Mission Impossible

[npaden]

Certainly impressive!

It was sad that you weren't able to save the trees though.

 

[AndyMA]

Jim
In order to safely move a tree you need to basically move all the roots out to what is called the drip circle. Typically pro's (which my father was) will dig a square trench around the tree and build a packing box around the root ball. They will then take a number of pipes and drive them under the root ball next to each other until they form a solid bottom. At that point either forks or a crane can pick the tree up. The minute you expose and tear the fine feeder roots, you've basically lost the tree. On smaller trees you can wrap teh rootball with canvas tarps and nylon straps and pick up or slide the tree. You just need to keep the air off the fibrous roots.

Andy

 

[JayDavis]

Yeah, when I saw the pictures of all the exposed roots, I cringed.... You cannot just rip a tree out of the ground and place it in another hole and expect it to live, though I've seen it work. My dad did this to one tree. It took about 3 years before it finally would leaf out good. It must have been one tough son of a gun to survive that.

Either way, saving the tree was secondary. The primary mission was to move the tree. You certainly did that. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif