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David Epstein: Welcome to this week’s Growing Wisdom, and today I am here with my buddy, Henry Patt, and we are going to be talking about how to plant a tree or shrub in a root ball or what we call B and B in a sort of lingo which means it is what, it is ball and-burlap. I have established where I want the plant to go, now what?
Henry Patt: Now you want to look at the size of the root ball, I have probably wanted to dig it closed to 27, 28 inches wide for a root ball about 16 inches. Depth was you only want to go down it as deep as the root ball or even an inch less, so you will have good drainage.
David Epstein: If you want a nice base for the plant, as you are establishing and if you go down too deep, you are going to have the plant sitting on really loose soil and you do not want the plants sitting on loose soil. You want it sitting on a nice flat base underneath there Falls are really good time to be doing this right?
Henry Patt: Oh yes, the roots are going to do fabulous. They like cold weather, they are not stress and the other thing is the ground really does not freeze around here until around thanksgiving time. So in September and October, you have got close to that – 30, 60 or 65 days of good growing weather. So you are going to establish a new root system. Basically, if you dig a plant it is in a ball and burlap having the root serve it you got to loose all your feet the roots. It takes 30 to 45 days growing a new set of feet of roots on the main roots and because of this the plant needs that time to grow. You are actually ahead of the game by planting in the fall because you have not established new feet of root system going into the spring.
David Epstein: Got it.
Henry Patt: So, I would not feel the effects of having to make new roots.
David Epstein: It is going to come right out of the gate in the spring and there it goes.
Henry Patt: Right, they are really not too heavy but with two people you can work, move it better. And David I like to put them in the center of the hole.
David Epstein: Now we need to do something called faces. So explain what facing means.
Henry Patt: That mean is taking the best side of the plant. Generally, it is the side that has lower branches, lowest to the ground, a little bit of the slope taper up to the top and that is what we call the face or the nice side of the plant and that we would generally have facing out -
David Epstein: I got to ask this question, do you take the burlap off or do you leave it on?
Henry Patt: I would leave it on for two reasons, one is when you cut the rope, and you untie the burlap, you lift the plant up, being move around a couple of times. In the nursery, I got in center; it might have been draw up, so you might have some roots that are damage that way. If you have a good chunk of soil attached to those roots, you are going to be breaking more roots off by pulling the burlap off.
David Epstein: Yes.
Henry Patt: So that is one of the reasons I would prefer to leave the burlap on. The burlap will disintegrate in the ground and generally it is anywhere from six months that I have had people say, two years. But as it disintegrates becomes food for the roots. Basically what you do is you undo the burlap and just fold it back so it flat against the root ball. So when your backfill that you are going to have the burlap right up against the root ball in the back fill, you would not have many area cavities in there.
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Planting Shrubs Part Two
Henry Patt: So we got the plant here, we got the burlap off, it is level with the ground, and it might be happening the entire and tie it over here and the burlap is down good. We are going to use this bag of planting mix which will put around here.
David Epstein: All right, jus to summarize real quick while Henry is getting that soil, we have dug the hole. We have now taken out the back fill. Our back fill was pretty lousy, so we are not going to put that back in because it had a lot of stones and stone does not just was not good, we are going to add actual brand new soil into this particular Rhododendron that we have planted and remember we have taken the burlap away.
We have let the burlap sort of tucked underneath there, so that will breakdown that is going to breakdown overtime. And we have also brought the level of soil on the top of the burlap down, so we can see the flare here at the very bottom of the Rhododendron. You want to see that flare, if your soil levels up, bring it down, so you can see the flare and that is the correct height to plant this Rhododendron.
Henry Patt: We are going to add in some super phosphate. Phosphorous is the middle number on a regular fertilizer mix that is the only fertilizer you would use in the backfill process, its called super phosphate. And it is generally handful for smaller size root balls. If you are planting trees, you generally use two handfuls.
