Out With the Box, In With the Spade

By Tim Widger, D&T Tree and Cactus, Inc.

Tree spades come in a variety of sizes and are used in various ways in the landscaping industry. Landscape companies and arborists use tree spades to lift large trees out of the soil for retail sale or compact storage. They are also used to create instant landscapes by digging and transplanting trees from one location to another. photos courtesy of Big John Tree Transplanter Mfg., Inc.

 

Back around 1982 I was involved in a very large saguaro cactus transplanting job in Tucson that was to become a famous resort and golf course. It was standard practice back then for the majority of saguaros and other protected cacti to be relocated out of the path of development and to be used in the final landscape of the project. This practice was given the name ?EUR??,,????'??native plant salvage.?EUR??,,????'??

It wasn?EUR??,,????'???t long before I realized that to stay competitive I would have to combine this tree boxing with my saguaro moving operations. So we learned this boxing method from people in the boxing industry and then set out to box trees.

The frame and blades of the spade open up to encircle the tree. The blades are positioned at an equal distance on all sides of the trunk to insure the root ball.

We purchased lumber, nails, hammers, metal banding, trailers and of course, picks, shovels, backhoes, loaders and rented cranes. What a nightmare. The amount of manual labor and time and materials required to transplant these trees hardly seemed worth it. We boxed trees for many years and it seemed like no matter how much money came in, the same amount always went right back out to keep this logistical nightmare rolling?EUR??,,????'??+I never seemed to get ahead.

I purchased my first Big John Tree Spade, a used ninety-inch spade, and began using it to relocate trees on my jobs. That was 10 years ago. We don?EUR??,,????'???t have that old spade anymore but what we do have now is a fleet of new Tree Spades, including 100-inch, 90-inch, 80-inch, 65-inch and 55-inch spades. The reason we are now able to keep about a million dollars worth of new spades around is that we now make a lot of money moving trees.

Transplanting Part II?EUR??,,????'??+Methodology

In the spading method of tree transplanting, 90 percent of the manual labor portion has been eliminated. The blades of this machine in mere minutes perform the work that would take men hours of hand digging. As far as the root systems go, spading is the least invasive method of transplanting. The spade will encapsulate 95 percent of the rootball of the tree; only a few lateral roots are cut below grade and cut cleanly by the blade creating less stress on the tree. The trees are then transported to their new location and planted back into the ground?EUR??,,????'??+in the ground is the natural environment for the rootball?EUR??,,????'??+not trapped inside wooden panels. Spading is very fast, efficient and most importantly, easier on the trees.

Here, the blades of the tree spade are about to be inserted into the ground. The blades are hydraulically inserted one at a time.

Boxing

The boxing method of tree transplantation is as I referred to earlier in the story a two stage process, taking up to six weeks or longer for each tree. In boxing, the first step is to excavate by hand the determined rootball size into a square. This takes several hours per tree and is very labor intensive as well as very invasive to the tree?EUR??,,????'???s rootball. During the excavation of the rootball, many roots are pruned in order to accommodate the four box panels that are to be built around the rootball. Remember that because of the high cost of labor and materials for this method they use the smallest box possible to let the tree survive the process. This means a lot of root pruning to size the rootball.

A quick example of this would be that most companies would put as large as an 8-inch caliper tree into a 48-inch box. To get it into a 48-inch box, the rootball would have to be pruned and excavated to 45-inches to comfortably accommodate the 48-inch box being built around it while leaving an inch or two for backfilling and packing. The tree would be spade transplanted using a 90-inch spade, thus 100 percent larger rootball for the same tree and encapsulating 95 percent of the rootball meaning little or no roots being compromised. Remember, this is the first of two stages.

The fill is tamped and placed using shovel handles or metal bars. The tree is then flooded with water and/or fertilized to help it through the stress of being root pruned and boxed. The tree will then sit for a minimum of four to six weeks to recover from stage one and to let the soil in the box become cohesive.

After the blades are inserted to their fullest depth, stabilizers are lowered and the tree is extracted from the ground and tilted into a horizontal position. The tree is now ready to be transported. Photo Courtesy of Knecht?EUR??,,????'???s Nurseries and Landscaping

Bottoming

After being watered and nursed back to health, it is time for stage two, ?EUR??,,????'??bottoming?EUR??,,????'??. In bottoming you must first build some lumber framing across the top of the box and nail it to the trunk of the tree and to the box panels. This supports the trunk of the tree to the box because now you have to tip the box over to one side to cut the tap roots of the tree to allow you to nail and band the bottom onto the box. During this process, soil is almost always lost from the bottom of the rootball, meaning once all of this is done and tip the tree back straight, you can start cutting a hole in the side of the box to backfill dirt into the airspace left by the lost soil from the bottom of the rootball.

Does the tree boxing work? Yes it does, and it was necessary before the invention of the tree spade. I personally boxed and moved ten thousand trees with this method. Would I ever consider moving them this way again? Not in a million years.