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Posts Tagged ‘root excavation’

Bare-root fastigiate beech transplant

Posted in Air knife, Air spade, Air tool, Air tool transplanting, Arboriculture, Bare-root transplanting, Massachusetts Arborists Association, Plant management, Roots, Trees, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 22, 2013| 2 Comments »

Air-tool transplanting is continuing here in Massachusetts; while it hasn’t yet become commonplace, arborists in this part of the world are conversant with the techniques, and some firms have been routinely been moving trees bare-root for the last few years.  Leahy Landscaping of Lynn, MA, has a team of transplanters, led by Mass. Certified Arborist Bob Dobias.  Bob recently sent me some photos of a project his crew carried out this past summer; they moved a beautiful 14′ Fastigiate Beech in Salem with air.  They relocated the tree from a location right next to a building to a spot further out on the property, where it can now grow to its full potential.  Here are the pix Bob sent:

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This tree has been growing nicely next to a condo entry, but was likely planted there when it was a much smaller specimen.

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Bob has exposed the topmost roots, and is working his way underneath the root mass.  Note that he’s wearing ear protection and has dust barriers set up around the work area.

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Fastigiate Beech is a narrow tree, and while a blowout to the dripline frees most of the roots, some root mass still had to be cut.  Bob reports that his crew cut one root that was growing under the driveway.

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Nice root mass on this tree.  The time had arrived for this tree to be transplanted; notice that the roots to the right are shorter and have been redirected down by the presence of the building wall.  A tree that grows for too long this close to a wall might not be as readily moved as this one — not because it can’t be dug out, but because the root mass has grown too asymmetrically for the tree to stand well away from the wall.

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The Beech being introduced to its new home.  According to Bob, the crew could have lifted the tree by hand, but decided to use the machine to minimize hazards to it.  For the actual move, they tied the tree to the forks; this shot, it has been untied and is being guided into the planting hole.

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And from a different angle.  The hole receiving it could be a bit wider, to make the backfilling and mudding in easier, especially as there are no obstructions around it.

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With the tree placed in its new home and backfilled, the crew waters and muds it in.  Leahy added better loam for backfill, and secured the tree with duckbills, to insure stability while it grows into the new location.

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Proud Leahy crew and Fastigiate Beech.  The Beech should now be able to grow a little fuller both above and below ground on the side that had faced the building.  The transplant operation took about six hours from start to finish.

Bob reports that the tree has experienced some stress from the move, but he expects it will equilibrate crown and root growth and leaf out well next year.  We’ll keep an eye out for more pix next year, to check its progress.

Fastigiate Beech moved by:

Leahy Landscaping, Lynn, MA

Arborist in charge:  Bob Dobias, MCA

Crew:  Alfredo Esteban, Shane Corcoran, Greg Beatrice

 

 

 

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Katsura update

Posted in Air spade, Air tool, Air tool transplanting, Arboriculture, Bare-root transplanting, Plant management, Roots, Trees, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 31, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Last February I wrote about the bare-root transplant of a large Katsura tree (Cercidophyllum japonicum) at UMass, beautifully executed by the pros at Foti Landscape and Tree. Matt Foti just sent me a photo he took last week of the tree, which has settled into its new home nicely.

Though the crew kept a large slug of soil under the tree’s butt for the move, Matt told me that they did some excavation at the root flare, as they always do, to check for girdling, circling, or damaged roots. (I hadn’t noticed the excavation when I first saw the transplant photos, but if you click back to that post you’ll notice it.) The crew found a girdling root and removed it — and clearly, from this current photo, the tree didn’t skip a beat.

Even in a backlit shot on a very hot day this tree is looking happy.

Even in a backlit shot on a very hot day this tree is looking happy.

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Underground Peek

Posted in Air knife, Air spade, Air tool, Arboriculture, Miscellaneous, Plant management, Roots, Trees, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on January 22, 2013| 1 Comment »

It was just over a year ago that an ecologist and ISA-Certified Arborist, Lisa Montana, contacted me from AECOM, the global architectural/engineering giant.  She works in New York City, and is involved on projects that require utility trenching under sidewalks and around the roots of adjacent street trees.  When her project sites have contaminated soils, excavation must take place with shovels and bars, the old approach to bare-rooting plants.  On sites with clean soils, the workers use air tools, which let them remove soil and preserve important tree roots.

Lisa kindly sent me some photos of air-tool trenching projects she has overseen, and with my apologies to her for the long delay, I’m posting them here.  Take a look, and note how persistent and vigorous those critical roots are even underneath concrete pavement.

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This one is a 26″ dbh Honey Locust.

