our little family: plant a tree

No this isn't the tree. This is a look at a "Green Manure", Trifolium incarnatum, also known as Crimson Clover. We planted it last fall over the area where we planned to put our tree. The red clover (as we call it informally) loosens the soil, prevents weeds from growing there, and adds nutrients. When you're ready to plant, you just turn it under. If you let it bloom, it has really pretty puffy red flowers.

If you find a four-leaf clover, you'll have good luck, so go ahead and plant some in your garden and hope for the best.

The first step was to get out the old idiot stick and turn under the clover. The tree is just a teensy little fellow now, but I'm a believer in digging a great big hole for an important plant or tree. So I turned over a good area. You can see you don't need to pick out the clover, just dig it right in. We're lucky - we've got good dirt at our house - so this step didn't take long. You don't need to pick out the clover, but you should pick out any rocks you find.

Here's how our tree was shipped. It came in a long box, with the branches pruned close and the the roots in a bag. Bare-root trees are only shipped during the dormant season. It's my understanding that the trees must be packed and shipped quickly, and should be planted right away after they arrive. Besides, a tree isn't much fun in a box.

Here's a look at the tree's roots once the plastic is unwrapped. The roots are packed in moss to keep them damp. You need to carefully pull the moss away to avoid damaging the roots. Don't pull the moss off and just leave the tree roots sitting out bare nekkid in the air - you want to prepare the hole first, then quickly plant the tree.

Before planing the tree, we add a bit of special sauce to the hole. A couple of scoops of organic fertilizer are followed by a few trowel-fulls of "Goop" as we call it. I just went out in the garage to look at what it's really called: Poly Aqua Crystals. They come dry in a big gallon jar; we bought it from our local nursery. You scoop out just a little bit of the dry crystals, put them in a bucket, and fill the bucket with water. The crystals absorb water and expand (think disposable diaper), filling the bucket. Once they're at this stage, they retain water nicely. This lets you water less frequently. Since you can't let a new little baby tree dry out, this is a good way to safeguard it and save a little money on the water bill at the same time. You want to mix the nutrients and the goop with the dirt just enough to disperse it all, but not too much - you want the roots to be able to find the goop.

Here, our hole is ready, we've mixed in the goop and fertilizer, and made a little mound in the center of the hole. The soil is packed in well so it doesn't sink too much. The little mound is just the right height to support the tree and roots. You don't want to bury the trunk too deep, or expose the roots. The different colored roots and trunk shows you about how deep the tree goes.

Remember that we don't want to leave the roots exposed, so quickly line up the trunk so it's straight, pivot the tree around so it's facing the way you want, and then pack dirt around it.

Our newly-planted tree. We've mounded-up the soil a little bit, knowing that it will settle over time. A little moat surrounds the tree to help water soak in. Note where the dirt comes up to - we don't want to bury the trunk too deeply.

Our little tree is now planted. Time to water him in. We put a bit of cedar bark around it as a mulch with the moss it shipped in on top. Our big-big Western Red Cedar tree is in the background. That should be a pretty backdrop for the white blossoms of our Elephant Heart Plum tree next spring.

It took a couple-few weeks, but we've noticed new growth budding out on the little tree, so we're keeping our fingers crossed.

Where we bought our tree

Our little tree came from these nice people in Central California. The Bay Laurel Nursery stocks many different kinds of fruit trees. You order in the fall and they ship bare root when the trees are dormant. Wish we had more room, we'd plant some more fruit trees.