Moving Fruit Trees in Hot Weather

[deenamr]

I have a friend who is losing his house in a bankruptcy. No one is living there and nothing is being watered. He showed up at my place today with a 3 year old necatrine tree he dug up for me to transplant. I know this is the wrong time of year to do this. Any thoughts on if the trees will make it. He also has a cherry tree he wants to bring me. I dug the hole filled it with water - added transplant fertilizer - inserted tree - spread out roots - filled with dirt - watered - packed down dirt - more water. BTW it's 104 out while I am doing this but it is his last weekend to have access to the house.

 

[Rosalind]

Good heavens. Well, give it a good soaking every day for the next few weeks. That's the down side, it'll need watered for much longer than normal because it's not dormant. If there's any new leafy growth (that is, this year's leafy growth) on it, you might want to trim that back to older branches, that will help slow down the water loss through leaves. If there are any green nectarines on the thing, yank em off, for sure.

Did he bare-root them, or did he bring over a big root ball? If a big root ball, it could make it through OK.

 

[deenamr]

Bare root. I did some pruning on it as soon as I got it in the ground.

 

[Rosalind]

Errrrmmm...Could he bring the cherry tree root-balled?

I dunno about a barerooted tree of any kind in 100 degree weather. Just sayin.

 

[deenamr]

I asked him to bring the root ball. It was a partial root ball really - maybe just 1/3 the soil it should have had. He did wrap it in wet towels for the drive over. I doubt he will do any thing different with the cherry tree. He says it is at least twice the size of the nectarine. He didn't really intend to save them. It's my fault he is bringing them here because I told him what a shame it was they were all being left to die. An apple and a peach were already dead.

 

[patandchickens]

Well, you can only try.

Losing most of a tree's feeder roots while being roughly transplanted midsummer is going to be hard to recover from, but, you never know I guess.

The nectarine may have more of a chance than the cherry, if the cherry is larger -- if either of them are more than 4-5' tall (and very slim and poorly branched) I would not give them good odds.

Any chance you could rig something like a pavilion of shadecloth, to keep the worst of the sun off the tree for the next couple months? THe less direct sun it gets, the less evapotranspiration, meaning the less water loss, meaning the less that the remaining roots are being counted on to do.

Oh, one thing that I've done that's SEEMED helpful when transplanting trees with inadvertantly partly bare roots -- get some hormone rooting powder (Rootone, or that sort of thing) and dust *just a very little bit* on the exposed roots. You can shake a little onto a paper towel and then pat the exposed roots with it. You are not making shake-and-bake, you just want a little bit of it on the roots. It has seemed to me that woody plants I've done that to, when being moved roughly, have done better than ones where I haven't. Obvioulsy this is not an option if the nectarine's been planted already but you could try it for the cherry.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[deenamr]

Just an update - the tree seems to be making it. I gave up all hope and quit watering it or even looking at it about 3 weeks ago. It was totally brown and crunchy. Tonight I noticed lots of new green leaves on it. I really can't believe it is alive and getting new leaves. Unfortunately it's just in time for a major frost. We are supposed to be in the low 20's next week. At least I really have hope for spring. Yeah!!!