Posts Tagged ‘tree staking’
Standing Straight
In the few moments between watching documentaries of the Apollo space flights and dodging thundershowers this week, I snuck down the hill to the fruit trees Cyndie planted beside the labyrinth to stand them back upright. Between the saturated ground, the high winds of thunderstorms, and now the added weight of some apples, the tallest tree was listing to about a 45° angle.
It’s a little difficult to separate the apple tree from the foliage behind it in that image, partly because the trees and vines in the background were attempting to swallow the tipping fruit tree so they would get all the sunlight.
Despite Cyndie’s efforts to sell anything that wasn’t permanently affixed to the barn, we still had some t-posts available for staking the trees. As soon as I attempted to pull the tree back to straight, it became obvious the tree deserved to have three points of support if I was going to do it justice.
I had only brought one stake with me, so I decided to see if I could make that work for the time being. As long as the wind only blows in one direction for the rest of the summer, it will be fine.
We had a near-miss last evening as the dew point temperature peaked at 75°(F) and the sky filled with a variety of water vapor versions as a cluster of thunderstorms slid by just to our south once more. Within minutes of the gust that rolled over us, the dew point dropped to 67°. The sky was spectacularly entertaining.
The 7-day weather forecast is offering hope for several days in a row of sunny skies next week, so just maybe the ground will firm up a bit and hold the roots in the preferred upright orientation. Although, giving it further thought, at 45° it would be a lot easier to reach the apples come picking time.
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Doubly Tipped
Saturday we woke to an unpleasant surprise. Peering out our bedroom door to the deck, I discovered one of the pine trees at the bottom of the hill was leaning severely. Closer inspection revealed that there were two trees tipping over.
My first thought was that it might be the result of deer pushing on them, mainly because of the fact it was more than one tree. However, when I stepped near the first tree, I decided it was more likely a function of the soil being completely water-logged. Those tree roots were trying to hang on to ground that was like a thick soup.
We tried pushing them back as close to upright as possible, and then tied them to some T-bar fence posts that we had from the old fence that was pulled out last fall. It was a little tricky, because the posts have to get pounded down into the same soup that wasn’t good enough to hold the tree roots. I started at an opposite angle with the fence posts, but once tension was put on them, they moved to almost straight up.
It seemed to work for the time being, so we wandered off to the next project. We started the pile of tree roots on fire again, and raked out the ground on about half of the labyrinth. We wrestled with trying to move some boulders by hand, using pry bars, but we weren’t very successful. Lastly, we did a little work on the spot by the barn door where today we plan to host our fence contractor and his skid loader, to dig out the berm and open up a driving lane behind the barn.
Ironically, we need to uproot a perfectly happy pine tree, and relocate him to clear the way. I expect we will be staking one more tree, before the end of the day.
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