exactly, especially if they are hard-to-find.
Thatās Great! It sounds like you have an attachment to the trees and should move them. Get some big
containers and move them. (Now before the sale and not stress the new homeowner).
I would pull them now and put into pots and keep them in the shade
Donāt let them get vigorous,
Good luck. I would have just bought new trees and been OK with the fact the I had started two orchards!
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Not to be insensitive to the attachment you have built up to the trees, but I agree with Richard. The sale of the house is just too big a transaction to complicate with the trees.
Now, if you want to remove them before putting it on the market (and fix up the lawn), that may actually help the value for some buyers who donāt want to take care of fruit trees. If you already have the other place, Iād say to pre-dig some good holes and use shade cloth after transplanting.
Iād also recommend planting some new potted trees (for example, Rolling River Nursery will ship now) at the new house. These new trees may be ahead of the transplants by next spring. Even if you canāt find just the right type, use it as a grafting platform. Iāve got well over 100 fruit trees and next time I need to move (hopefully at least 10 years out), I probably wonāt take many at all- just a lot of scionwood.
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Dave, huge congratulations! An upgrade with 2 acres can give your family lots of elbow room - not to mention the possibilities for designing and expanding your orchard to your heartās content. What a fantastic opportunity!
I get it with the trees. These are your first, your babies. Sure, you could buy replacements in the future, but they wouldnāt be THOSE trees.
My suggestion is going to be different from the Californiansā. I say to dig them now and put them in suitable containers. If you donāt have any that size on hand, you can go to GreenhouseMegaStore and order root pouches in 15 or 20 gal. size. Since this is only for short term, you can go with the less expensive ones, and wouldnāt necessarily need the longer lasting brown variety.
Fill in the holes and take any needed landscaping measures.
Having them already in portable containers removes them from being considered permanent fixtures to the property. You donāt have to worry about adding clauses to the contract, or whether the buyers will take proper care of them or change their minds about allowing you back on the property without a hassle. The fewer clauses, exemptions, complications there are to the sale, the less hassle it is to find a buyer.
If your area is going to be getting the rain predicted for the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states, this could be a good week to dig them out.
Transplanting these trees can give you a literal and ceremonial way of setting down roots in your new family home.
Once youāve moved, you will also have to send me your new addy so I can mail you your cuttings this winter when itās the right season to take them.
Once again, congratulations on your good fortune!
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Iām going to suggest another approach. First you donāt have a buyer yet. It could take months for sale and closing. Wait to dig the trees. If you can get to September theyāll have better chances potted or direct move to new orchard. Two months to find a buyer and a month more for closing gets you well into fall.
Speed, I agree with everyone else. A home sale is way too big a deal to be cluttering it up with dopey contract clauses. Mind you, I donāt think the idea is dopey, but the average person will see it as a very weird request.
Richard is right the cost of the trees is nothing compared to a home saleā¦I mean weāre talking whatā¦like $300? Big dealā¦let the new owners have them, maybe youāll inspire them toward fruit growing. Many, many have came to the GW and here searching for how to care for fruit trees in the yard of a home they had recently purchased. Chances are though, theyāll get chopped because like Patty said, most donāt want the hassle.
Theyāre not children, just trees and they are totally replaceable.
FWIW, Iāve thought about this very same thing since I plan to build a new home as soon as I find that perfect piece of land. In the end, I came to the same conclusion as everyone else here. If the timing worked out, Iād take them, otherwise Iāll just let them here.
Iād tend to agree with Appleseed and others, the sale of a house is too big a deal to let a few fruit trees get in the way.
That said, you could let your realtor know that you would like to take those trees with you, and it can be a point of negotiation in the contract you eventually hammer out with the buyer. Most people do not want fruit trees (too much work, drop fruit everywhere, etc), so I suspect you will be able to take the trees. Iād just write the part of the contract which covers this so that you have to remove them before closing. That is the safest way, no issues with getting back in, or how the new owners took care of the trees, etc.
