Features
Dig holes for trees and shrubs now before winter comes
What a great time of year to be outdoors! Cool weather is enjoyable as long as you can warm up by moving around. A good way to fan that internal fire is to dig holes.
Dig holes in which to plant trees and shrubs now. This time of year the soil is usually crumbly and moist. Plants set in the ground now will be in place and ready to grow next year when warm breezes melt away winter.
No need to break your back digging holes. Ignore the old gardening maxim that it’s better to plant a $5 tree in a $50 hole than vice versa. Make your planting hole just deep enough so that the ground line on the plant will be the same as it was when the plant was in the nursery or its pot.
And no need to concoct fancy additives to mix with the soil in the planting hole. Fluff up the soil with peat moss, compost, or perlite, and the roots will have little incentive to leave the hole. Eventually they will wrap around, perhaps strangle, each other.
Also avoid putting fertilizer into any planting hole. Most feeder roots are in the top layer of soil, so sprinkle fertilizer on the soil surface and let rain leach it down to the feeder roots.
Lime or phosphorous fertilizers move very slowly down through the soil, so if your soil needs either of these materials, mix them into the planting hole. Farther out, just spread these materials on top of the soil. By the time roots reach out that far, the lime or phosphorous will have worked its way down.
One situation that does call for digging a $50 hole, as well as mixing in special additives, is when you’re planting a tree or a shrub that needs a special soil. Rhododendron, blueberry, and azalea, for example, thrive best in soils that are very acidic and high in humus. At another extreme are cacti, requiring slightly alkaline soils that are sandy and low in humus.
Some trees and shrubs transplant better in the spring, but even in such cases it pays to dig planting holes now. Take the soil out of the hole, put it back in, then put on a cover of hay or leaves to protect the surface and mark the site. Come spring, pull back the covering and you will be able to pop a plant into its prepared hole in less than five minutes.
