Planting Pecan Trees - Need Advice

[baymule]

Jim, digging by hand-when you get to the rock hard soil, fill it with water and come back in a day or two to finish digging it out. Here are a couple of links that might help you out.


http://coststudies.ucdavis.edu/files/98pecans.pdf

http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/fruit-nut/files/2010/10/improved-pecans.pdf

 

[897tgigvib]

oooph! Cay digging! Makes me want to go to a gold's gym and announce a free exercise regimen! Aerobic shovelling!

 

[JimWWhite]

All, I've dug down to 42" and the holes are 36" wide. What I'm going to do at this point is to put about 6" of gray #5 granite gravel in the bottom of each hole and then insert a piece of 4" corrugated pipe to the bottom along with the root ball. The pipe will stick up out of the ground about 1 foot. Then I'll work in some good topsoil I bought from the supply yard today and fill in the holes. Then I'm going to take all the soil I took out of the holes and make a mound around each hole to keep water from washing in and then fill that in with about 3 inches of oak bark mulch. I'll put a piece of screen door wire mesh on top of the pipe to keep things out of the holes but we'll be able to use it to water the trees when they need it. All of this plus keep my fingers crossed...

If anyone else has some ideas I'm going to plant the trees this weekend so I'm still open to ideas and suggestions.

Thanks, everyone!

Jim

 

[897tgigvib]

break up the bottom of it as deep as you can first. What you do not want is 2 things:

a water pit that gets all anaerobic and rotten.

a totally dry spot with no water for the roots.

You have a fine line between the 2 extremes, so best of luck!

Reminds me of the time at the nursery i was planting strawberry pots. I failed to notice one of them was defective, and had no drain holes. We kept that one, and that season it was watered very carefully only. It worked, but at season end I dismantled it, and Roxi's husband drilled holes in the enameled clay pottery after. Little or no drainage really does make for a fine line to tread. Too little water is better than too much, but either can cause death of the plant.

 

[JimWWhite]

Good advice, Marshall. Thanks all!

Jim

 

[bobm]

I would only mix in very little of the topsoil, otherwise the roots will go round and round like in a clay pot and not want to grow into the native clays where one wants them to expand into.

 

[JimWWhite]

Well, I got the last of my pecans trees in the ground. I actually planted four because I had to get a Cape Fear Type I cultivar to go with the three Gloria Grande Type II's that I already had. I found the Cape Fear at Lowes. I dug the holes 36+ inches wide and 42 inches deep. I put about 6 inches of gravel in the bottom and set a plastic pipe down to the level of the rock and it stuck up out of the ground another 18 inches. I mixed some of the top soil and some of the clay along with some garden soil I bought and this stuff called ClayBuster I also got at Lowes. It contains gypsum plus some other mulchy looking stuff. I roto-tilled everything until it was good and mixed in and then worked it into the hole around the roots and the pipe. I used the remaining clay from the bottom of the hole to build up a berm about 4 feet around the hole. The next thing I'll do is to use landscape timbers to make a box around the trees and fill it with bark mulch. If it don't work then I give up.