It's easier to bury some seeds where you want the trees to be, and select the strongest of the sprouts.

In all honesty, the local wild palos verde are scrubby, weak trees, not really worth the effort of the transplanting.

Desert Hills, I was just going to post on the same topic.

Actually I think your PV volunteer is worth transplanting if you want one in another location. For those of us who live in the natural desert areas, we have many strong and old PVs on our properties -- some of mine have 20" trunks! But of course until it's cooler, the heat will be a stress on the transplanted tree. One that is a foot tall has probably been there since last year.

The seeds you see coming up now at 2" tall with their big roundish "seed leaves" are doing that because the rainwater has tumbled them through the gravel, scratched the seed coat and the rain has germinated them. They have to be scarified like that to sprout. We have oodles of clumps of seeds popping up all over our acre. The rabbits and birds will eat most of them while they are young and tender.

The reason I was going to post is because I just "found" a volunteer blue palo verde early this summer. It was sprounting up among some scrubby bursage so I hadn't seen it before. When I first found it, it was only as tall as bursage, about 12". With all this rain, it has almost doubled in size in the past few weeks! So I am wondering if anyone here can advise how deep one has to dig to get out a 24" tall palo verde? I'm pretty sure they have a long tap root but other than that, not sure. Come October, I'd like to get it moved to a better spot and I sure hope I can without killing it.

>> It's easier to bury some seeds where you want the trees to be, and select the strongest of the sprouts.
Hmm, why did't I think of that before? I'll try this one, too. Thanks Lazygarden! :)

>> With all this rain, it has almost doubled in size
A volunteer from three years back (I think) has grown a lot too since the past weeks. It's about 5' now, at a good location to screen the dirt road.

Kathleen, I love the old PVs in the yard, they are humongous and looks interesting.

I'd still like to try my hands on saving the volunteer, at least for the experience. Hope more people can chime in to give some ideas:
- When is the best time to transplant?
- How deep one has to dig?
- How to prep the new area for planting?

I have no idea what the answers are, but I'm hoping you're successful and will post the information when you're finished (successful or not) - it's awfully good info to have around.

As far as prepping the area is concerned, if you mean soil ammendments, don't bother unless you're moving it to an area of heavier clay than it's already in, in which case I'd recommend some coarse sand or gravel mixed in. Remember that these are desert trees and are totally adapted to alkaline, fast draining soils that a maple would wither to see.

HTH!

Thanks PC! I'll post if if I got any success. With all the volunteers popping up every week there's plenty to experiment with.

My yard is covered in volunteers from my neighbors tree that he removed 2 YEARS AGO!! AARRGGHHHHHHHH! Just drive by my house and help yourself :)

The 'volunteer' palo verdes in my yard are like weeds more than trees. They don't have the same growth patterns as the momma tree, they are horribly thorny and they invariably pop up where they threaten to take over other plants. I hate 'em and keep chopping the things down only to have them come right back. I don't want to know how to 'save' these pests; I want to know how to get rid of them!

Hi tomatofreak! Yeah, I agree, those that grow where they don't need to are WEEDS and hard to get rid of. I used to just pull em up, but new ones sprout quickly. Now, whenever I see a new one I also dig the surrounding dirt to pick the seeds that hasn't sprouted. I figured that will help cut back on future weeding.

I did plant a few seeds in a desired spot, hoping for a shade tree there someday.