That looks fine to me, provided you did deal with any circling roots that might have been present.

Just an FYI, but it never hurts to plant trees on the high side with the root flare clearly visible or slightly elevated above ground level whereas planting deeply can lead to all manner of other issues, some even critical to the survival of the tree. Or in other words, when in doubt, plant high :-)

And just curious, where in the world are you located that a red maple is already leafed out in February??

you did fine ....

it would have been better if you could have planted it fully dormant.. without the leaves ... but thats hindsight ... get the roots pumping water.. before the leaves are there ....

take a walk around an area with 50 plus year old trees .... you will find they have grown themselves into the same format ...

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Maple+roots&t=ffcm&iax=images&ia=images

doesnt look like any trunk damage from the high soil level ...

give us a pic of the whole tree.. and we might give you some better options for your staking ... im not sure those low down accomplish much.. but that might just be the pic ..

ken

The tree & root ball will subside after some time. It's fine.

One would hope that the tree and the rootball will NOT subside over time!! That is when you start getting into a problem area and why one should never dig a planting hole any deeper (and preferably, somewhat shallower) than the existing rootball. A deeply dug and then filled to level planting hole will result in subsidence or sinking and that is not a good thing!

I'm assuming late summer in the antipodes given that the Agapanthus are fruiting. Can't quite make out the wheel on the car but I'm guessing right hand side.

^^ Aha!! That would explain it :-)

Horticultural Techniques for Successful Plant Establishment

https://s3.wp.wsu.edu/uploads/sites/403/2015/03/Planting-fact-sheet.pdf

Sometimes you lose some soil due to pounding rains, wind etc.

My sugar maple (Fall 2018). The mossy soil was up to the trunk when transplanted (was 1/2" or so higher in the bare area) but it seems fine and has been growing like a weed. :-)

Thank you everyone! I’m just south of Sydney Australia, I really did want to wait till the tree was dormant to plant it out but I had another whip of a tree planted here and we had some really bad winds just recently and it didn‘t come out on top so I really just wanted to fill the space and I thought that being near the end of summer that any time in the ground before winter might of been beneficial, it’s also been a wet and mild summer for a while and I set up some drip irrigation under the mulch which I let run for a couple hours each morning to keep it all moist which I hope is helping it.

This tree was in a 45 litre bag and I’m assuming it was a bare root a year ago or so the nursery bagged up because only a couple of roots had hit the edge and started to circle but these were easy to direct out while planting.

haha yeah I felt as though the staking at the base was a bit low but it was more there because after my first couple of days of heavy watering the tree looked like it was starting to lean so slightly ( may of just been me overthinking things) and if I tied higher up it seemed to give it a bend so I tied down low, we get the occasional gusts of wind here so even though the tree feels solid if I shake it I just want to keep it staked until winter when there‘s no leaves on it that might help the wind to give it some problems hence the 2 looser ones on top to try and catch it a little if it does go wayward.

It’s still night here and this is the only photo I have in my phone that shows the staking.

Urghh you‘re talking about subsidence, the original tree in this location had a much deeper rootball, about 7 inches deeper, I dug up another area of my front hard to get the same soil which is sort of a sandy loamy soil and filled centre of the planting hole and drowned it until it literally felt like it had the same consistency as the wall of the hole, there’s no where else I really wanted to put this tree so I’ll just keep an eye on the depth of it if that works?

Gahh a sugar maple has always been my dream but everything I read was leaning toward my area being better suited to a red maple, thank you for the photo.

More of a recent photo

Sandy loam is excellent soil for red maple and red maple will probably do better than sugar maple which prefers some clay in the mix. I do have a couple of reds in my yard already and the sugar was a woods dug tree from a friend of mine and was free like in free, free, free! So thought I'd try it. :-)

you have a nice yard there btw!

Thanks Bill!!

Can’t say no to a free tree!

How old/tall are your reds? Mines about 8-9 foot tall and just over an inch Caliper.

We bought the house almost a year ago and it’s been an effort to get it looking anything nice, the original owners had it very low maintenance and just kind of let it all over run with weeds and an array of different grasses, I don’t mind a bit of yard work, I find it relaxing even, so I’m trying to get a few trees growing and will start to get a bit of shade in the future hopefully.

I planted a couple of magnolia soulangeanas along the neighbouring fence but I think that was a bad decision as they didn’t really do too well this summer so I think I‘ll transplant them to a spot with a bit more shade this winter.

These pictures are from last summer (July).

The one in the front yard is about 12-14 ft. tall and close to 2" diameter. Brought it in as a 6 ft. woods dug whip about 4 years ago.

This second one in the back yard planted as a 6" seedling, 4 maybe 5 years ago. Guessing 9 or 10 ft. tall and a good inch diameter.

