An olive tree in a friend’s garden is in the wrong spot and needs to be moved. It’s an evergreen and sits on the northern side of the garden, so in winter it will create shade. It also blocks access at the side of the house. The tree could be taken out, but it’s beautiful and can easily be moved. In fact it only needs to be moved a few metres to a spot where it gets full sun, will have plenty of room to grow, won’t shade neighbouring plants, and will screen a fence, the shed, and also provide privacy from the neighbours.
The first thing is prune the tree to a manageable size. Many evergreen shrubs and trees can be moved and autumn is the time to do it. It’s cooling down and the plants don’t get as stressed as they would in summer, but the soil is still warm enough for the roots to recover and grow. If it’s done in winter, like you would for deciduous trees and shrubs, the roots can actually rot.
Reasons to keep the olive include that it’s a grafted specimen rather than a seedling so you can expect better fruit. It’s also been pruned properly in the past so it’s got a good framework.
Prune any water shoots down the bottom before moving the tree. After pruning, dig a moat around the tree and give the roots a good soak. Really flood them. When the soil is soaked it’s time to expose the main roots so they can be cut. This can be hard work depending on the size of the tree. Fortunately the olive’s roots are not large. Once the surface roots have been cut, slide the shovel under the root ball and sever any deeper roots. Some extra muscles from a mate will always help.
When moving a plant a lot of the soil actually falls away from the roots. This often happens in sand, but it still should be fine. On heavier soil the root ball should stay intact, particularly when it’s wet.
The last thing before pulling it out of the hole is to mark the north, side of the tree. This is important. The temptation is to rearrange the tree in the new hole to try and balance it up, so you put a shade facing side towards the sun. But the problem can be that the bark can get sunburnt. Marking it and putting it in the same orientation is important.
It’s also vital to give the root ball a really good soak when it’s planted in the new hole to flush out any air pockets around the roots. That’s important otherwise existing and new roots will dry out when they hit air pockets.
Don’t add fertiliser to the hole before planting the tree. This is also important. If you add too much nitrogen to transplanted plants you force them to put on new growth and that stresses the plant. So with sandy soil just apply some slow release rock mineral fertiliser on top to slowly wash through. We also added half a dozen shovel loads of sheep manure, which is full of organic matter but low in nitrogen, straight onto the hole and then mulched with ordinary straw. Water it all in well.
Transplanting is a fairly traumatic experience for a shrub or a tree but if you look after it, it will be absolutely fine.
While all this seems pretty straight forward, maybe a little more advice, or help could be needed, why not give me a call and get all you tree service requirements done right.
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