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This astonishing root mass belongs to a 28″ dbh Oak.

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These roots come from an enthusiastic 29″ dbh Norway Maple that needs the rooting area in the lawn beyond the sidewalk.

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This final photo shows a 32″ dbh London Plane whose roots are seeking moisture in the bed beyond the fence.

It appears as if each of these trees is reaching underground toward open ground, where adequate moisture and air can be found to sustain them.  I have been mulling over these photos for some time, and especially since Hurricane Sandy, when so many uprooted New York street trees appeared to have root masses that conformed to the bar-like shape of their planting spaces.  I wonder if those root masses had been cut at some point, as is often done for the reconstruction of a sidewalk or for utility work done in a less sensitive way than AECOMM’s methods.

Thanks, Lisa, for sharing these photos, and giving us a peek at what’s going on under some sidewalks.

Location:  New York City

Arborist In Charge:  Lisa Montana, AECOMM

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Elm root growth

Posted in Air knife, Air spade, Air tool, Air tool transplanting, Arboriculture, Bare-root transplanting, Plant management, Roots, Trees, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on November 18, 2012| 2 Comments »

Elm trees are known for their toughness in urban conditions; it’s why so many were planted in the American landscape.  For speed of growth, beauty of form, and wholehearted commitment to growing in all sorts of conditions, almost nothing beats Ulmus americana.  The elm’s Achille’s Heel, of course, is Dutch Elm Disease, which decimated the population of them through the twentieth century.  For the last half of the twentieth century, it was quite unusual to see American elms planted anywhere; they almost entirely disappeared from the market.

It wasn’t impossible to find them, though, and scientists and a few growers continued to work on developing disease-resistant strains of this majestic tree.  The Elm Research Institute grew and distributed clones of elms it believed showed resistance, and in the 1990s Dr. Denny Townsend, a geneticist with the National Arboretum, released two of the first DED-resistant cultivars of American elm, called ‘New Harmony’ and ‘Valley Forge’.  Bit by bit the American elm began to reappear in the landscape.

I was part of the design team for the streetscape restoration of Boston’s downtown area during the Big Dig design and construction phases.  We selected the National Arboretum elm cultivars, among a range of trees, to help fill out the planting palette for what became the Rose Kennedy Greenway.  So far, the trees have been doing swimmingly.

Last week Matt Foti’s crew spent a few days on the Greenway moving a collection of trees bare root from one of the parcels near Quincy Market.  The Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy will be building a permanent carousel on that parcel, and they wanted to save and reuse the trees that had been growing where the carousel will be placed.  Matt called to tell me about the work, which involved moving some red maples and some American elms that had been in the ground for the last 6-7 years.

The red maples, about 6″ in diameter, moved quite easily; their roots had readily broken out of the original root balls and grown nicely out into the planting medium.  Blowing them out was a simple process.

The American elms, however, had gargantuan root systems that seemed to go on forever.  Root growth was thick and profuse, and the crew had to keep blowing further and further out, and further and further under the root plate.  Here are photos that Matt sent of the elm roots:

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Tremendous root mass on an elm that had been planted only 6-7 years earlier.

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One elm getting lifted out of its planting hole.  Sinker roots had to be blown off; though the tunnel top is three feet below the surface, it appears that the roots on this tree had grown down to the concrete surface. Note the clean cuts on roots that had to be severed.

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Blow off the cobwebs…

Posted in Air knife, Air spade, Air tool, Air tool transplanting, Arboriculture, Bare-root transplanting, Plant management, Roots, Shrubs, Trees, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 5, 2012| Leave a Comment »

…and go back to school for a day.  If anyone in the Massachusetts woody-plants world has not seen the latest in tree- and shrub-planting techniques, here’s your chance:  on September 27, Rolf Briggs and Matt Foti will be giving a workshop entitled At The Root:  Air Tools Workshop at the New England Wild Flower Society’s Garden In The Woods.   Matt and Rolf will discuss and show the best techniques for planting trees and shrubs fresh from the nursery (air tools not necessary for this), as well as how to use air tools to trench under trees, decompact soil, and transplant trees.

I have my reasons to promote this workshop (and it’s next-day partner, At The Root: Understanding and Managing Healthy Soils), and they center on the fact that every planting season I find myself coaching laborers on how to deal with the root balls of plants that we’re planting on my job sites.  The boss, not knowing or having taught his laborers the proper planting techniques, usually has priced the work based on a quick  installation (dig the hole, stick the plant in, cover up the root ball, basket, and burlap), and the laborers, knowing only the quick and dirty method, look sideways at me as I show them what I want them to do.  The guys do the work the way I want it, but really, the process would go much more smoothly, and more landscapes would establish and grow in better, if everyone knew , priced, and carried out the work in what are considered the most plant-friendly ways.