Oh, and here's the Sugar last July (third summer in the ground) 8-9 ft? :-)

Right on Embo!

I just realized that Austrailia has it's own set of planting zones where Z3b (Austrailia) = Z10 (USDA). haha!

My maples shown above just went through 5 months of cold dormancy (more than necessary).

Let us know how things turn out in a year or two Brefin. :-)

Ha yeah it has been one of the concerns I’ve had that maybe it may not do too well in my area though every sparse bit of information I could find online about growing maples in my climate zone (warm temperate) pointed to it being possible with the red maple being the most suitable, I’ve just got to make sure I keep it irrigated though dry times, the nurseries I went to also said that it will be fine (but I always thought that could just be them trying to sell them more).

I live on the top of a hill and everyone around me has cleared their trees for some reason, if I drive down the streets there are quite a few deciduous trees growing though most these from what I can see are jap maples, ash trees, elms, pears, sweet gums, cherries, magnolias, crepe myrtles, and forest pansy’s, there hasn’t been a lot but I have seen a few small (15+ft) maples growing about though.

My neighbours house is a few years old, it’s one of those stock standard minimal maintenance houses that are popping up around Aus and he has had his garden designed around his pool out the back, lots of palms, frangipanis, magnolia teddy bears, and tall grasses everywhere but if you walk the streets he’s the only one with a yard like this.

Where I live during winter we can get below 0c/32f but very rarely, then in summer we can break the 40c/104f mark but again very rarely, average temps from summer to winter are 26c/79f and 7c/44f.

Happy for this to be the test tree, the nursery down the road from me has a few that they’ve had for a couple or more years and they keep popping back every spring but nobody is buying them because they are so root bound that when you touch the bag it feels rock hard.

The zone map for acer rubrum show it all the way to south Florida. It's pretty warm there. From what I understand, many trees that need cold dormancy, only need a few weeks during winter where it gets down in the 30's F and 40's at night. I doubt south Florida gets that much at all.

Here a link to the USDA information page: (secure site)

If there are Japanese maples and cherries growing the vicinity then you should have no issues with the red maple.

Sounds like a climate similar to coastal southern California.........

Hi Gardengal, I think you’re right there, the most common comparison I keep seeing is San Diego/LA, though it says we get more rainfall than these areas, where I am the land rises quickly from the coast and it seems to cause even more rainfall on average each year than the surrounding areas and much more than in Sydney itself.

Thank you heaps Bill! that filled me with more confidence!

Apparently Jacksonville in Florida holds the same temperatures as our winters

I've heard somewhere that maples don't get the spectacular fall colors in a warmer climate, as they do where they have colder winters. I don't know if that's true or not. :-)

I’ve read something like that as well, it lent toward the tree having more orange colours over scarlet reds.

Summer for us is almost at an end and April is only 2 months off so I’ll be adding a couple of photos then to see what colour it gets

It’s planted now see what it does

No point in ruminating about it - I bet it does fine. Whats more important is whether you have acidic to neutral soil.

Bill. is it typical for seeding sugar to remain that narrow in full sun for your area?

That first picture is interesting - curious to see if it continues to put on vertical growth with limited lateral elongation.

whaas,

The first picture I posted is Acer rubrum. I've been keeping it's growth narrow encouraging upward growth, hoping this will cause the branching to become more horizontal. I'll probably leave it alone for this year and see what it does.

This is what it looked like last October. Excuse the white tubing placed to prevent sun scald. :-)

Drove around the local streets for about 10 minutes and came across a good 6+ meter red maple, gave me a bit more confidence it will grow here, I’ll go check this one out in fall as well

So it held on to its green leaves almost right to the end of fall, over the last few days it has changed from pale reddish edged green leaves to the kinds of red I was hoping to see, amazing tree, we had a very mild, wet, colder than usual summer and autumn so it’ll be interesting to see how the leaves go after a hot year, I’ve also pulled back the mulch in a couple places as well and just below the soil there’s a net of new roots so I’m happy it’s really taking to its new home.

We're just entering our 'hot' season although we've had an unusually hot April & May.

The branches on my rubrum are growing more horizontal. I don't know if it's because I kept it narrow for a couple of years and now the branches have to 'reach' from behind the tower, idk but it looks good and should be a nicer formed tree. Just thought I'd follow up here. :-)

Bill, did you get this one from the woods?

Lane,

Read my post with pictures earlier in this thread.

Hey Bill!

That looks like it‘a really going to take a great shape, big difference to the photos you posted earlier, it’s good we can see the growth over a season.

Thanks brefin!

We still have 3 months of growing season here. If it's okay with you, I'll try to update in Sept. when everything is pretty much done for the season.