Transplanting Coast Redwoods

[Riddler]

My place in west Sonoma County, CA, has quite a few Coast Redwoods grouped in several different areas. I would like to take a few of the immature trees and transplant them to other areas on the property. If done properly, is there a decent chance they will survive the ordeal? If so, what is the maxmimum size tree I should try to tackle and what technique should I employ? If there is a good book on the subject, I am happy to purchase it and go from there. As far as tools go, I own a compact utility tractor with a loader and back hoe, so given some level terrain and enough room to operate, I can trench around a tree to a depth of several feet if necessary. I can also prepare any size hole (with amendments) to receive a transplanted tree. Thanks in advance for your advice.

 

[M.D. Vaden]

I'm almost ready to "saw logs" in bed in a moment, but:

While info is posted for your question, could you indicate the size of diameters of trunks for trees you have available to move?

All ranges?

2" diameter?

Bigger?

A lot of any certain size?

 

[Riddler]

M.D., I have my choice of sizes really. There are saplings and young trees in a variety of locations that could benefit, potentially, from being moved to areas of less competition. I am happy to start with the smaller ones and then try something larger if my transplanting technique proves successful. If you have any suggestions beyond simply taking as much of a root ball as possible (which I already intend to do), I would love to hear them. Thanks.

 

[ArtB]

Planted a bunch of seedlings 20 years ago (20 or so Coast RW & G. Sequoia (2YO bare root from Mossyrock nursery), and hundreds of DFir.

Moved some of them when trunks were still under 3/4" or so (Seattle area) and had 100% success with all 3 species (except the ones the doggone deer ate all the bark off).

Tried transplanting some a few years ago that were 3-4" dia, 15-25 ft tall, that were in shade of other trees, used 1 cu yard loader bucket for good size root ball and still lost about 1/2 of everything except the fir, lost about 1/4 of those - maybe a bad technique, but thought a cu yard bucket would be big enough to try- the bucket still cut/tore a bunch of roots in the narrow dimension.
IMHO I'd stick with saplings under 1" dia, esp if you have only a shovel.

ps:re: "any suggestions beyond simply taking as much of a root ball as possible" - yes, what I've read in the WA state forestry guidelines and followed is to make sure you pack the soil tightly so as to exclude air pockets and do not put the original soil line of the trunk more than 1" under the new soil line.

 

[Riddler]

Art, thanks for the feedback. As soon as things get a bit dryer around my place so I can run the tractor/backhoe without impacting the ground too much, I am going move around some of the 1" and smaller candidates and see how they respond.