Click below to listen to my 2 min. Garden Bite radio show/podcast: How NOT to kill your trees
I just spent last weekend at our local County Master Gardener Horticulture Day and one of the speakers was a University of MN Extension Educator, Katie Drewitz. Her talk was titled How Not to Kill Your Tree.
She had some doozy stories and a lot of great reminders I want to share with you as we head into spring.
She told one story of a woman who called and wanted to remove the surface roots of her maple tree because it was hard to mow. THAT is a great way to KILL your tree. That reminds me of a friend who was so proud to show me the raised flower bed she created over those surface roots. She really didn’t like it when I told her that would kill her tree.
And then there’s that whole thing about ROCKS. If you listen to me you know I am not a fan. Another very important piece of information is when you go to plant your new tree.
In the photo above you’ll see multiple things wrong with this. Those large rock are heating up in summer along with burying the surface roots that take in water and nutrients. AND they have that cement circle around it. UGH. Even small rock, although touted as a good idea, is not. Neither is placing herbicide around the tree so nothing grows and you don’t have to mow it. Use mulch. The photo below was taken in 2006, I’ve chosen since then to use mulch that is not dyed.
You MUST make sure you know where the root flare is and that that is ABOVE the soil level.
Planting the root flare will eventually kill your tree as the roots will begin to circle around the trunk. That’s called girdling and it will kill your tree. If you see a tree with no surface roots, odds are it’s planted too deep and will die much quicker.
If your tree looks like a fence post with no root flare at all, it’s planted too deep. My friend Faith Appelquist helped me save this Ancestry Oak that was planted by a volunteer group. We dug it out. Then a neighbor, who allowed me to plant the tree on our border, nicked it.
They are an investment, you don’t want to plant your tree wrong. Of course lawn mowers are an issue as people nick their trees all the time. I have photos of issues that I had with the neighbor nicking the tree but first, the tree had been planted to deep.
I simply hand pull weeds. I thought of putting mulch down but I think with the way the area is mowed it’s best to leave it as is.
And a quick peek at pruning those “bad” sprouts, etc. from Katie…
