Planting Tips:
To insure the best success in your home landscaping, it helps to know local soil conditions and combine them with proper planting techniques.
• Generally, you want to plant all trees and shrubs so that the top of the root ball is at the same height as the adjacent existing grade with no fill dirt on top of the root ball. This is the most common mistake people make, planting too deeply.
• If the area you are planting in is low and prone to periodic inundation, you can mound the planting area higher. If the bed area is confined between a sidewalk and the house it can act as a bathtub for your plants. Fill the area prior to planting so that it is higher than the sidewalk and drains away from the house. Leave a trench against the sidewalk to contain the mulch and prevent the dirt from washing out of the bed.
• As far as tree planting hole size, a newly released standard recommends excavating or at least loosening a width of 6′ or twice the width of the root ball, whichever is greater and digging the hole depth 4-6" deeper and then backfilling this area with the loosened soil excavated from the pit. The top 6" of backfill material should be a mixture of well composted leaves and recycled yard waste that has been tilled into the existing soil removed from the hole. This method of planting assures that the roots will have an easy pathway to grow outward from the tree and not be confined to the small hard walled pits that are normally dug. Shrubbery and ground cover beds should be tilled, loosened and amended the same way.
• When planting on a slope, the top of the root ball on the upslope side should be slightly below the existing adjacent grade and the root ball top on the downslope side should be slightly above the existing grade such that the trunk of the tree base is at existing grade. Form a watering ring around the tree with it being higher on the downslope side to keep the water from washing out.
• A soil pH test is a good idea so appropriate plants can be selected that prefers acid, neutral or alkaline soils. If the proper plant is not matched with the proper pH, the fertilizers may not be available to be converted and used as food for the plant and will appear chlorotic. Our sandy soils generally will be on the acidic side and the clay soils will be more alkaline. Soil pH can be changed by the addition of soil sulphur or aluminum sulfate to encourage a more acid soil or limed to push it towards the alkaline side, but this is a slow conversion process and takes years of continual applications. Therefore it is best to just pick the right plant in the first place!