Opps, hit something and it posted too soon. I was going to add, be sure the contract clearly states what you will or wonāt be doing after you remove the trees (leaving a hole, replanting grass/sod, etc). Closing are very emotional times and it is good to have all the details decided ahead of time to help keep everyone in lineā¦
I think everyone is right in different ways. Decide how much they mean to you in context with everything else going on. If you want to eliminate any questions of whether they are fixed features, dig them out before showing the property. If you you feel strongly about leaving them where they are until dormant, leave them in and hope for the best. I have no idea how quickly real estate moves in your area. I had a daughter who listed her house in Raleigh last year. She had 3 offers the first day. A day later, a signed contract and only a few weeks before closing and moving. Another daughter in a rural area still hadnāt sold hers after 6 months. Properly priced houses move quickly in some areas and slowly in others.
I appreciate everyone who chimed in here. This has turned into an interesting discussion with a lot of different opinions and suggestions. Many of which I hadnāt thought of. Iām still unsure of how Iāll handle it but I am certain it will not effect the sale of the house. I may decide to pull all the trees and stick them in bags prior to showing the house. I am pretty certain Iām not going to just leave the trees. I donāt think having fruit trees planted will be much of a selling point. Maybe to a small fraction of people (<5%). I think the majority will be completely indifferent toward having trees and will not factor it into their decision to buy my house. Then there will probably be a small fraction of people who think fruit trees are a pain in the ass and will plan to cut them down so they donāt have to deal with them.
My main concern is to get the house sold ASAP. I do not want to sit on it longer than I need to.
I wouldnāt move them now, too high an odds of dying. Before the closing ask through the realtor if the new owners want and orchard or not. It yes, just get new trees for your new house. If no, settle on a date where you will dig them up. In other words, the most important thing is the house sale but maybe you will get lucky and get to grab the trees.
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Being a retired realtor with over 40 years in the business, Iāve seen many similar requests stipulated in contracts. It is not an unusual request. As has been mentioned by others, this is not the time to move the trees. You have to wait until they go dormant, and by that time, your house may still be on the market. As a sweetener in the contract you can stipulate that you will replace the trees with ornamental trees of the buyerās choosing. In that way, the landscaping is not disturbed, because you are replacing trees that you want, with trees that most buyers want.
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this sounds amicableāespecially from the buyerās perspective. Also establishes good rapport with the future owner.
not sure how ārareā the posterās specimens are, but if they are super rare ones that are āsporadicallyā available, then probably limit the digging up to those.
three or four years ago i saw winter delight jujuās being sold by onegreenworld. I kind of snoozed on it, thinking that once it has been made available, it will always be available thereafter, since the supposed trend is that the original source trees will get bigger and that the nurseries should have more budwood as time passes. Needless to say, i was wrong. Not even Mr Meyer of juju renown has this variety, which means i got three years older missing the experience, and would continue to be uncertain when it will be available. If at all it will beā¦
of course this dilemma probably applies only to jujus and other exotica, and perhaps doesnāt apply to apples and peaches so digging them up may not even be worth it, nor worth the trouble(or risk) of confounding the contract with an addendum clause-- since specimens are three months young.
How about a bit of a buyerās perspective. If someone sees your home and likes it enough to make an offer, whatever your requests about the fruit trees will be a tiny issue that would have no effect on the purchasers decision, unless they are quite neurotic (you will have to feel that one out).
Buying a home is the biggest economic and maybe second biggest emotional decision most people make in a life time. I canāt see a single reason why having to allow someone to come back to dig some trees a few months after would have any real affect on that decision. Just donāt cry on the kitchen counter when you come to visit. That might cause some discomfort.
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Here is my experience with summer transplanting of fruit trees. in 2012 I closed on a 2 acre property, and wanted to move as many fruit trees as I could from my old place, to the new one. These are the trees that I moved in July to September. Height and age is approximate, based on my flawed memory. But close enough.
