North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Thomas Olenio" <tolenio@sentex.net>]

Hi,

How large are the trees?

I moved a Macintosh that had a trunk diameter of about 6".

First root prune the tree with a spade, 18-20" out from the trunk.  This  
severs the major roots and forces the tree to form new smaller roots  
within the diamter of the rootball you will dig in the future.

Second, prune the top of the tree hard.  With the significantly reduced  
root zone, you have to balance the tree.  Less foliage, less need of  
water/nutirents.

I would do this late summer after vigorous seasonal growth has stopped.

When the weather cools and leaves have dropped, trench around the tree/s,  
then undermine the tree, forming a rootball sitting atop a pedistal.  Wrap  
the rootball securely with chicken wire and burlap.  You may have to do  
some wrapping before you undermine and create the rootball/pedistal.  Make  
the rootball solidly wrapped.

With a couple of guys, break pedistal, and lift wrapped rootball out of  
the hole.  Rootball size is limited by the number of friends willing to  
risk their backs (or a backhoe).  Put the rootball/tree on a tarp and  
slide it to the trailer.  Lift and secure.

Reverse process at the other end.

You will have to irrigate the replanted trees regulary.  I gave my  
transplanted tree 25 gallons, once a week, on a siphon trickle for the  
entire next summer.  You will find the trees will do little  
suckering/foliage, as all engery will be going into roots.  Do not allow  
them to fruit.

There are size limitations and it is a lot of manual work.  I did it for  
one tree.

Later,
Tom


On Sun, 6 Mar 2005 10:36:18 -0800 (PST), Del Stubbs  
<northernlights2n@yahoo.com> wrote:

> I have posted before regarding my friend who needs to move his orchard  
> of 50  - 8 year
> old apple trees on seedling rootstock.
> He has found a couple of local contractors who have commercial 'tree  
> spades' on their
> loaders to pop out the trees with a large cone of dirt and roots. The  
> problem is in
> moving them 35 miles - normally it seems the spade keeps the tree in its  
> diggers and
> drives  to the new site. This would make it prohibitively expensive. He  
> needs a way to
> wrap  and load many trees onto a flat bed which can then be driven to  
> the new site, and a
> good way to unload them again into their respective holes.
> Does any one have experience with this? Any thoughts much appreciated,  
> he will need to
> have all this arranged in a month.  Del  N. MN Z3
>
> Del Stubbs  http://www.pinewoodforge.com   zone 3   N. MN
>
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