Just Small Trees – Page 2 – Just Small Trees, LLC

Tree Watering – Fall Planted Trees

HOW To Water

Expect about 15 seconds of watering at a medium to strong flow rate per gallon of the original container size. So a 7-gallon tree, about 2 minutes. A 25 gallon tree, about 6 minutes. If the mulch is dry, it’ll take some time just to soak the mulch, so you need more to moisten the soil below.

You can use a strong flow if you are hand watering with a hose end that has a “shower” or “rain” setting. If you get run-off under the mulch but haven’t watered that much, move to another section or stop watering for a few minutes to let it soak in.

Another option is to set your sprayer on a gentle flow and leave it spraying on each section of the mulched area. Move it every 5 minutes or if you see runoff. With a gentle flow it’ll take about 1 minute per gallon of the original container size to water your tree. So a 25 gallon tree, about 25 minutes.

Remember: It’s better to water deeply and less often than shallowly and more often.

WHERE To Water

For the first 4 months the roots will be in the area of the container, for a 25 gallon tree this is about a 2-3 foot diameter. Though you want to water the entire mulched area, make sure you don’t miss watering this area.

Watering SCHEDULE

Water in 1 week.
If the weather remains on the warm side, water every week until it gets cold.
For deciduous trees, water until the leaves have fallen off or have turned completely brown (some deciduous trees hold on to their leaves until the Spring).
Once cold, generally no watering until the Spring warm-up.
During the Spring warm-up, water every 2 weeks.
Once the leaves are out and the weather is warm, water once per week until the weather cools off in the fall.
In the fall, water every 2 weeks until it gets cold.
At this point you shouldn’t need to water anymore except in hot weather dry spells. If you get one, water every 2 weeks to enhance the health of your tree.
Trees such as Japanese Maples planted in hot spots require weekly watering in the heat to help prevent leaf scorch and limit tree stress.

Do I need to water in the event of RAIN?

Because the tree is new and due to the mulch, you’ll need to water even if it rains unless you get at least 1/2 inch of rain or more for the watering period. Some locations are sheltered from the rain and as much as 1 inch of rain is needed before the tree is adequately watered. Don’t be afraid to put your hands in the soil and check for moisture after a rain.

CONTACT ME

If you have concerns about your trees health or watering, please contact me right away. If you feel your tree needs more than 1 deep watering per week in the summer, please let me know.

Tree Planting Service

Need a tree for your yard? Looking for a tree selected and planted with care? I can help you.

Total price = Tree price + Installation price

I install customer provided trees and plants for the installation price only, though I provide no warranty on customer provided trees and plants.

Tree Pricing

Trees I provide are selected from area nurseries. I personally approve the trees after observing the roots, root flare, trunk, branch spacing, and overall health of the tree. Tree pricing depends on the tree variety and size. Please contact me to get a quote for a specific variety.

Please note: Once I’ve ordered your tree, there is up to a 25% cancellation fee (based on the tree price only) for cancellations. Once I’ve received your tree, there is no cancellation on the tree and it will be delivered to your property.

Installation Pricing

Container Size	Installation Price, Basic	with Sod Removal
<1 gal	$7	$12
1 gal	$12	$20
3 gal	$30	$40
5 gal	$40	$60
7 gal	$60	$80
10 gal	$80	$100
15 gal	$100	$120
20 gal	$125	$150
25 gal	$150	$180

Japanese Maples & drainage sensitive in heavy clay: +50%

Installation Service includes

811 called. Note: 811 only marks utilities. I cannot take responsibility for any underground systems unless they are marked. This includes (but isn’t limited to): irrigation, landscape lighting, security, septic, and water from the main to the home.
Clear ground where plants will go. Sod removal is extra.
Remove plant from container and remove loose bark and sand as texture of plant’s roots permits.
Prune out damaged, encircling, and girdling roots.
Dig a proper size hole, typically two times the container size and at depth determined by root flare. If the tree is going into or next to the spot of a removed tree, please see below under Installation Service Extras.
Locate root flare to determine planting depth. Plant root flare 1-2 inches above ground to account for settling.
Japanese Maples and drainage sensitive plants in heavy clay planted 3-6″ above grade after mixing in Permatill and additional screened topsoil into native soil.
Backfill with native soil and 50/50 native topsoil/compost blend.
2-year slow release fertilizer installed at appropriate depth and appropriate amount for container size.
Cover with 2-3 inches of triple-shred hardwood bark mulch.
Prune out damaged, dead, or very poorly located branches. In most cases, pruning should be limited until one full year of growth from planting.
After-care watering instructions.

Installation Service Extras

Tree for Tree – Replacing a tree in the same spot as a removed tree. This may require additional grinding, extensive digging, removal of old tree grindings, and replacement soil. Priced on a per job basis.
Clearing – Sod removal and disposal or extensive clearing of ground for plants beyond what is needed for planting itself.
Mulching – Mulching placed beyond what is needed for the planting itself.
Staking – Staking is not usually needed, but is available.
Soil Testing – Mass planting or high value trees may benefit from site soil testing.
Design Fee – Installation prices are based on customer generally knowing what plants and where. More extensive consulting and design work is available though I generally refer customers looking for complete garden designs.

Plant Warranty

1 year covering plant and labor to re-install. Limited to one replacement of equal or lesser value. Please contact me as soon as possible if you believe a plant is not doing well or you have questions about care.

