A Prairie Garden Journal    by Dick Meyer

Keeping Arbor Day Trees Alive

Planting trees is good.  Keeping them alive is even better.  If all of the past week’s Earth Day activities has you planning on planting one or more trees this Arbor Day, here are a few tips to help insure that the trees you plant this spring and summer will be around to see the next Arbor Day. 

Keeping trees alive starts with planting the right species of trees.  Wyobraska’s soils and climate combine to limit the variety of trees that can be successfully grown here.  In my experience, about half of all of the trees that die within two years of being planted are ones that simply are not adapted to our region.  So selecting an adaptable tree is the first step to a successful tree planting experience.  Following are lists of well adapted, partially adapted, and poorly adapted tree species for Wyobraska based on my observations over the past 30 years.

You’ll find that it’s not at all hard to keep newly planted trees alive inWyobraska.

Finally, the tree murder rate from lawn mower and string trimmer injury is way down from 10 years ago, but it is still unnecessarily high.   I estimate that 10 to 20 percent of newly planted trees are still killed within five years of planting by lawn mower and string trimmer injuries.   The answer to this problem is not to stop mowing your lawn, but to simply start mulching your trees—and to keep them mulched.  Mulching a six to eight foot diameter circle around each tree that is growing in your lawn is the cheapest and easiest way to prevent fatal lawn mower and string trimmer injuries.  As noted in the tree planting instructions, you should plan on adding new mulch every second year—the old mulch doesn’t blow away, it decomposes and turns into slow release fertilizer for your tree.  That’s one of the reasons that mulched trees grow faster than non-mulched trees.

Follow these simple steps to planting and caring for your tree and it will be around to pull carbon out of the air for many years to come.  Not to mention, look pretty, provide shade, be a home for birds, etc. etc.

Previous Articles

Fractions March 15
Yardner March 8
Urban Legends of Trees March 22
Que Serra, Serra March 29
Grocery Store or Garbage Dumpster Plants April 5
Planning Your Landscape Project April 12
Planting Cool Trees April 19

2006 Articles

Steps to tree planting:

            1.  Select a site in your landscape where you wish to plant a tree

Call diggers hotline to make sure that there are no buried utility lines below ground and check overhead utility lines above that might affect the tree.)

2.  Select and purchase a suitable tree species and tree for the site

            3.  Prepare the planting site

                        a.  remove a 6 to 8 foot circle of sod (if planting in established lawn)

                        b.  spread 2 inches of compost and 5 pounds of sulfur on the site

                        c.  loosely spade the entire site to a depth of 6-8 inches

            4.  Plant the tree

                        a.  dig a planting hole 2 inches shallower than the tree’s root ball
                              and 2 feet wider all around

                        b.  place the tree in the hole so that the trunk is plumb

                        c.   loosely place soil back around the root ball

                        d.  place a slow running hose (1/3 speed) in the bottom of the loose
                             dirt and let it slowly settle the backfill.  Add more backfill as needed.

                         e.  with a rake, grade the entire site, leaving no new soil on top of
                              the tree’s root ball

            5.  Mulch, Mulch, Mulch

                        a.   mulch the entire site with 3-4 inches of shredded wood mulch

                        b.   as grass creeps into the mulch over the summer, simply spray
                               it back to the edge of your planting site with Round-up—
                              don’t try to pull it out.

                        c.  plan now to add new mulch every two years

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