Infoalmanac

Landscaper Secret 3: What Garden Tools Do I Need for Tree Planting?

A nursery truck pulls up to your home, offloads a couple of trees, some dirt, two guys and four or five tools. You go into your garage or tool shed and look at the thirty or forty gardening tools you've got. Forty-five minutes later, they return and pickup the guys and the tools, your trees perfectly and professionally planted. What gardening tools were they using and just how did they do it so fast and so well?

This article is for the gardening tools required for planting a tree. The list is not long: you'll need a spade, shovel, hose and a rake. That's it. Well, not really. First the secret:

Landscaper Secret 3: Professionals use virtually the same tools as you, BUT they keep them clean, very sharp and well oiled.

The two other tools that you didn't notice them pitch off the truck were a file and some oil, like WD40. That shovel and spade have been ground down with a grinder similar to sharpening a knife.  If you don't own a grinder, ask at your gardening supply store for a referral.  If you live far enough out of town, the feed store will be the one who knows somebody.

The file they carry is for quickly restoring the edge to their tools. If they're good, they'll clean their tools before they leave your place and may oil them then. Or, if it's early in the day, they may wait until the day's work is done before the final sharpening and oiling.

Now, the tools:

Landscaper Secret 2: What are My Tree Planting Options?

You've made a decision about what size tree to plant with the help of the previous article and your, hopefully, trusted landscaper. There are four decent ways to get that tree successfully in the ground and growing. A landscaping service can help you with the first three. The fourth is DIY landscaping (with exact instructions to follow in the next article).

Some of the big landscapers out there come out with a huge machine. They drive it into your yard and scoop out a hole as deep as a grave, six feet in diameter.  In one motion.  The crew drives away with your dirt and comes back a little later.

The machine now holds a fully mature tree, root ball and all.  The landscaping crew backs it in.  Some poor soul carefully directs the placement. Then, they lower the tree in. Hey, presto! Instant, fully "mature" landscaping. (This tree was already at least five years old.)

For the rest of us,

Landerscaper Secret 1: What Size Tree Do I Plant?

Everyone loves the landscaper's pictures of beautiful shade trees framing a house, lining the streets. You can buy a home like that, maybe. Or you can start out with a blank slate, perhaps the home you're in now, and make it like that. Large trees or small, landscapers have a vested interest in doing it the best way. You can watch and learn or read it here.

Landscaper Secret 1: In the long, or even short, run, size doesn't make a whole lot of difference.

Along the Texas Gulf Coast, in my family's nursery and landscape experience from the 1920's on, there is not an appreciable difference in the size or quality of the trees five years later from a tree you can handle yourself.

Why is that? This landscaper's secret has a lot to with what a truly mature tree is. Most shade trees aren't really mature until they're 20 years old. What people think of as mature is a 15 or 20 foot tree with a nice, sturdy trunk. That's about five years of water and fertilizer supported growth.