Planting Evergreen Tree Transplants

Okay everyone, since Autumn is here, I figured that it’s just about time to plant a new batch of evergreen transplants.

I had a tough time with this one. It’s been a really hot and dry Summer, so I wasn’t sure when to have these trees shipped. On one hand, I wanted to get them fairly early in Autumn so they would have a chance to get acclimated in their new surroundings, but on the other hand, I needed the soil to be moist enough as to not shock the tree roots. I chose the middle of September as a compromise. I figured that the rains would return soon and until then, I could keep the trees watered.

I have been watering. I will tell you though, it’s not much fun trying to find 150 young trees. I know that the water isn’t really penetrating the soil, but I know that keeping things as moist as I can is better than doing nothing. Also, I am fairly confident that many trees with survive; the ones that don’t can be replaced next year. They don’t cost much to purchase and have shipped.

With that in mind, I would like to give a big thanks to a new tree nursery with really great prices I found online. They are called Needlefast Evergrees and are located way out there in Michigan. The owners seem like nice people and I am happy to give them my business. It has become sort of a hobby of mine to locate various seedling and transplant nurseries that offer good product for a great price.

Anyway, I have written about transplanting trees a few times before. In one post, I told you about my new garden auger and in another post, I told you about this Spring’s evergreen transplant activities.

Let’s talk about the garden auger first. There are a few things I would like to express. First, the tool works very well. It’s strong and does exactly what it says it would do. I used it with an 18 volt cordless drill and everything was good. The only problem is that using this tool takes a bit longer to plant the trees than the faster “shovel in dirt” method. Also, when you drill the hole in the ground, the dirt that you bring up kind of disappears. It gets spread out to the sides and when you are ready to fill the hole back in, there isn’t much material to work with.

My father keeps asking me how the tree planting project went. For some reason, he wanted me to buy a really strong corded drill. He likes tools. He also wanted me to use the garden auger for all 150 trees. I had to break his heart when I told him that my existing cordless drill worked fine and that I only used the auger for about 25 trees due to the reasons I just described above. I explained to him last night that if I only had 50 trees waiting to be planted, I would have used the drill and auger method. I also told him that I would have picked up some top soil to fill in the holes as well.

Okay, so now at the time of this writing, all 150 trees have been planted and have been watered twice. It is supposed to rain for the next few days, so I am hoping that this will aid in the moisture aspect. I really don’t want to keep watering. You can well imagine how long that takes.

Here are some photos of the project…beginning to end. If you have any questions, please leave a comment.