Some of the most effective tools available to see what can be considered plant-friendly, and to work in soil crowded with roots, are pneumatic air tools.  I believe that Rolf and Matt will be transplanting a tree bare-root, using air, which will afford workshop attendees a chance to see what a tree’s roots really look like when the soil is blown away.  It’s an experience that can change how anyone working with plants understands how a plant grows and anchors itself, and for that alone this workshop is worth attending.

Watering in a newly planted tree-form Taxus from Weston Nurseries.

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Root issues repost

Posted in Bare-root transplanting, Miscellaneous, Plant management, Root-washing, Roots, Trees, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on May 24, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Last year I worked on a large mall planting project.  A number of trees had to be pulled out to make way for a new parking layout; the islands they had been growing in were removed and paved over, with new islands located in a different configuration.  Most of the trees were hauled away by the landscape contractor, but one ended up in a discard pile next to the mountain of loam that had been excavated for reuse.

I was interested in the root configuration on this six-inch caliper red maple.  A mass of fibrous roots wrapped closely around the tree’s trunk, much like cotton-candy filaments spun around a paper cone.  Looking at it more closely, I found that the fibrous roots grew out of thicker woody roots, some of which had been cut during the tree’s original ball-and-burlapping, and some of which, growing since that operation, were circling the trunk.  Take a look:

Fibrous roots circling the six-inch red maple trunk.

Pulled away from the trunk, the roots clearly are circling it. Over time, as the tree grew in girth, these roots likely would have constricted the flow of nutrients between root mass and crown

This sort of circling root is usually seen when the soil mass in a B&B root ball is of different porosity from the soil surrounding it; moisture will not move from one soil mass to the other until one mass is completely saturated.  Because roots tend to grow where moisture and oxygen are available, they will often stay within the root ball, and circle around the trunk as they grow.  The problem is made worse when burlap is not pulled away from the ball, as the burlap constitutes yet another interface for the moisture to move through.

Here's the tree's underside. Note the girdling root snaking on top of the big torn root facing the camera, and the curiously self-contained look of this root mass. The tree's problems likely began early in its life.

Not every B&B tree has these problems, and in those that do, not every rooting problem can be remedied at planting time.  Judicious treatment — looking for circling roots that can become girdling roots, cutting back girdling roots and cutting or redirecting circling roots, roughing up the sides of the root ball, removing or cutting down wire baskets, pulling down or removing burlap — can go a long way in helping B&B trees establish better in the landscape, and in remedying problems that threaten a tree’s long-term health and viability.  For more discussion on root issues affecting B&B trees, check out this post on Matt Foti’s station at the MAA’s Elm Bank bare-root workshop in September 2009.

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Weeping Norway Spruce bare-root transplant

Posted in Air knife, Air spade, Air tool, Air tool transplanting, Arboriculture, Bare-root transplanting, Plant management, Roots, Trees, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 10, 2010| 2 Comments »

Mark Smith, construction project manager for Belknap Landscape Company in Gilford, NH, sent me photos and a description of the air-tool transplant his company executed with Piscataqua Landscaping recently.  Belknap has been using air tools for transplanting, site preparation (excavating roots at foundation limit lines prior to the foundation excavation), and root forensics, and has also used compressed air to reduce weight in larger B&B-dug root balls being moved.

Here’s what Mark had to say about the Weeping Norway Spruce they recently moved from Baker Valley Nurseries (with light editing):

“We moved a 25+ year old Weeping Norway Spruce that has resided in Baker Valley Nurseries in Rumney for the duration of its life.  This tree stood 10-11 feet tall and at least 12 feet wide on one direction.  The last time this tree was root pruned with a spade was 10 years ago.

Through the spading process we could clearly see where this root pruning occurred.  All said and done we were left with a 25-30′ wide root system…You cannot see that in these pics real well, as we had all the roots coiled up into harnesses and sitting atop the root pan.

I helped Piscataqua with the digging of this and am told so far it looks great in its new home on the coast.  Just to dig and get the tree in the truck took about 4-5 hours with 2 of us spading, and then 4 of us to get the tree in the truck which was actually the worst part.”

The tree before excavation.

Branches tied back to permit easier blowout.

Leader wrapped in burlap to protect it during excavation and moving.

Deepening the excavation.

Root plate covered in wet burlap for the pickup and move.

Guiding the forks for the lift.

Confirming a balanced and firm placement on the forks.

Guiding the lift.

