I have the opportunity to buy several hundred 2-4" diameter apple and asian pear trees for a very reasonable price. I was wondering if it is worth moving them from one orchard to another with a tree spade in late November/December. Is it worth the risk? I will have to buy/rent a tree spade, I have transportation to move them and I have the room to put them. They are bearing fruit now, they also look quite healthy. Any thoughts? Worthwhile endeavor or a fools errand?
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You need to make sure that @alan responds to your post -he does this kind of work for a living. Also search the forum, as I’m pretty sure he’s discussed it before.
Sounds like a big project. Good luck!
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I’m no expert on the subject, but how vigorous of rootstocks are we talking about here? A healthy 4” caliper tree could have a very large root ball… and depending on vigor and planting density in their current location you may not be able to separate those root balls…
I’ve estimated a charge to move some 8 inches in diameter…but the cost changed the mind of the
client.
Most trees moved by tree spade are stunted one to 5 years.
But, if it can be done inexpensively, the trees most probably do fine.
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It depends partially on the soil. Ideal is relatively heavy soil with few large rocks, so the balls hold together when you are wrapping them, if that’s your plan. Trees in finer soil have more concentrated roots systems
I have done this, but instead of moving the balls I knocked off the dirt and moved the trees bare root (the soil was much too heavy to be worth digging the trees up by hand and getting a lot more root than I did with a spade.
All the trees survived, some I still manage 2 decades later. What I did was fill my truck partway with wet leaves, working the leaves around the roots of the trees and covering the whole thing with a bull tarp so the leaves wouldn’t blow away. That way I could move a lot more trees with every trip with a hell of a lot less effort because trees had no heavy balls of dirt.
I hired a tree spade man to come to the site and pop up lots of trees and set them back down and I removed the trees at the rate in which I could quickly permanently transplant them. He told me that in some soils he’s had the soil drop away from the roots completely and the trees still survive just fine, which is what inspired my plan. The trees were up to 3.5 inch diameter.
Apple trees store a lot of energy in their wood, so transplant well even when losing most of their root systems. I can’t say the same for pears, which have fairly consistently died on me when I’ve attempted to bare root transplant larger trees. Even whips often seem to take a lot of extra time to recover from transplant. Peaches fall somewhere in between the two, but transplant bare root quite well if you manage to keep a lot of the root system intact. They tend not to do so well BandBd unless they’ve been managed to develop a concentrated root system within the ball. Some nurseries even use pure clay at the base of balls in wire frames.
You probably should remove all fruit for the first 2 years to help the trees establish a new root system.
I have also managed trees that have been transplanted with a tree spade when fully mature and up to 10" diameter or so, but wasn’t around when the work was actually done. A larger tree spade was used and it took about 3 years for trees to fully recover at both sites I manage where this was done. when you use a tree spade to dig the hole, you need to be sure to loosen up the edges with a shovel if the edges of the hole are compacted. or if the soil they are being planted in is compacted in the first place. But glazing with tree spades is a common problem and can cause trees to runt out.
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So, based on what you wrote, could I bring a load of wood chips (they are wet), pull the trees with a tree spade, knock off the soil, place the trees in a trailer and cover with wood chips? Stack them as close as possible to get as many as I can in one shot, 80-100. Dig the holes on the other end with the tree spade again and replant the next day with the dirt pulled from the new holes. Will that work? Any added fertilizer?
As long as trees are dormant, I believe that should work fine, as long as the wood chips don’t heat up and cook the trees, which is quite possible. The main fertilizer you worry about when planting is calcium in acidic soil. The books also say phosphorous but I personally believe that most trees get all the P they need in most soils due to mychorizal relationships. I’ve never had a P deficiency in any orchard I’ve managed over the years.
It is possible that once the roots are growing they can benefit from some available N, although Cornell suggests it’s not helpful the first year, at least for apples. Carl Whitcomb suggests otherwise for transplanted trees in general. At any rate, I would only do a surface app of that and wait until very first growth in spring.
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