Transplant made easy

[kracker]

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

[jezza]

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

[Deedee]

WOW Amazing

[Kristen]

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.

[Dave Brown]

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

[Kristen]

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).