How To Care For Advanced Trees

While many gardeners tend to fuss over seedlings and other new arrivals to their yard, how can you ensure that your advanced trees also stay happy and healthy?

Technically speaking, mature trees that are classed as established are usually between two and older, and have well developed root systems that have helped them to reach such an age. If you’ve been in your home or property for a number of years already, there’s a high chance that you might share your yard with a variety of established trees that you’ve either watched over while they grew, or that were already present long before your arrival. 

However, nurseries right around Australia are reporting a growing trend. For new and existing home owners alike, making the decision to purchase established trees is becoming a popular option when compared to the prospect of waiting for smaller shrubs to grow. Investing in established trees also sees the risk of pest or weather damage diminish significantly, as these grown up flora varieties are often made of stronger materials when compared to their younger counterparts. 

In saying that, they still aren’t classified as a shoe in when it comes to going the distance, so how do gardeners care for and maintain the health of mature and established trees, particularly when moving them?

How To Transplant An Established Tree 

Whether you’re moving house, moving a teenage tree into a new spot or simply installing a new purchase, transplanting mature trees can be tricky business. Although they are notoriously sensitive to air exposure and transplant shock, the good news is that gardeners can minimise the potential damage by following a few key steps. 

Get Digging – Before you get started,  make sure you choose a tree that is healthy and thriving to begin with as it will be much more likely to survive the process of transplanting. It’s also important not to suffocate the root system with insufficient space, so start by making a hole roughly one and a half times as large as the root ball of the tree. 

Prepare The Tree – When you start carefully removing the tree from its existing location, it’s critical that you keep as much of the root system as possible. To help the tree re-establish its root system, gently loosen some of the soil around the root ball. Try to avoid exposing the roots to direct sunlight whenever possible and better still, try to plant the tree on a cool, overcast day. 

It’s Showtime – Place the tree into the hole and backfill with soil around the base. Try not to plant your tree deeper than it was in it’s previous home, and make sure that you don’t pile the soil too high up around its trunk. Keep the top of the root ball aligned with the top of your soil, so that it’s still covered but is not too deep.

As soon as you’ve managed to successfully transplant a mature tree, one of the golden rules to follow is to water it immediately. This is one of the biggest shields against transplant shock for advanced trees, as the process helps to encourage it to settle. Gardeners will need to water the transplanted tree regularly until it’s root system reforms. It’s also a good idea to mulch five to ten centimetres around the base of the tree as a means to help regulate the temperature of the soil and maintain moisture, as well as assisting in keeping weeds and pests at bay.

In order to keep your advanced trees healthy and requiring little to no maintenance, try to embrace forward thinking and proactive measures instead of reactive ones, especially when it comes to things like watering, weeding, fertilising and tackling pests. As such, one of the most effective means to do so is to ensure that the soil in your garden is at its best. 

Optimise Your Garden Soil The Natural Way 

Do your plants – and yourself – a favour, and give them a head start by optimising your soil prior to planting. By adding a natural plant food like Biotic Booster, this will help your garden to: 

• Provide essential nutrients and microbes 
• Act as a liquid fertiliser to unlock your soil’s potential 
• Drought proof your plants and lower water consumption
• Increase and speed up the germination process
• Assist in protecting your plants from pests and diseases 
• Provide a natural solution that’s safe to use around your herbs, fruit and veggies

If you’re ready to take the leap into improving the health of your plants while minimising the use of chemical based fertilisers, then it may be time to try plant food and plant probiotics. Our Ultimate Garden Health Pack includes our Biotic Booster, FP-60 Probiotic Spray, RE-250 Soil Energiser plant food and plant probiotics. In each concentrated bottle, millions of natural bacterias are waiting to find a new home in your garden.

Here at Bioweed, we specialise in environmentally friendly gardening products, including herbicides, plant food and plant probiotics, and natural alternatives to traditional gardening solutions. Should you have any questions about how to improve the sustainability of your garden, get in touch with us today.