Monday 6th September
Ahead of the winter tree planting season, Tom Williams gives some tips on planting large trees to the readers of Pro Landscaper...
Unloading: It can often be very difficult pulling a jigsaw of large trees from the back of the lorry. If in an enclosed lorry, a conventional rootball lifter can’t be used either. We often find that an outturned excavator bucket does a fantastic job and is often better at scooping them out and causes less ground damage if a loader isn’t available on site with pallet forks.
Handle rootballs with care. If they are dropped, then they loose structure and are impossible to tiedown underground and once unloaded, get them planted asap.
Bark rub. So easy to do when using a rootball lifter. Have plenty of hessian sacks to hand to protect the stem.
Don’t take the mesh off the rootball. It’s designed to rust away in no time and the structure of the rootball must be retained.
Make their bed. Sit them on a bed of sand, not a bed of topsoil. Trees don’t expect to have topsoil under them and it will compact and stop drainage.
Don’t plant too low. you’ve got to see the base of the tree when finished.
Backfill. There’s no point spending all that money on large trees and then squidging a load of site dig out round them as backfill. If you haven’t got screened topsoil from the site, bring some BS standard in for putting round the trees after.
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