A final spray-down before transport.

No photos yet of the tree in its new location, but when they come in I’ll post them.

Tree and equipment supplier:   Baker Valley Nurseries, Inc., Wentworth, NH

Moved by:

Piscataqua Landscaping Company, Inc., Eliot, ME  (Booth Hemingway and Travis Wright) and

Belknap Landscape Company, Inc., Gilford, NH (Mark Smith)

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A tree is not a carrot

Posted in Air knife, Air spade, Air tool, Air tool transplanting, Arboriculture, Bare-root transplanting, Plant management, Roots, Trees, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 6, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Thousands of people showed up at New England Grows this past week.  One of the conference’s principal speakers, Bonnie Lee Appleton, unfortunately fell ill and had to cancel her Wednesday talk; for a while the day before the conference it looked as if one of the two convention center ballrooms would be empty for a couple of hours.  At the last minute, NE Grows asked Matt Foti to take Ms. Appleton’s place with a talk on bare-root planting.

The talk was great — packed with information — and sent a steady stream of people to the Foti Tree and Landscaping booth to learn more about bare-root transplanting.  Matt teamed with Teddy and Mike, two of his arborists, to field questions at the booth, which had a good set of air-tool transplant photos, a continually running rough cut of my London Plane video, and two 3-inch caliper Zelkovas from Matt’s nursery. One of the Zelkovas had been dug, balled, and burlapped; the other sat with its bare roots splayed on a sheet of plastic, showing off their extension (they extended about 3-4′ on all sides from the tree trunk), uncut tapers, and web of water-collecting and nutrient-storing capacity.  Every now and again one of the arborists would spray the roots with water.

It was cool to watch visitors to the booth stop and take in what they were seeing.  Some of them shook their heads and moved on; most, though, would watch the video for a few moments, or peer at the photos and the trees and start asking questions.  Matt and Timmy and Mike rarely had a moment in the three days when they weren’t answering questions.

A couple of questions popped up over and over.   Arborists, landscape architects, designers, and contractors all wanted to know how much air-tool transplantation costs.  The answer, based on labor requirements, species, condition, and size of tree, as well as on site conditions, was that bare-rooting a tree for transplant may cost more than digging it with a tree spade, but less than digging it with the more traditional drumlaced B&B method.  Bare-rooting a tree for transplant typically preserves at least 90% of the tree’s roots, though, a claim that cannot be made for the other methods.  The more roots you save, the less transplant stress and the shorter the tree’s reestablishment period — and all other factors being equal, the healthier the tree tends to be after transplant.

The other question, also coming from arborists, landscape architects, designers, and contractors, was about taproots.  How did bare-root transplant affect a taprooted tree?  The answer is that taproots are rarely an issue, at least in this part of the world.  In New England, soils tend to be shallow.  As we know, trees tend to develop their roots in the top 18″ of soil; the larger the tree, the deeper that zone may go, but typically it extends no more than 3 or 4 feet below grade.  Some thick roots do extend vertically down in this zone, but many more run horizontally away from the tree’s trunk.

It’s helpful to keep in mind another factor when thinking about taproots and transplanting trees.  More often than not, a large tree being transplanted was planted out years earlier as a B&B plant, or possibly moved into place with a tree spade.  Both methods would have cut any taproot in the initial planting.  When the end of a root is cut, the tree tends to send shoots out from just above the cut end.  In a vertically oriented root, the new shoots are apt to extend horizontally from the cut end, and feeder roots would similarly extend out horizontally.  The situation may well be different for a tree that has grown from seed in one place, that someone now wants to transplant bare root, but for most landscape trees the taproot issue is moot — whatever taproot may have existed when the tree seed germinated has already been cut, and the tree has adjusted for its loss.

A carrot grows downward, with rootlets out to the side and foliage above ground. A tree is not a carrot. Photo by obenson in Flickr.

This beech tree was moved last fall, having been transplanted once about 20 years ago. See how the root mass extends far out horizontally, with a relatively shallow depth.

This is one of the thickest roots extending vertically from the beech's trunk. This root was cut in the earlier (20 years previous) transplant; note the resultant root growth just above the cut.

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Air-tool transplant: Norway Spruce, Part 1

Posted in Air knife, Air spade, Air tool, Air tool transplanting, Arboriculture, Bare-root transplanting, Massachusetts Arborists Association, Plant management, Trees, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 21, 2009| 1 Comment »

The Massachusetts Arborists Assocation bare-root workshops — one in August 2008, and one in August 2009 — have been spreading word through the Commonwealth about the benefits of air-tool tree transplanting, and word is travelling throughout Massachusetts horticulture circles now.

