Friday, August 8, 2008

Transplant of Princeton Elm in same container for 5 years

Monday, August 4th, Scott and I were wanting to see how a Princeton Elm was tolerating being planted in High 90-Degree temps. There were two factors that made this very difficult for the tree.

1. The 15 gallon Princeton was in the same container for 5 years and we did not know what to expect?

2. We blew off all the soil from the roots to exposed the roots only and left the tree laying in the full sun for three hours without it being protected.

The temperatures were in the mid 90's and rising to around 98 degrees. We had a heat index of over 100 degrees.

Observations:

The first thing we noticed was that the roots were not coming out of the pot. There was some circling, but they were a smaller type of root. The roots were of a small, size (the size of a spaghetti noodle or so). We were surprised that the roots were not larger and weren't really roping around the container. See the below photos.







After getting all the soil out of the ball, we left the tree lying there for approximately three hours.


Later that afternoon, we took the tree, basically bare root now and planted it near our office. Amazingly, it did not wilt or seem to miss a beat! We watered it once a day for five minutes with the hose. Here a picture of the tree today - August 8th, at 4:32 pm.



What A Great Tree!!!! The Princeton American Elm - order yours today!