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Trick for finding the root flare on a buried maple, saved me 40 minutes with a shovel
I got called out to look at a silver maple in a yard near Tacoma last month that was planted way too deep, you could not see any flare at all. Normally I dig around the trunk by hand and it takes forever, but this time I used a hose on low pressure to wash the soil away from the base. The water moved the dirt without nicking the bark, and in about 10 minutes I had the whole flare exposed. I set the hose to a slow trickle so it would not blast the roots, then just worked my way around with my fingers. Anyone else use water instead of a shovel for this, or do you have a better way to check how deep a tree is sitting?
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saraho483d ago
That "slow trickle" part is the key detail that most people miss, and I'm glad you brought it up because I've seen folks wreck a trunk by going full blast. I feel for you on those deep planted maples, I've dealt with the same thing on a few jobs and it really does eat up your whole afternoon if you go at it with a shovel. Water is the way I do it too, though I'll sometimes just poke around with a thin rod first to find where the flare starts before I even turn the hose on. Sticking a screwdriver or a metal probe in and feeling where it stops going in easy tells you a lot in about two seconds. The hard part with silver maples is they send those surface roots out everywhere, so once you wash the dirt away you have to be careful not to leave them bare for long. Sounds like you got it done right though, and 10 minutes beats 40 with a shovel every time.
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