Super phosphate will not bear in roots. If you use a regular fertilizer that has nitrogen phosphorous on pot ash if you put that on the hole, you are almost guaranteed to burn the roots and nine times out of ten, you will kill your plant.
David Epstein: Okay, good to know. So you only want that middle number the phosphate?
Henry Patt: Right, so, I am going to put this in here about half way around. You want to pack down your backfill pretty good, so you do not have too many your packets, in that way, they should not have any issues with disease in the root area.
David Epstein: And you want to put this at the top or right in where the roots are?
Henry Patt: Right in where the roots are going to come out, so, I will sprinkle my handful around, I did not have quite a whole handful here and again the super phosphate will not burn the roots. So I got my super phosphate mix them, now we are going to finish off filling the hole with the backfill.
David Epstein: Now, you do not have to do anything with breaking the bottom of the root ball up a little bit to get those roots exposed?
Henry Patt: No, that is the process you get involved in if you are doing the plants on a pot or a container. This here where it was dug out of the field, the roots have been chopped of; they cut new roots growing out. They are going to grow and now with fashion because they are looking for new soil, they are looking for phosphorous.
David Epstein: So, we do not have to tease the roots underneath.
Henry Patt: Right, you do not have to do anymore work on the root area.
David Epstein: Okay.
Henry Patt: So, I will finish, put in your backfill here.
David Epstein: When you are doing these guys, just pound down that soil, you want it nice and tight against the plant. You do not want any air packets think about what would happen if a root started growing into an air packet. It is going to be exposed to air, there will be no water, there will be no soil, and you will get failure of the plant.
Henry Patt: You can also use your foot to back fill it in and get rid of the air packets.
David Epstein: Okay, so we are going to create just a little wall to shoot the water in and really right?
Henry Patt: Right, you are creating a wall to keep the water in and by doing that when you water, your water would not be draining in a way and you would not be wasting your water.
David Epstein: And how far away from the plant centered, you want the moat?
Henry Patt: I would generally keep it to the edge of the hole; this is where you would have that.
David Epstein: Okay.
Henry Patt: Sure, run your container, wall, or your moat here, I would run to that may be about inch to 2 inches of the of the most.
David Epstein: Okay. So far, we have got it planted, we built our little moat, we use the backfill to do that and now it is watering time.
Henry Patt: Right.
David Epstein: And how often do I do this?
Henry Patt: Generally, the day of planting, you want to water it three times. Kindly fill it up near the top of the moat, let the water drain down, fill it up again, your second time, when it drained down, and then fill it up for the third time and that should be sufficient for the day of planting.
David Epstein: Three times right in a row.
Henry Patt: Right, you are basically having the water go down through the backfill and getting rid of any air small packets that might have been created in the planting process.
David Epstein: And then they are after how much water?
Henry Patt: There are two thoughts on this, one is watering it once a day for a week stop, and the other thought is once every other day for two weeks stop, and then the most important factor is watering once a week to the middle of November when the ground starts to freeze.
David Epstein: All right, last step is the mulch. Tell me about how we are going to do this.
Henry Patt: On the mulch, you want to put on about two inches on the average, sometimes people put on three inches. That way you can keep the moisture in and it does not dehydrate quickly with the hot days, in the growing season and it also keeps the weeds down. And around the trunk you always want to keep like around two inches away from the trunk, so you got to the top of the root ball exposed for about two inches.
The reason for that is, it is allowing the root just to breath you do not want to smother your roots system. The other reason is you might have mice may cause in there in during winter months and if you have mulch against the trunk, they can eat the back of and destroy your plant.
David Epstein: All right over the past couple of segments, we have shown you how to plant a shrub that is in burlap and that is the key here. This is a burlap shrub and eventually we will show you how to do a container, and I just want to thank you Henry for a coming on and showing me how to do that.
Henry Patt: You are welcome.
David Epstein: Come back every week for all of our tips here at GrowingWisdom.com, Henry and I are going to do a little bit of watering as we closed out this segment.
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