Today I planted an arborvitae thats root flare was 6" below the top of the ball. And it was from hopewell (supposedly a premier nursery in NJ). .
Today I spent 8 hours with a crew of 4 doing nothing but correcting defective roots. Sold the customer copies of ANSI and the BMP's. She was mad when she saw the difference between the standards and what the "premier" nurseries sold her. 2 of them will be out within days to excavate surplus soil and see for themselves the twisted roots we uncovered.
She will get credits and extended waranties and satisfaction or she is talking lawsuit. Hell hath no fury like a tree-loving woman sold crap.
Me I'm buying more copies to sell to highend clients who want to go to war with highend nurseries. This epidemic must end.
Quad, some pics would tell us what those little roots are all about. I was pruning em left and right today if they were in the way and it was 95 degrees, no worries.
"Most SGR’s were once small circling roots, innocent in appearance to most observers. If these roots are not straightened or cut in the nursery when trees are “stepped up”--transplanted into larger containers—this can result in a “multiple corkscrew” effect. The European nursery standards specify root pruning at every step, 4”-8” further out each time, to avoid these defects. The ANSI Z60 American nursery standards do not address this problem. The best way to expose and treat this condition is to wash off the nursery soil and correct the roots as you plant trees in the bareroot style. This process, called root washing, is growing in popularity with planters who are concerned with long-term tree health and stability. But even when roots are growing away from the stem, the tree is not yet out of the woods.
Root “balls”, the volume of soil packed inside a young tree’s packaging, have been getting rounder and rounder every year. Whether trees are grown in containers or dug from the field B&B (balled and burlapped), soil is commonly heaped around the trunk, where it does not belong. The trunk flare, where the trunk naturally turns into roots and the tree joins the earth, is all too often buried early in the growing process, and buried deeper yet at planting time. Some specifications still ignore the requirement in ANSI A300 (Part 6)-2005, 63.6.2.3, “The bottom of the trunk flare SHALL be at or above finished grade”. Instead, they instruct the landscape contractors to plant the root BALL at ground level, so the landscapers obediently follow this instruction, with disastrous consequences.
Arborists should have the ANSI standard—available from TCIA—in hand when they talk to growers and landscape architects and landscapers about deep planting. When these professionals see with their own eyes that the American Nursery and Landscape Association and the American Society of Landscape Architects are represented in ANSI, they will realize that they don’t have a stem to stand on when they bury trees. The entire green industry agrees that we should always be able to find the trunk flare.
Technically, the rootball does not even include the soil above the trunk flare. It is “measured from the bottom of the trunk flare to the bottom of the ball.” (ANSI A300 (Part 6)-2005, 63.6.1.2) If the flare is found and set to grade, in a hole “a minimum of 1.5 times the diameter of the root ball” (63.6.1.4), with mulch “applied near, but not touching the trunk” (63.6.2.9), the tree roots will not need to grow up in search of oxygen. But even if these standards are followed at planting time, the tree may not grow well. For some reason, there is nothing in the standard about the making sure the roots, at least the major roots, are growing away from the stem. Why not? You’ll have to ask your organization’s representative to the ANSI committee, and get your comments in before the standard is revised again in 2010. The ANSI pruning standard does not currently cover root pruning—perhaps with the right kind of input, that standard can change to provide needed guidance on this simple act of arboriculture."
3 cents, from page 8 here:
http://www.tcia.org/PDFs/TCI_Mag_July_07.pdf