Chop chop chop. Dig dig dig.

[JohnAndSancho]

Ok. I overdid it. I guess I forgot I'm older and have a stack of health issues now. But anyway. Yes this title is a Simpsons reference. 

 

Front was easy. I pulled out most of the rocks from my brick planter and stole some bricks from it. Dug a really deep hole because it was easy here. I needed to pull some weeds, might as well shred them and throw them in the hole along with some 4-4-4 palm food. Nitrogen and what not I guess. We'll see if it makes a difference. Anyway most of the weeds in the bed are gone now. I dug probably a 4 foot deep hole and put several handful of weeds in it before backfilling it with some gravel, some native soil, and some of Wal Marts finest $3 organic garden soil. 

Sabal Birmingham, which @teddytn referred to as a Super Bastard takes center stage in the Bed of Unwanted Bastards. 

 

The picture is cheeks but it's mounded up a little bit for drainage and prominence. 

 

Now the other side of the yard - y'all I'm not gonna lie. I thought it'd be easy as hell to dig over here since the grass stays short and it's all shaded out. I don't know how I overlooked the fact that I'm like 15 feet away from hundreds of years of old growth forest. And it's still Bermuda grass and I didn't drag my cultivator fork. And there's an insane network of roots in all directions and I didn't bring my loppers. So this is about the 8th hole that I dug. I really wanted to get it dead center between the snowball trees and then plant the Waggy x Princeps hybrids in kind of a fancy arrangement but I really needed to come in and sit down. That's after I decided I wanted them arranged between the power pole and the trees, and after I decided I wanted... It doesn't matter. I dug a lot of damn holes. Very shallow holes. 

These roots kicked my culo, my whatever kinda disorder I have is going crazy, but you know what? I killed a bunch of grass and dug a bunch of holes and finally dug one deep enough to get this damn tree in. This is seriously the 4th or 5th spot I tried. 

 

I'll come back later and clean it up and add some rocks and mulch and enough bricks to be presentable and be better equipped to plant it's cousins out at some point, but not today. I might even need to lift it out and hack away at some of the roots around the hole just to give it more room unless y'all think it'll be ok. 

 

Anyway, I read that for every foot of canopy from a tree you can expect 5 lateral feet of roots. Did I mention we live in the middle of a damn forest? Some oaks came down during Katrina and they were 200 years old. Speaking of old, I found some chunks of metal too. I found the head of a broken hoe and something else mysterious that I'll clean up and investigate after I cool off and my heart slows down. Or tomorrow. Maybe a week from now. 

 

Anyway for those of you still reading this, will the Trachy roots work around the other roots and develop a symbiotic relationship like the rest of the forest or is this poor siting on my end? It's in part shade and sloped down so it'll get lots of water here. I'm hoping to get a dark, thick, stumpy Trachy here. 

 

[JohnAndSancho]

I'm gonna have to move the Trachy, aren't I? I just noticed I cracked my shovel either trying to hack this root or bashing into the metal chunks I found the hard way. 

 

Speaking of moving, @PALM MOD can you move this to the Cold Hardy forum if you've got a minute?