A couple of weeks ago I was chatting with Kristen DeSouza, one of the horticulturists at the New England Wild Flower Society‘s Garden In The Woods, and she mentioned that she had passed my name along to Sonia Baerhuk, who tends the grounds at Watertown’s Perkins School for the Blind.  Kristen told me that Sonia and her crew have been using air tools to  transplant trees on the school’s grounds for the last several months, and suggested that I get in touch with her.

And so last Thursday, a couple of emails and a phone call later, I pulled in to the visitor’s parking area at the Perkins School.  Sonia soon arrived in one of the grounds department’s Gators.  She very kindly showed me around the campus, explaining that a new and large building project had required the removal of dozens of large trees.

It’s a scenario typical of many institutional sites:  a program outgrows its home, the phasing of a master plan leads to a shifting of facilities or the construction of a new building, and the vegetation on site must either be removed or relocated.  Having worked at Perkins for several years, Sonia was no stranger to this course, of events, but still, she had been dismayed to see so many large specimen trees being cut and fed into the chipper.

Though the grounds crew does most of its own tree work, over the years they have called in arborists for their expertise, and Sonia knew and trusted Matt Foti’s expertise.  Matt had told her about the air-tool method, and on the strength of his recommendation, she signed up for the MAA’s Elm Bank bare-root workshop this past August.  At it, she absorbed as much information as possible.  She came away from the day’s event convinced that air-tool excavation and transplant was the best way for her crew to relocate any salvageable campus trees.

So Sonia and her boss Rich Falzone equipped the crew with an Air Spade and an Air Knife, coveralls, eye protection, ear protection, and respirators, and began to direct the relocation of trees.

To date, the Perkins crew — Sonia Baerhuk, Rolando Ortega, Mynor Tobar, and Santo Masciari — has moved several 15-20′ Norway spruce, a fastigiate white pine, a Forest Pansy redbud, several apples, and a beautifully structured 25-30′ tall Halesia.

On the day I visited, they were ready to move another Norway spruce from a location that is slated to become a pondside patio.  Its new home would be a lawn next to a parking lot to which they had already moved a number of evergreens.  The new planting is beginning to screen the lot from adjacent buildings; over time, this grove will shade the parking lot and the walkway near it.

Sonia Baerhuk marking the new home of a 15' Norway spruce to be relocated.

Fifteen-foot Norway spruce in its original location next to the campus pond. The crew discovered that the Norway's roots were interwoven with roots from other nearby trees. This tree was flat on the side facing the fence.

Currently, the grounds crew rents compressors. These two generated air for an Air Knife and an Air Spade. Note the plywood barriers set up to prevent soil overspray onto the lawn. In this project, the crew did not dig a trench to hold blown-out soil; they simply started blowing soil out from the trunk and followed the roots out to and beyond the dripline.

Sonia and Rolando, kitted out in their PSE: coveralls, gloves, hats and hoods, ear protection, eye protection, and respirators.

Blowing soil off the roots took about three hours. Sonia likes to divide the root mass diameter into quadrants and work systematically, while Rolando prefers to work all around the tree; when they work in tandem they use whichever method fits the site conditions best.

Edges of the original B&B root ball are barely visible here; it was roughly 24-30" across. Rolando and Sonia discovered the wire basket still around it. They also discovered that the root flare sat several inches down in the original root ball.

The spruce was anchored with a thick mat of fibrous roots; the crew found virtually no roots larger than 1/2" in diameter. Here, they are pruning root ends under the eighteen-inch deep mat.

Still pruning the mat, and rolling it up toward the trunk to blow soil out from under the tree.

The root mat rolled up and bound in burlap for further blowing-out and moving.

Project site:  The Perkins School for the Blind, Watertown, MA

Project manager:  Sonia Baerhuk

Project crew:  Rolando Ortega, Mynor Tobar, Santo Masciari

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The Garden Professors

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 7, 2009| Leave a Comment »

If you’ve been interested in the issues on this blog, you might well want to look into another blog, this one written by four horticulture professors.  They’re each based somewhere different — Washington State, Virginia, Michigan, and Minnesota — and they write with humor and expertise about plants and plant issues.  The Garden Professors started posting in July 2009.  They talk about root-washing, propagation, nursery practices, soil contaminants, slugs, rubber mulch — you name it, they’re addressing it.  A recent post highlighted the air-tool transplant of a beautiful 10″ caliper weeping white pine by a Michigan State University Nursery Management class and the MSU arborist. — take a look for some good pix and clear, personable, often funny writing about a great range of up-to-the-minute plant issues.

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