# Planting trees in hot weather? Need some help.



## HGX_Fisherman (Feb 26, 2009)

Hey guys, thanks for all the help with the yard before, took a whole weekend and till raked it down to almost nothing (got an entire 65 gallon trash can of dead thatch), spread some wood compost real thin and watered ~2 inches a week and in a month I've got green again!

Now comes the unfortunate part, 2 trees in the front yard are dead and HOA demands them replaced ASAP. My wife and I have a Crape Myrtle and a Tulip Poplar to replace them, these are both saplings. At the same time, we're going to take the other two Live Oaks out of the small front yard and move them to the backyard where they'll have more than enough room to spread their crown.

I know the end of June, in the middle of a drought, is no time to be planting or transplanting trees, but we have no way around it with at least two of them. I have read that a 13-13-13 slow release plant food in the bottom of the hole with a lot of deep watering will help the roots take, but where do I find something like that? Lowe's and Home Depot only have at best a 19-6-12 (Osmocote). Also, would the wood compost be good to put in the hole?

Looking for a little bit of advice again so I don't kill the trees, and, hopefully get the ~4 feet of growth per year both the Crape Myrtle and Tulip Poplar are supposed to get. This project starts tomorrow, so please, help me out once again! Thanks in advance!


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## castaway300 (Oct 6, 2007)

PHC (plant health care) tree saver.
will do wonders...


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## Johnny9 (Sep 7, 2005)

Bet you loose your Like Oak Trees. Never move a tree in the summer months. Good Luck and give them lots of water.


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## Sugar Land YAK (Jun 19, 2004)

*Watering*

If you do have to replant them take u some pvc pipe and drill some holes down the pipe and insert in the hole before u move the tree in the hole, should allow the water to get down to the roots...good luck!!

I would make a case to the HOA to wait till October...


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## wickll (Oct 6, 2009)

Sugar Land YAK said:


> If you do have to replant them take u some pvc pipe and drill some holes down the pipe and insert in the hole before u move the tree in the hole, should allow the water to get down to the roots...good luck!!
> 
> I would make a case to the HOA to wait till October...


I agree with making a case to the HOA to wait. I just planted a few palms a few weeks ago for a business that had to have trees planted to get a "Certificate of Occupancy". Originally, the guy wanted to plant oaks and was willing to take the risk of them dieing. I was really relieved when he changed his mind and went with the palms. One option on the oaks, (though I hesitate to recommend because I don't know about the long term effects on the root system), would be to simply cut the bottom out of the pots and plant the whole pot in the ground. But I would not do any fertilizing whatever you do. If you plant them in the pot, I would plant them above the ground line (maybe 1/2 of the pot below the original ground line) and pull dirt to pot. Then , next spring, when you have lots of roots coming from the bottom and anchoring, remove rest of the pot and prune any roots that are circling , and cover the roots up to the original dirt line that was in the pot.


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## HGX_Fisherman (Feb 26, 2009)

Hey guys, thanks for all the tips, they'll really help. The tree move got the kibosh put on it this weekend. Started digging, got down about a foot and hit rock hard caliche in both yards. The two holes started in the back yard are now on mega-soak to try to soften the ground to keep digging.

As it stands right now, we've potted the Poplars and Crape Myrtles with about a 70/30 mix of soil from the yard and organic compost, along with the little bit soil they came in. No fertilizers. We'll keep a close watch on watering them and shuffling them between the garage and the sun to make sure they get enough sun, but we don't burn them out in the heat.

Next step is with the HOA to see what can be done as this weekend project just became something that might end up being quite a bit longer.


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