David Epstein: Hi! I'm Dave Epstein, this is Growing Wisdom. I’m with Wayne Mezitt in a row of gleditsia trees. And Wayne, what is so wonderful about this tree?

Wayne Mezitt: The honey locust tree is one of the best trees for dappled light shade. It doesn’t cast that heavy shade that nothing grows under.

David Epstein: And they’re not messy either.

Wayne Mezitt: That’s a nice clean tree. Sometimes you see these huge seedpods on some of the locus trees. These don’t have seedpods.

David Epstein: And the leave’s a little bit smaller so they tend to blow away, different than an oak or a maple where the leaves are really heavy.

Wayne Mezitt: Yes, they’re really not a problem to clean up in the fall.

David Epstein: So, I want to show you guys the process of moving this big tree. So, talk about that a little bit.

Wayne Mezitt: Well, the first step is you have to choose a location that’s appropriate for the tree. You want to make sure you’ve got enough room for the tree to mature in, you’ve got the right soil conditions, you can get to it with a big tree mover, and if you like to dig a hole ahead of time either with a tree digger or with a backhoe so that the hole is ready for the tree to go in. And you have to size it appropriately.

The next step is to go and get the tree, dug with a tree digger. And you position the digger around the tree very carefully so that it’s centered and it captures much of the root system as possible. You dig the tree with a tree digger which is a very quick process and you lift the tree out of the ground and tie it to the tree digger so that it’s secure for the trip to where it’s going to go. Pull the top in, tie it in so you can get it over the road, cover it so it doesn’t get whipped by the wind, transport it to the location where you want to plant it, and then put it down in the hole with the tree digger. And at that point, you lift the spades off of the tree and you backfill with soil and you sort of do it concurrently so that you end up with a root system that doesn’t shift, doesn’t move, then you form a saucer around the root system and you make sure you water it in thoroughly after you temp the soil in.

Before you plant it in, you also want to make sure that these nutrients are in the soil. We like to use phospate and that helps increase the root health and root growth once it’s in the soil. We don’t recommend fertilizing a tree for the first year or so until it gets established, the root systems are spread out into the new soil.

David Epstein: So, instant large tree. Come back every week for all of our tips, hints, helps here at Growing Wisdom.