Is now the time to transplant a volunteer maple?

17 years ago

I am going to attempt to transplant this volunteer maple from my dad's house to mine. Is now the best time of year to do this? Should I wait until all the leaves have dropped?

Thanks.

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:1092119}}

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Comments (3)

Embothrium
17 years ago
Might as well wait until leaves have dropped.
plantknitter
17 years ago
This may be theoretical but, I'll give it a go.

As long as there are green leaves, photosynthesis will be going on and sugars will be made.
These sugars --plant food-- will be stored in the plant's roots, before the leaves fall off, to help growth in the spring.

If you at least trim the roots in a ring around the plant, as you will when you dig it, (or dig it completely out), these plant sugars will be stored in the roots that you will take with the plant and not be left behind in the roots that are left behind, right?

So, either digging now or at least pretrimming the root ball and leaving the plant partially in place, may, in theory, get you some more stored energy in the roots and thus more growth in spring.
no?
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I can't tell if the little guys are E. purpurea either, they do look very similar but not quite! I think your plan to pot up some seedlings and put them in a mostly shady spot will work fine. Echinacea seedlings are pretty durable, but I would be gentle with roots and of course keep them moist and give them a little diluted liquid fertilizer every couple weeks. I have some Ech seedlings sowed in late May, sprouted throughout June, and will probably plant them out around late August, when it starts to cool down at night. They hopefully will establish and over-winter okay, as long I keep them well-watered.
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Well, I'm tap rooted, check it an see, I've got roots down to 100 and 3' Come on baby, can you do more than dig? I'm tap rooted, tap rooted Now that our musical interlude is over ... when I dig out something like that, I try to get as much as possible of the tap root, but often it isn't possible to get a significant portion of it. You just have to do the best you can, and at some point cut it off cleanly -- DON'T hack at it with the shovel, which can end up with it being a big, frayed mess. And, I DO believe that a wounded tap root should have the wound dipped into a fungicide like Captan or even Rootone F before replanting -- I think that does help survival.
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Man, as I was reading this for the first time I really got pumped up to see new pics of the what I thought would be 20' beauties! I hate that you lost them but now you have more room to plant something else ;^) I do wonder why the winter killed them, though. I would think they should be perfectly hardy in your z7 MD. We have had a few large sycamores in our neighborhood leaf out weakly for a couple of years then not leaf out at all. Curious if it is something similar at play...
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They sure sound like seedlings to me. They won't be exact duplicates of Bloodgood, but will probably be close in most characteristics, i.e. leaf color, growth rate, etc. You can certainly dig them up, just try to get as many roots as possible. It looks like you are in zone 7, so I think you are probably already past the safest time to move them in the Spring. I would probably suggest waiting till October or wait until early March of next Spring if you want the best chance of them living. It might not be a bad idea to take a shovel and root prune them a little now where you intend to dig out the root ball. Don't pre-dig the whole root ball but instead say one third of it. This will stimulate roots to grow in the area you will be digging when you move them. Good luck Jim Here is a link that might be useful: When to move plants including calendar for trees and shrubs
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Embothrium
17 years ago
No benefit to pruning roots in advance. Best to lift barerooted right after leaf drop, trying to get as much of roots as possible instead of cutting roots.

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Is now the time to transplant a volunteer maple?

Comments (3)

Embothrium

plantknitter

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Embothrium

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