Wait until the tree loses its leaves, take it out of the barrel entirely and plant it in the ground. Then you can deal with the barrel any way you want. And will be of much benefit to the tree as well to be planted in the ground rather than confined to a barrel.

hi and thanks for the response, i dont have room to plant the tree on the ground... its currently in a nook of the house but its top of the tree is hitting the ceiling of the house, it has to be moved and my only option is the back yard.

Once dormant you could let it dry out more and then rent a sturdier dolly. Perhaps a bigger local nursery would let you rent one of theirs.

tj

I see.... so if i did take out some dirt closest to the barrel all around could kill the tree if i did it now?

You don't want to mess with any roots until the tree is dormant. And why can't it be planted where you intend to move it? If there is room for a barrel, there is room to plant in the ground. The barrel won't last forever anyway so you're going to need to consider this at some point.........

my back yard is basically all pool and concrete... i understand that there is a shorter lifespan with the tree in a barrel, i wanted to initially get rid of it but my gf wants to keep it... she wants in the back yard close to the kitchen window so i guess thats where its going.

A full-sized wine barrel is 35" high. You don't need that much dirt. A halved barrel, 20" deep would be good enough. Next time it's dormant, repot, do a root prune and put it in a smaller 1/2 barrel. Be much easier to move next time she changes her mind. lol

im worried if i wait until its dormant the soil will be moist and even heavier to move?... i honestly feel like me only option is to somehow take some dirt out of it smh.

You're going to need some help.

They rent heavy duty moving dollies. You just need a friend or two to help tip the barrel enough to get the dolly under it. Then you strap the barrel to the dolly and two people (big strong ones) can each take on side of the dolly and roll it away.

We moved a 700 lb gun safe from the garage up 4 steps, into the house and down the basement that way. ymmv.

When you do a repot and root prune - which should only be done when the tree is fully dormant - you will be removing most of the soil anyway.......essentially bare rooting it. This needs to be done every 3-5 years for any containerized tree.

This is from someone that grows a collection of several dozen Japanese maples entirely in containers and has done for the past 25 years for several of my oldest trees. And none of them nearly as large as a half whiskey barrel!

I am afraid the your only real option is to remove it from the barrel. While there are heavy duty moves that could move an object of that weight, if you try to wrap a strap around the wine barrel, it is going to collapse. I don't thing it is designed to have the force applied in that fashion.

I think I would seriously consider the half barrel option and place half barrel on a dolly so it can be easily moved.

all these wonderful answers.. all spot on... but im not sure we know where you are.. big city name... so we can help you understand the proper time to do this ....

your dolly is undersized by at least half.. and that is why you are having problems .... you ought to see the ones they use in tree nurseries for moving giant ball and burlap plants ... apparently scope if defined by what its called.. dollys are for small stuff.. when you go large.. they are called trucks ..

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=+hand+truck+for+trees.&t=ffab&iax=images&ia=images

but.. all that said.. i cant really see investing in something like that.. you could probably buy 2 new trees.. NOT in barrels .. for the price of those monster tools ..

bare root it .. at the proper time.. get it out of the barrel.. go buy a proper pot.. do root surgery... repot the thing out near the pool.. and be done with it..

in garden terms.. do it right..

in injury terms.. do it right.. this thing isnt worth blowing a disc in your back...

note section one at link ... need to know where you are ... and then pay attention to teh rest.. pot or ground.. the general rules are all the same..

https://sites.google.com/site/tnarboretum/Home/planting-a-tree-or-shrub

and do note.. the most important thing in a pot is the media... not the plant.. use the proper media for a tree in a pot ... wonder where big al is ... ill track him down if he doesnt pop up today ...

bottom line.. your prior owner really Effed this up .. and now you are spending money to fix what he or she effed up ... for gods sake.. divest before you spend a couple hundred dollars fixing what they broke.. crikey.. for about 20 bucks.. you can buy a better smaller JM that is a hundred times better.. and plant it in a small pot that you can move when you want to ...

work smart not hard.. and dont wast money fixing other peoples problems...

ken

That dolly looks pretty light duty to me. what's the weight limit?

Most light duty dollies don't give you the leverage to tip them back because they're not high/long enough. And hard rubber wheels don't give you an advantage on rough going.

If you have a short distance to travel that's pretty smooth going, and have plenty of help, you might get it to go but it you have steps, or hit divots in the cement, you could break an axel or wheel and dump the whole thing over.

Other than that, I wish you good fortune with the move, but the bigger the dolly, the easier it will be. Some good ones even have 4 wheels, so you have the weight riding on four wheels instead of two. You could almost do it yourself with one like this.

The tree is in obvious distress growing in that barrel. Unless you plan on doing the necessary repotting and root pruning described earlier, moving the barrel and plant intact is just delaying the inevitable. The tree will continue to decline and eventually fail and die.

The dolly doesnt have the wieght limit, its 45 inches in hieght… i found some dollys i can rent at home depot but idk which one to get.

https://www.homedepot.com/c/moving_supplies_equipment_rental

Ummm ... does this tree have a very small root flare, or is the tree too deep? I'm not really seeing the root flare as I expect it. Might want to check/address that during this process ...