Stanley Plum, 3 years old, 7 foot tall
Indian Free Peach, 3 years old, 3 foot tall
Methley Plum, 2 years old, 3 foot tall
Almaden Duke Cherry, 3 years old, 7 foot tall
Illinois Everbearing Mulberry, 3 years old, 7 foot tall
I also planted some fruit trees that were close-out at Home Depot. They were very rootbound, and I needed to cut many roots before planting. They includedā¦
Hosui Asian Pear, 6 foot tall
Ornamental Plum, red leaf, 8 foot tall
Satsuma Plum, 4 foot tall
Toka Plum, 4 foot tall
And there were also shade trees, including four pot-bound lindens - 8 to 10 foot tall, a Norway maple, a red maple, a Korean dogwood, and some others.
I also planted 3 small pawpaw trees from containers. I avoided cutting their roots, because i read that pawpaws donāt like it if you mess with their roots.
In most cases, I pruned back some top growth, about 1/2 of the same-year growth. As for digging, I dug a wide and deep as I could, going to the drip line. For most of these trees, that was a circle about 18 inches to 2 foot from the trunk, and about 18 inches deep.
I watered frequently. For most, that was twice weekly.
What happened -
They all survived the first year. They all leafed out and grew the second year. Last year, the Satsuma and the Korean Dogwood died. I donāt know why. When I dug them up, it looked like I was not sufficiently aggressive about removing root-bound roots, and the roots did not spread out. I also have underground voles that eat roots.
This year, most of the trees have grown very well. I cut back watering to twice monthly in the summer in 2014, and once monthly this year.
Quite a few of those trees are producing fruit this year. The lindens have doubled in size. Also the maple, the Stanley plum, and the ornamental plum, which is covered with fruit now.
My summers are dry. It reaches 90s to 100s, and does not rain all summer long.
So that is my experience. I read in theory you canāt move trees in the heat of summer. But with care, it is possible. Since your trees are much younger than mine, I bet you could dig them up carefully, donāt let them dry out, water frequently, prune back some of this yearās growth if it was too much, and you will do better than starting over from scratch.
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Iād dig them up now. 3 months in the ground is nothing. Just be careful not to break up the soil too much when you dig them up. I would bet you can move them to a pot without even hitting any roots. I actually just did this today with some pawpaws that I planted this winter. Iām not at all concerned that they will even drop a leaf.
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Iād say that your impulse would be viewed by the buyer as fairly crazyāand with complete justification.
In addition to being crazy, your impulse is also unethical. Part of our hobby is to leave our patch of land better than we found it, with the understanding that much of the benefit will be reaped by those who come after us. This means that we plant a āGoldrushā apple where our successor would have mindlessly planted a āRed Deliciousā apple he bought at the big box store. This is what we are supposed to be doing.
It is also our karma. I know that I have eaten more good fruit planted some wise person who preceded me than I will ever plant myself; unless this infernal spell of drought and erratic springs ends, anyway.
Use your new patch of ground to make right the mistakes of your last patch instead.
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First, who cares if the buyer thinks you are crazy. Second, that is a ācrazyā definition of ethics to my mind. You could say the same thing of family heirloom furniture that make the house feel so warm when the purchaser views the house.
If the new owner doesnāt care for fruit trees it will not make the land better having them there. Most people canāt be bothered growing fruit. As likely as not, moving the trees will spare them the ābasal pruning treatmentā.
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I respect everyoneās opinion here and itās been great hearing your suggestions and thoughts. I can handle a great deal of criticism but this is the first response that has truly left me scratching my head. If you think moving the trees is crazy or silly then thatās fine. In many peopleās eyes it might be. But to think itās āunethicalā ??? That is rediculous. Where is this ācodeā of leaving the land better and who is the judge and jury? Is that your personal code of ethics? Leaving those trees in the ground doesnāt automatically make it a better place. We have no clue who the buyers of this property will be.
Also, make sure they are well hydrated. I watered well the day before, and did my digging in the am before it got too hot. I wrapped the entire tree in a tarp for transportation, and tied to reduce wind dehydration, especially the roots. I Soaked in well immediately after planting.
I did get some disturbing wilt on the Almaden Duke and a 6 foot tall ginkgo, but they recovered and did well in the long run.
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