I have no scientific knowledge to back this up, but I view agricultural chemicals the same way I do smoking… definitely not good for you but probably won’t make you drop dead. Some people smoke into their 90s and die from something unrelated to smoking, others are affected directly at an early age.
I just try to limit my exposure to chemicals to the extent possible. Our bodies are pretty good at filtering out bad stuff, but who knows what chemicals, and in what amount, my body specifically can handle. I always figure there there’s an obvious risk to non-organic, so I choose organic for myself.
One other thing to consider about large trees is how and if they were pruned. I chop off everything I plant at knee height so large trees aren’t that important to me. No need to get a large tree if the structure does not meet your needs.
Actually, I am called on to manage many an apple tree with terrible structure. The tree nurseries around here that sell only to pros often sell apple trees that are a few years old and should be bearing age but have been hedge sheared to give them a “nice full” look, even when suffering transplant shock. Such a tree might have 50 small scaffolds.
It is pretty easy and quick to turn such trees into nicely structured apple machines, and 2 years after planting them you might even be harvesting your first apples. The problem is, they will probably be Red or Yellow Delicious, Macintosh, Granny Smith of some other top 10 famous variety. So it might be 4 years before you are harvesting the varieties you like from your own grafts- but the tree will be much, much bigger than if you started with something about 3/4" diameter.
My needs are probably different than most peoples. A motorcycle racing accident left me a c5-c6 quadriplegic so everything I do is from a wheelchair. I like to start with a smaller tree that I can train low so I can work on it. I do need help with some things but I prune, fertilize, mulch, weed and spray myself.
I doubt my situation applies to anyone else here I was just stating that a large tree from a nursery will probably need some work no matter who you are. You also bring up a good point about only the most popular varieties will be available in large sizes, These are things most people here don’t grow or are just a small part of a bigger more obscure collection of trees. A lot of trees we have can’t be bought in any size if you consider a certain variety on a certain rootstock. One thing is for sure no matter what route he takes it will be a big set back. The time invested is his biggest loss, not just past but also for the next several years.
I know you weren’t looking for it, but I just gained an incredible amount of respect for you, c5tiger, to be out there doing all that in your situation is extremely impressive. And your comments were the same as in my original post- one of my big fears in large trees is that they haven’t been properly topped and pruned and otherwise cared for. I also wanted to confirm that Alan and you are correct about the varieties available in large trees. I’ve already spent quite a bit of time looking for large trees, and when you do find them they are just as Alan said- mostly apple and just the most popular varieties at that.
Maybe I’ll convince Alan to pack up some of his large trees and have them shipped down here??? Since I (hopefully) won’t be paying the bill, it might be worth your time!!!
When i was in middle school we got to play with mercury. I remember a kid having it in his hand… This was 1990ish… Today the teacher would be thrown behind bars and a lawsuit for $100 million would be filed against the school district
Sometimes when I can’t decide one way or the other, I hedge my bets and do both. For me, living with cancer, I dont know if I will be around in 3 years, or 5, or 10. So, I do some things with long term benefit - plant some little pawpaws, or persimmons - and some that seem faster. I start some trees from cuttings, and I graft onto branches hoping for a taste, not a big crop. I buy precocious rootstocks or varieties, when I can.
Maybe that’s a way to go. Plant some larger trees, being careful to cut encircling roots, or even hose off and bare-root them, then spread out and water well for a season, and start some from little trees.
Maybe the neighbor could also pay for a stockade fence, although that would not be 100% preventive against a repeat.
Do you have any pictures of your trees? I’d be interested in a thread dedicated to your methods. I saw some pictures from DWN of a plum tree trained verrrry low–I think it was 4 feet tall and 4-6 ft wide. It was a pretty interesting little guy.
I lost my plums to some disease and another to ambrosia beetles, I just planted new trees so not much to show at this time. They will be open center and pruned like a peach but will end up a little taller than 4 feet. I just like to start the branching low to keep total tree height as low as possible.
If you could find the older trees in an Orchard setting already, those would be the ones to buy. Then find a tree spade truck with a 90+ inch spade. It will cost $200+ per hour, but you will hardly notice any setback. Do not mess with containers that old. Don’t move trees if they have leafed out. We move older trees all the time with big spade. It’s amazing what you can move. All this talk of hand digging and big containers… Well what I’m talking about is a different level, talk to a nursery man with a spade.
You may feel like the 2-4-d was mixed strong, but it could have done the same damage at normal rates. If he used a 5-6 pound product they have volatility issues. They can be applied during the correct conditions and later turn to a gas and drift in other directions if the wind switches. 4 pound products don’t have that same issue so they only drift at the time of application. It is an interesting chemical that actually causes plants to grow super fast, faster than the rest of the plant can keep up. Tomatoes hit with just a whiff can turn into over grown bushes whose fruit never ripen.
Jag, I bet you don’t do much moving of larger bare root apple trees that are carefully hand dug- it’s a much better way to go than a tree spade if the soil is not fine (lots of clay), IMO. A lot of landscapers today are addicted to big equipment and the old ways are being forgotten.
I once made a sweet deal with some very rich person who was building their dream home on former commercial orchard land. I hired a tree spade guy to dig up as many 3" caliber trees as he could dig in a day. We B+Bd what we could but most I just had him set back down in the holes.
I ended up moving about 30 of those trees by breaking up the balls and removing them bare root and they did better than the BandB’s trees.