That dolly definitely doesn't look adequate for moving that barrel. It's too small. I mean, if everything's concrete, I'd be looking to rent a forklift ... but then, I'm not moving that thing on any dolly, big enough or otherwise ... (Okay, okay ... I would be hiring someone, but since you want to do this yourself, I'd be looking for something closer to a forklift.)

'i can rent at home depot but idk which one to get.'

Tell them what you have to move and let them tell you which one to get.

I'm guessing you have 800-1000 lbs. there with pot & soil.

But I'm with gardengal48,

If it's not an emergency, do the repot and then you'll only have 1/2 the weight and size you're looking at now.

You'll save money that way too.

Appliance Dolly

Hand Truck

these are at home depot... both have a capacity of 800 pounds... the hand truck is 50 inches, the other one is 60 inches. Both rentals.

If you are determined to move the barrel intact, you don't want an appliance dolly OR a hand truck. You want a tree ball cart..........like this:

The deep front platform is better able to accept both the weight and the shape of the planted barrel than either of the other two. Will support at least 1000 pounds. These are available at equipment rental outfits but pick a full service one. Not Home Depot or Lowes.

Reason i brought up lowes and home depot is because i cant find another place that rents dollys

I stumbled upon this thread in my search for a tree forum to find answers to some questions of my own. But I might have some ideas, based on my limited experience with native New England trees. I do not own any Japanese maples and for all I know they could be exceedingly fragile, however the maple in that pot looks stressed.

I am in southern New England and have moved red maples (Acer rubrum) the size of your Japanese maple or a bit larger. Our red maples are very hearty and there are tons of them around and if one doesn’t take, I can just go find another one.

Here is what I did to a particularly nice one that I wanted to move.

Before moving the 7’ tree, I made sure that it had been well hydrated and was healthy.

I had the receiving site dug out and watered and the removed soil piled up close to it. I might have added a little bit of woodland soil.

I tried to get as much of a root system as I could but I’m not a tall nor a strong person. I used a long handle spade to dig about 2 to 3 feet around the tree and as deep as I could get in stony sandy loam. This was around September. I moved the tree and its roots, many of them free from soil at this point, onto a tarp. I pulled the tarp across the lawn and to the place where I wanted the tree. It was not a hot day but probably a 70 or 65 deg F day, late afternoon, a bit overcast. Our yard is mostly dappled light and we are on a slightly north slope in a woodland setting with wetlands.

So I pulled the tree over and plopped the roots into the ground, adjusted to the correct height so I wasn’t burying the flare, and began filling in the hole with soil that came from the newly dug hole and any that was around the tree roots (sandy loam). I worked quickly and I use the hose with a soft sprinkler to wet the soil as I put it against the roots. I might have tapped in the soil a little bit — softly with my foot. I think the hole was probably about 3.5 ft deep probably only about 3 feet wide or a bit wider at the surface. I got the tree in and let a hose drip lightly with a soft spray to wet it down completely. I can’t recall if I had to support it with a couple of stakes.

Over the next month or two I kept that area damp not flooded with water but consistently moist, maybe letting it dry out for a day, then giving it more water. I don’t recall that the weather was hot; it was late summer early autumn.

The tree did very well and thrived but after about four years I decided I didn’t want it where I put it after all and I either moved it again or just yanked it. But it did really well it looked nice. But I decided I wanted a paper birch there instead (so another tree move/transplant).

I have moved a lot of trees and shrubs with a tarp. It holds the tree, or shrub and also holds the soil.

I’ve new furniture with tops or inside I use an acrylic blanket – – just some oil junkie thing that we’ve had for years and the slides across the wood floor, so I can move really heavy things without having to lean over and lift.

It seems crazy to keep that tree in that little barrel unless it’s not going get taller than 7 feet and you are going to continually root prune to keep it small.

But if you want to move the barrel, instead of using or buying a barrel or tree dolly, perhaps you could try using an acrylic blanket (they are slippery) and a tarp. Get somebody to help you hold the barrel steady or lay it down on its side for the move.

But you need somebody to help hold it and probably somebody else to help drag the tarp. Be sure you get a solid tarp and acrylic blanket. What I would do is leapfrog the tarp/blanket. Put the acrylic blanket down, and on top of that put the tarp with the tree in the barrel. Pull the tree in the barrel over the blanket until you get to the far end of it then either use another acrylic blanket or finagle that one so that you can move it up front again and pull the tarp with the barrel over the acrylic blanket again. Pink works well :-)

Excuse my voice typing because I have trouble using the keyboard and I can’t bother to correct all of these errors because that also uses the keyboard to type or arrange the text; so I hope you can understand what I’m trying to communicate. I don’t know where you are located and again I don’t know how fragile Japanese maples might be.

But I look at it this way – – that tree is not doing well in that barrel and as time goes by it’s going to continue to deteriorate. So you can try to do as people have said and periodically root prune the tree or just out and out transplant it. In some ways you haven’t much to lose — especially if you’re going to keep the tree in that barrel. I don’t know where you’re located, and again, I have no experience with Japanese maples but I don’t think that they can be all that fragile (or are they?)

You're welcome! Glad for you that it worked! A little ingenuity goes a long way.

Keep us updated please. :-)