Hardy Tropicals UK

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=65 ... =2&theater

I've got to get me one of those! Anyone spare a few grand?

WOW Amazing

Looked into getting a Tree Spade to move a couple of mine that were in the way of some building work we are doing, but it was £N,000's to hire for the day ... so I used a JCB and a couple of straps. Moved them in July, not the best time!, but they seem to be fine.

I've seen vids of these before, and they would seem ideal for transplanting palms, but something in me is screaming out that you'd need to reduce top growth to ensure a shock free transplant.

Kristen, I presume they came with operators rather than self hire £N,000

Dave Brown wrote:Kristen, I presume they came with operators rather than self hire £N,000

Yup. Not sure how practical self-hire would be, as it looks to me like there is some skill involved ... but it would be FUN to try, for sure

Its a decent sized rootball, and it looks to me as though there is no/little disturbance, so I reckon they would get away well, thus perhaps no top-reduction necessary?

Lifting with a JCB and then "carrying them" with a strap shakes up the rootball quite a lot, so I reckon quite a few roots / root-hairs etc. must get damaged, thus more likely to need some top-reduction.

Could wrap the rootball (e.g. in hessian) if the plant was more precious though. I'm reading a book on Topiary [by Jake Humphrey] and there is a section that discusses the Japanese "training" of trees. Over there it is common to rootball plants, any time of the year, but they put a lot of trouble into digging around the tree, and wrapping the rootball really tight such that there is no disturbance (of course doing it like that you can choose a larger diameter than the fixed-size of a Tree Spade, so that probably helps too).