Somebody once said, “it’s pretty darn hard to do something well if you’re trying to do it fast”, and that especially goes for growing trees. If you try to fast track or “short cut” growing trees you usually end up paying the price somewhere down the line.
That’s why we try to grow as many of the trees we specify in our designs as possible. Growing our own means having full control of proper pruning, spraying and root ball sizing and tree digging methods from the start.
Burlapped balls of our river birch freshly dug in the fall.
This “hand dug” ornamental cherry stands over 18′ tall, and has a trunk width of over 7″. It’s being added to an existing group of trees at the center of a motor court on one of our projects. Notice the root ball width to trunk width ratio.
This “hand dug” ornamental cherry stands over 18′ tall, and has a trunk width of over 7″. It’s being added to an existing group of trees at the center of a motor court on one of our projects. Notice the root ball width to trunk width ratio.
Some people believe that hand digging is a better method than mechanical digging. Pictured here – intricate lacework on a recently hand dug root ball.
Most trees are dug mechanically (using a tree spade), which has it’s advantages – tree balls are more stable, and more likely to stay in tact when transported. Some folks think the wire baskets used with mechanical digging don’t break down over time, and can girdle tree roots harming the tree. We find this usually happens in anaerobic soil conditions, and since those conditions are harmful to the tree as well, we think the soil is the problem and not so much the baskets. Sort of like saying “correlation doesn’t imply causation”.
Learn more about our tree planting & installation services.