example above: They guy lost a plant, he made a pronouncement about why it dies, then I came along and said that what he said does not stand up to scrutiny, not even a little itty bit, lol!

I'm sure you've got a lot of good stuff going on there Michael. No disrespect intended. But for whatever reason, I have a hard time not responding to what to me is clearly off-base. And really, it's not about me. That's why I provide references to people like Gilman. I may be a well-educated, modern horticulturist, but most of this stuff is not my own research. I do though, know what the experts are saying. For another example, in 1980, when I was hired by my present employer, I already knew of the tree research of Alex Shigo. Among Shigo's early findings was that of the utter uselessness of tree wound paints. Yet it took another full ten years before the outfit where I worked finally gave up on that tech for good. So it goes. You can look wrong by being right. It takes time for the world to catch up sometimes.....maybe most times. And I think this amending of tree planting holes is another example of that. I go by science, and the science is very clear on this point: It makes no sense to amend a tree planting hole. Amend your whole yard? Sure, that could do some good. But that little space where the backfill soil goes should just be what was dug out of the hole. And I think I've given the reasons.

+oM

Keep in mind that if you want a landscape that you don't have to baby, just pick the right plants and don't worry about all the extra organic material. Age of the plant didn't have to matter either. As an example, our native coontie plant will live 500 years sitting in pure sand. Coonties, as well as ALL CYCAD species have a secondary root system called Corraloid roots that fixes Nitrogen out of the air and make their own fertilizer. Plant a cycad garden and you would be all set. For some color, put in some Dyckias. They also would do fine with no extra organic material.

I can't get an exact figure, but when I was landscaping, I probably planted 80,000 plants here in central Florida, and only filled in extra soil for only a couple of 100 of them. Dogwoods, Magnolias, Camelias, and sometimes azaleas.

Plantsman, did you use topsoil from the area or something else? I surely do agree with your main point, and some of the options you guys have down there could indeed yield a very nice scheme. My endorsement of coonties as a landscape plant area matter of record. As for Dyckias, thank you sir for alerting me to that plant. Wow! But yeah, even in the naturally-existing plant communities, there's something about those sites which are largely xeric even though in a place capable of getting much rain- pine flatwoods, scrub, jungle (just off of dunes), which I find to be extremely attractive.

+oM

I do like the looks of a cycads and palms garden. The bamboo and palm walk of Leu Gardens is my favorite part. And after seeing just how many different cycads there on the Gardening Australia show (far more than you tend to see in Florida landscapes), I find myself drawn to them even more. But for my personal garden, while I might integrate the two into my yard, I don't want the landscape to be centered on those types of plants. As gorgeous as the palm and cycad walk is, it just seemed a bit lifeless with exception of the squirrels.

Michael, keep in mind, that is a botanical garden with collections of certain types of plants, and not put together to be a landscape. Just think about a garden with those three plant types integrated with design in mind. Add some color to that, could be dyckias, but the bamboo isn't xeric, so this wouldn't have to be all xeric. Down south, colorful crotons, bromeliads and draceneas could add the color needed.

As far as my planting, 90% of the landscapes I did was for brand new houses built by the contractors I worked for. Most houses were built with 2 to 6 footer blocks high and then they bring in fill to bring the ground up near slab level. It was usually cheap sand totally void of organic material. Any plant in a planter up close to the house was plunged in that material. There were a few times the home owner wanted something special, but that was not the norm. I stopped landscaping in 1998 and the majority of what I planted is still in those yards.

Cool. Much of my work life is involved in "native restoration", and more and more, such a direction makes sense, I think. Not as a purist kind of thing but more as a guiding principle. Michael, what is this Gardening Australia you speak of? Sounds like it would be right up my alley, but maybe it's not on here. FWIW, you've obviously made the connection between those sub tropics and that of your own location. I often think certain parts of Australia would be grand places to live. I store this in my big list of things that ain't happening, lol.

+oM

Gardening Australia is a show I stumbled upon while searching for old episodes of Gardeners' World (British show) on YouTube. As interested as I was in GW, I did soon realize that there was a much closer connection between many of the Australian gardens and my own than there was with the British gardens. Both are great in their own right, but one of the hosts of GA actually lives in the sub-tropics and grows year-round crops, so I have been really taking notes on what works for him. It is actually this guy, who was trained at Kew, who prompted my "Naming Gardens" post as I recently learned that he had named his Australian garden. He grows lots of veggies that you just don't hear about here. They're also very big on sustainability, being water-wise and embracing natives more than exotics, but not necessarily to exclusion.

If you are interested, you can look up "Gardening Australia 2014" (or 2015) on YouTube. There are a couple of people who have their episodes posted. Many of the older episodes were purged during a 'copyright infringement' sweep. You can also go to http://www.abc.net.au/gardening/video/download.htm and download a year's worth of episodes at a higher quality than you will find on YouTube. Be warned though, the main host for the show is a bit 'out there'. My wife calls him 'just weird' while I call him 'attention grabbing, passionate and engaging', but he is definitely out there.

Thanks, bud. Out there, huh? Sounds like my kind of guy!

+oM