I lost a 50-year-old Weeping Willow tree to a wind storm earlier this summer. While I absolutely hated that willow because of it continually dropped branches into the yard, it did provide all of my backyard shade after about 11am. With this loss of shade, my yard feels completely exposed and Ive noticed that the house is significantly warmer in the afternoons.
One of my closest friends in my office made a great observation of the differences in generations: shes at the start of the Gen Xer and Im just at the start of Generation Y (or often called Millennials). While her generation would go to Home Depot and replace the tree with a $50 4 5 version that would grow into a beautiful tree in 15-20 years, my generation would rather spend more, in my case $800, to get a 25 tree that is already substantial and will be a quality shade tree in less than 10 years. I actually would have preferred to go even larger but the bigger you get the higher mortality rate you have on those transplants.
The method I chose was referred to as tree spading. I went out to the contractor’s tree farm and walked their farm to find the right size, condition and type of tree for my needs. Because I wanted a fast growing tree that would be quite large when fully grown, we went with an Autumn Blaze Maple.
Once I selected the tree it was only about a week before I had it delivered. The day of delivery the contractor “dug up” the tree and brought it down… once he showed up at my house the tree was in the ground in less than 30 minutes.
The nice thing about tree spading is that the tree has a significant amount of the roots transported with it, the tree is only out of the ground a few hours, and you don’t have to do any digging yourself! Due to the efficiency of this method in reducing stress on the tree, my contractor said his survivability rate is in the high 90′s%.
I was very pleased with my experience and would recommend it to anyone else looking for a fast solution to getting large trees. For those of you in the Twin Cities area, I certainly recommend my contractor, Shermik Tree Farms.
So, for those of you who want to plant a large tree into your yard for quicker results, here are some photos from my adventure:
The tree on the truck
Digging the hole
The hole – 90″
Placing the tree into the hole
Balancing it out and pulling the spade out
I’ve never heard of a process of extracting a tree and planting it elsewhere–or at least not one that fully grown. How encouraging! I’m hoping to plant some apple trees in my family’s backyard. Maybe I should look into this to get a better crop of apple sooner! Thanks for the tip!
$800 seems like a lot to spend on something that could grow in a few short years. Then again, if you’re older, I could totally see the need of going through this process! Who knew!
My neighbor sold his house in SIX days–for his asking price. I think his well-kept lawn/beautiful landscaping made the quick sell. Do you have any tips on how to revamp my lawn? It’s good, but not as great as his!