HOW TO PLANT AND CARE FOR YOUR NEW TREES

Begin by locating a good spot for your tree.  Never plant a tree within 30 ft. of your house or over your septic system.  Plant trees 20-30 ft. apart unless you are making a grouping.  Dig a hole wide enough to hold the roots without bending them, and just deep enough so that you can plant the tree at the same depth that it grew in the field. Place the soil you remove from a hole on a board, on cardboard, or on strong cloth, so that you can easily put it back in the position it came out. Scrape the sides of the hole and roughen them to enable roots to grow through the easily. Break the soil into pea-sized pieces.

Bare-root trees benefit by being staked until they have grown enough new roots to anchor firmly. Use a stake at least 5' tall. Nail one end of a strip of cloth or rubber near the top of your stake.

Place the stake a few inches south of the center of the hole you dug, and drive a third of it — between one and two feet — into the ground. Until the tree grows more leaves and branches, the stake will also provide the trunk some protection from sun during the hottest part of the day.

Take some of the soil you dug from the hole and make a mound in the center of the bottom. Use your hands to tamp this mound until it is firm.

Turn your tree so that the graft union (the knot near the base, just below where the two trees were joined into one) is facing north (away from the stake). Holding the tree trunk against the stake, lower it until its roots rest on the mound of soil in the bottom of the hole. Check to be sure that the line on the trunk showing how deeply the tree was planted in the field is about an inch or two above the level of soil at the sides of the hole. Your tree will settle a little after you have planted it.

Have somebody else hold the tree while you adjust the mound by adding or removing soil until the level is right. Begin placing additional soil you dug from the hole around the roots until they are covered. Add water to settle the soil around the roots. Repeat the process, filling and watering, until the level of soil in the hole is equal to that of the surrounding ground, and the roots are covered. Planting too deeply can injure or kill your tree, so plant a little high rather than a little low.

Cover a 2 ft. wide diameter area around the tree with a 3-6" layer of dry leaves, woodchips or shredded bark mulch. and keep the soil from becoming too hot during the day and to prevent water from evaporating so rapidly that the soil cracks and breaks fragile roots as it dries.

With the strip that you nailed near the top of the stake, make a loose figure-eight loop around the tree and the stake, then tie the strip to the stake, be sure that the tree can move a few inches back and forth in the wind.

To prevent sun damage to the trunk of your tree, paint it up to the lowest branch with white latex paint, diluted with one part water to four parts paint.

Do not add fertilizer the first year to a bare root tree.  Water trees especially through dry summer periods. A good way to water your trees is called ” bucket irrigation” a 5 gallon bucket works well for this but any container that will hold from 1 to 5 gallons of water will do.

With the full water container adjacent to the tree, simply place one end of a small hose of approximately ¼ diameter by 5 to 6 fool long into the water container and gently suck on the free end of the hose to start the water to siphon. This slow rate allows the water to soak into the soil and very little is lost to runoff or evaporation. Check the soil moisture every few day and repeat the watering as needed.

Above is an example of the “bucket irrigation” method of watering trees or plants.

The Fannin Soil and Water Conservation District has these buckets and the watering hoses for sale at the bargain price of $3.00 each. Contact Mary Jane at the District office 903-583-5612.

For more information on trees, planting and care, contact the Fannin Soil and Water Conservation District Natural Resources Conservation Service at 903-583-9513 x3 or the Fannin County Texas Cooperative Extension at 903-583-7543.