When I bought my house twelve years ago, there was not a single tree. There were horny toads, which was cool, but not what I was ultimately going for. It was like someone had implemented a scorched earth policy.
Awesome!
Since I was in the nursery business at the time, I had all the good contacts for getting nice trees, and I promptly planted a balled-and-burlaped Shumard red oak.
There it is on the left.
Incidentally, I planted this tree on December 19, 1998 which is the day Bill Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives and also happened to be my dad's birthday, so it's a commemorative tree of sorts.
Balled-and-burlapped trees are field-grown trees that are dug in the winter when they're dormant, and the root ball is wrapped in burlap (just like the name says!) This allows you to move a larger tree while minimizing transplant shock.
Because the tree loses much of its root system during this process, they should only be planted during the winter months when the canapy is dormant. The benefit to doing this is that it allows you to plant a larger tree than you can typically buy in a container. Balled-and-burlapped trees are sold by the caliper inch which is the diameter of the trunk at around chest height while container-grown trees are sold according to the pot size.
My Shumard red oak is now about five caliper inches.
I don't remember the exact caliper size of my red oak when I bought it, but you can see that it is growing into a nice shade tree - one that my dogs can enjoy!
The Shumard red oak is a nice, hardwood shade tree. As such, it is somewhat slow-growing, but a long lasting, quality tree that will give you generations of shade and and good fall color.
Close up of Shumard red oak foliage.
A few years later, I planted several more balled-and-burlapped trees as well. More to follow on that later...
Two posts in a week! You're on fire!
ReplyDeleteYour yard sure has come a long way - I didn't remember how barren it was. It's beautiful now!