Memo to self - when planting a tree

As a minor update - Jen was born into a family that has a decent-sized farm in California. When I met her, she was running her own landscaping business and specialized in (and was popular with) high-end estates. You would recognize the names. Very A-List.

Because of this, I deferred to her on matters botanical.

We planted an apple orchard and out of 120 trees, only three are still alive. These were bare-root trees and needed to have the topsoil plowed to allow for root growth. She insisted that using a soil auger to drill an 8" hole was just fine.

Digging my Dad's grave today, I exhumed the rootball of the original flowering dogwood tree. When we planted it, Jen assured me that we did not need to remove the burlap covering the rootball - it would disintegrate in a few months and everything would be fine.

Six years later, I pulled up pieces of burlap that were almost as good as when they were buried. I took a strip about two inches wide and I could not tear it. I do blacksmithing as a hobby - not a 96 pound weakling...

So when planting a new tree - make damn sure to remove all wrapping, all string, all burlap. Dig a shallow but wide hole (at least three times with width of the current leaf load) and be sure to use good soil. The soil in the location was pretty sandy/rocky so I removed it and put in a half-yard of good three-way and about two inches of well-rotted mulch.

The tree was happy when I tucked her in...