How to Plant a Japanese Maple
Hi, I’m Ken for Furney’s Nursery, I’m here with Furney’s October fall special, we have Japanese maples on sale for 25 percent off. Fall is a great time to plant these maples, you could come in you can see what their fall color is going to be that you can't no other time of the year. It’s a safe time coz it gives the plants a chance to get establish before spring and warm weather comes the following fall. We got a huge selection, we have Japanese maples that only get three foot tall, we got other Japanese maples that get 25 feet tall, and all different colors of foliage and different shapes. Okay, well I think we’re ready to plant one; I just want to give a demonstration to the proper way to do this. I like to plant a tree out of the container, it’s the very best thing, they’re all established, there is no transplanting shock, you just take it out of the pot and put it in. Dig a hole about double the size of the diameter and the very same depth as the pot is. Go ahead, get your hole measured out, come over, grab the tree, take it out of the pot, if it’s stuck in the pot, just tip it over and tap the pot with your shovel a couple of times. And it should just slide right out; it’s got a nice root system on it already. The root sides haven’t started to circle, that’s the nice thing about all of our trees, they’re all well taken care of. They haven’t been pot weld. If you do see any circling of the roots, you wanna take your shovel and just slice it a little bit, just may be in four, five places just to keep the roots from circling around the pot. And take it, set it in the hole, make sure that’s in the proper depth, this one looks pretty good right here. Make sure it’s good and straight. We’ve already pre mix some soil building compost with this, we want to do this in ratio about one part compost to three parts soil and just go ahead and start shoveling around. At this stage, I like to build a dam around it, just before it’s completely full in order to hold water. I wanna put a lot of water in it, for two reasons, one, I need to hydrate the tree, the second thing. I wanna get rid of all the air pockets that are down in the root zone, and that’s the very best way to do it. We’ll just let this fill up and just go right up to the edge of the dam a couple of times. You can see how, if you watch closely you can see the bubbles coming out, when you see bubble coming out that’s a good sign, that means that the air is getting sap out in there. Okay, there we go. Now we just let that water settle down there, let it disappear, then we’ll finish filling the dirt in. Looks like the water settled pretty good now, I’ll go ahead and finish filling it in. I’m gonna be real careful not to bury it too deep, I don’t want my soil to be any higher than the top of the existing root ball. And we’ll just pack that in good; make sure that’s good and solid. Level it out, and if you want to it’s probably a good idea to keep that dike intact so the next time you water you can keep the, keep the soil and keep the water inside that root zone. It doesn’t have to be much of a dike, this time of the year, once the fall rain start, you don’t have to worry about it too much, but I would let the heavy dew and life rains fully, it still needs a lot, ‘til all the leaves are gone. So, that’s how you plant a Japanese maple, and I want to invite everybody to come down to Furney’s in October, take advantage of the 25 percent off on all of the Japanese maples, no matter what size. We’re gonna have pumpkins, we have a giant maze for the kids to play in, we have fall lamps, everything you need for fall and we’ve got a great gift shop to, take a preview of what we’re doing in our Christmas gift shop to.