I wouldn’t have had the nerve to do it if the spade guy hadn’t mentioned that when he digs up a tree and the soil falls off the ball, the trees seem to do just as well. Before that I wouldn’t move trees bare root that were more than about 1.5" diameter.
When you move things bare root you don’t have the issue of 2 distinct soils.
Results will vary with species, of course. Peaches don’t move well as B and B and actually do better in my experience being moved bare root while pears do terribly when I try to move them bare root- I grow them in fabric bags or containers in my nursery.
The problem with bare root is the work needs to be done during dormancy. I’ve seen balled trees moved in the middle of summer. Very, very expensive moving all that soil.
Interesting. I wouldn’t have thought to try to bare root moves on trees that big. I have moved 5year old apples though in the early spring and had full crops that same year. A big spade won’t even touch the roots on a tree that sized. The tree doesn’t even know it was moved. It might be more expensive but I don’t see how anything could be any easier on them, and a spade is a lot easier on the back. I’m not talking little 36 or 48" bbs either, just direct moves with a big spade.
A big spade will sever many roots of a tree that size unless perhaps it is a clay soil, but maybe not enough to cause visible damage- trees generally have a surplus and if moved soil remains moist I can imagine no visible signs.
You may be talking about a larger spade than I have been around- I don’t believe I’ve seen apples moved with a 90" spade- more like 60"-70" as I recall. Here they charge about $200 an hour for the smaller spade and trees are usually being moved quite a distance- lots of travel time there. People wind up spending $2,000 dollars per tree or so.
The orchard around here that sells them charges $700 per tree no matter what size you buy.
One problem with spade installations, at least with a smaller spade, is if they dig the planting hole with the spade that they drop the spade dug tree into, the tree can’t penetrate the glazed soil sometimes. This has brought me some nice consultation work a couple years after the fact. Easy diagnosis and rapid recovery when you loosen the glazed soil and soil a couple feet beyond that. The pricey nurseries around here don’t seem to want to diagnose their own mistakes.
At my nursery I stick trees grown in 18" Whitcomb grow bags into 25 gallon pots, lining the soil balls with nice draining potting soil. I let them grow in the pots for a season and then move them without any staggering after they’ve recovered in the pots. Nice way to market 2.5" caliber apple and pear trees. Lots cheaper than $2,000. Not a method you’ll find in any commercial nursery book.
I won’t copy her entire article, but the relevant part is this:
Remove all clay from the root ball. This can be done most easily by using a water bath or a hose. Use your fingers to work out clumps of clay from between the roots.
Look for and prune out defects in your freshly denuded roots. Be sure to keep the roots moist during this procedure and work in the shade if possible*.
Do they actually sell any of these trees @ $700 Alan, and if so, who the hell buys them? They could buy a $30 tree and within 4 years have the same thing. Better I would think since it grew in situ. I can’t imagine $670 worth of fruit from 1 tree in 4 years excluding chemical costs etc. Hell, if things were that good everyone would be in the orchard business.
Some people are all about instant gratification and I guess have more money than common sense or math skills. To me, watching the tree grow up through various stages is all part of it.
If you are getting free standing 4" diameter apple trees in four years you should be in the nursery business. The 2.5 inch diameter trees I sell on 111 really take another 2-3 years before they produce heavy crops from 4" dia. trees. It takes me about 5 years to produce a salable apple tree
The people who buy these trees generally have accumulated more money than they are likely to spend in their lifetime, and just the process of waiting for the fruit to transform from flowers to ripeness is as long a stretch of anticipation they get to experience, beyond waiting for their children to grow, or when they remodel one of their mansions.
One of the main points of being rich (beyond having others treat your existence as if it actually contains significance) is the power to buy whatever you want when you want it. I have a new customer that didn’t want my “tiny” trees and bought 25 year old trees from a commercial orchard primarily for the look. He spent well over $50,000 for the operation that got 30 trees on his property. A third of them weren’t moved until they were in leaf because he didn’t want to wait another season to move them and half of those died with no refund. Guess they needed a larger spade.
When I was brought onto the property I brought him a basket of mixed fruit from my orchard- plums, peaches and nectarines. He wound up buying a dozen more trees from me and I manage the whole thing.
At least he got a pretty nice mix of big trees, Macouns, Jonagolds, Fujis, Honeycrisps, etc. some of which bore nice crops on their second year. He didn’t even bother to harvest the Fuji crop which were as good as they get. Sometimes root pruning really pushes the brix.
At other sites I’ve seen there might be 50 trees of nothing but Red and Yellow Delicious- the grower probably pushed the trees he couldn’t make money on. Now that’s a waste of money.
We are pretty much on the same page here. I know moving them with a spade is expensive. I wouldn’t use a 90" spade on apples either if I was paying, but In this case we are talking about insurance or the sprayer that should be picking up the cost of replacement trees. I used to be an ag Chem sprayer myself but I still think if they drifted and killed someone’s trees they owe FULL price replacement. At the very least he needs to get quotes for replacing those trees the best and easiest way possible. He can always choose to keep the money and go with your cheaper more back breaking route, hand digging and babying younger trees. You may get great results with your method, but I know trees can produce a full crop the same year as a dormant spade transfer. If it was up to me and i wasn’t paying it would be the way I would go. The sprayer owes him producing trees installed and should not get away with forcing the owner to accept anything less.
