I dug up an Ulmus Minor from my mom’s backyard today. Unfortunately, it was mostly feeding off one giant root, and the rest has very few feeders. Pics below. What are your thoughts on survival odds? I’m keeping it warm right now to jog it out of dormancy and hopefully kickstart some movement in the roots. The thing is pretty big, around 20cm in diameter.
An elm’s best and worst quality is that they’re hard to kill.
This should be fine. Hopefully you made clean cuts at the end of the larger roots and cleaned up in that way, that would help.
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I just implemented the “black bag technique” for an elm raft I dug a couple of weeks ago.
Here’s Harry Harrington on the subject
Here’s Tony Tickle on the subject
Here’s Mauro Stemberger on the subject
Here’s my raft and the bag, though mine is more of a box.
Disclaimer: I don’t know what I’m doing, nor do I know if it will work. But it might! And I think it’s a technique best suited for trees collected with few fine roots, like what you have. Cool tree!
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Thanks everyone. Yeah, I’ll try the black bag. I have to reinforce the plastic thing it’s currently in first, then I’ll try and make some kind of tent with black bags (cause the tree definitely won’t fit inside a bag just like that).
Yeah, my mom was actually complaining that the tree was impossible to kill. She’s been hacking it back for the past eight years trying!
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Oh hey. I came back to this post and noticed your black bag tree is in the sun. I don’t know what kinds of temps you’re currently hitting, but keep it in shade. You don’t wanna boil it alive. I’ve done that to a ficus once.
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