Warranty Applies To – Plants purchased by Just Small Trees, LLC. Customer supplied plants are not warrantied. The full plant warranty is offered on a job-by-job basis and on container-grown plants only. Plants installed in difficult locations, on difficult to transplant species, or on plants that typically do poorly in central-NC conditions may receive a partial warranty or no warranty. You will receive warranty information in advance.

I do not install ball-and-burlap (field grown) trees. In most cases, it is easier to start with a container grown or bare-root tree and let the tree grow to the desired size. Ball-and-burlap trees can lose up to 95% of their roots during the digging & packaging process.

Warranty Covers – Plants that decline or die despite reasonable care. Trees that are blown over in high winds will be put upright within the warranty time frame at no charge.

Warranty Does Not Cover – Damage from acts of God or extreme weather conditions, theft, 3rd party damage, improper watering, improper pruning, neglect, abuse, or animal damage.

Finishing The Job

I completed the removal of a dead Crape Myrtle recently and I was surprised to hear a now familiar story: “We had a man come out to do the job, but his chainsaw broke and then he didn’t come back.” I examined the cut and it was small enough that it could have been finished with a handsaw and effort. Why didn’t he?

Of the many times I’ve heard this story, some cases might be a person who takes the money and runs, but some are surely just leaving work on the table. In any case, I finished up the work left unfinished and was happy to do so. Sometimes the breadth of characters in the world surprises.

Mulberry In Raleigh

A customer contacted me about a Mulberry that had fallen down due to the heavy rains received in the previous days. In one of the established neighborhoods in the North Hills area of Raleigh, the Mulberry had been growing for a long time and providing privacy along a rear fence. And had it ever!

Mulberries are tremendous growers that put up multiple trunks and produce a lot of wood. Unlike a Bradford Pear, the wood is quite strong and so the Mulberry grows easily to an unbalanced shape as it seeks light. This tree was probably under 40 feet tall when standing, but nearly as wide, and was close to 2 feet in diameter at waist height.

The thing with storm fallen trees is that they are over, but they are not down. So the work is nearly as much, and in many cases more, than cutting a tree down from a standing position. The tree was pieced down carefully from the tips, working back, making sure to be careful of the shifting and rotating weight that is released from storm fallen wood.

In the end, the trunk was cut back close to the root mound and left as shown per the customer’s request. It measured over 24 inches at this point. You can also see the yellow wood and white sap that are hallmarks of Mulberry.

One of many trunks. Cut shows white sap.

Disposal went well, the location wasn’t close to the street, but the land sloped down – a welcome relief. Because I don’t use heavy equipment and I work carefully, the yard was left in great condition despite moving a couple tons of tree across it.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to my customers. Whether you just had me out for an estimate or gave me the job, I enjoyed meeting so many this year. As my brother-in-law says about his business, “I have the best customers!” The only headaches this year were a few 95F/90% humidity days, a stuck tree that took all my coaxing to come down, and a split pair of pants. With a business that focuses on small trees, what suffered most was the wedges.

2016 Annual Report

Animals Rescued: 2 baby squirrels (Thank you, Wildlife Welfare)
Lost Tools: 1 Silky handsaw
Vehicles Stuck In Mud: 1
Vehicle Tire Flats: 1, shredded on Dogwood stump
Shovel Handles Broken: 3
Dogs Met: 4, only 1 hostile
Tyvek Suits Worn: 1, severe poison ivy on tree
Favorite Job: Mulberry Removal
Toughest Job: Hickory hung up in an Elm and a Magnolia. Save the Magnolia.
Furthest Job Location: Middlesex, NC
Most Shrubs Removed on One Job: 21
Hardest Plant ID: Ternstroemia gymnanthera. Great plant, I recommend using it where conditions permit.

Log Bucking in Raleigh

A customer had me out to remove a dead pine tree, broken & hung-up, that was in danger of collapsing onto his home. That worked completed, he had me back out a week later to buck up all of the fallen wood on his property.

Log bucking is simply cutting wood into shorter lengths that can later be split for firewood or used in outdoor fire pits. Generally the lengths are from 12 to 16 inches, depending. I don’t do splitting. I do stack, but the customer didn’t want that in this case.

Thanks to the more powerful equipment I use and the tools I have for handling timber I was able to cut up everything on his lot in 2.5 hours. In all I bucked Oak ranging from 6 to 12 inches in diameter, Pine from 4 to 16 inches, and large Tulip Poplar up to 22 inches that had fallen in a storm. When you have many fallen trees and a small chainsaw, it can save you many, many hours to use the log bucking service I offer.

Pruning Service

I offer pruning for small trees, fruit trees, ornamental trees, and shrubs such as Roses, Privets, and Figs. You can find more details on my Services page. My goal is to prune to arboricultural standards while meeting your requirements as closely as possible. So I prune for the health of the tree, with proper cuts, and at the proper times. This means I don’t top Crapemyrtles or prune Azaleas in the fall.

Here is a ‘Red Delicious’ Apple Tree (Malus domestica) I pruned in March 2015. This was right before bud break with pictures just two weeks later as the buds began to break.

front-pre — Apple, pre-pruning from the front

side-post-spring — Apple, post-pruning, bud break

This tree is at least 35 years old and in fairly good condition with only one major defect in the trunk and strong leaf out each year. The tree hadn’t been pruned in a few years, so there was a lot of extra growth.

Why not prune more? The general rule of thumb is no more than 1/4 of the canopy in a year (1/3 for shrubs). Also, the tree is older and is in fairly good, but not great condition. Pruning doesn’t make a tree grow larger, but young trees can take a lot pruning because they don’t have a lot of mass to maintain. Very mature trees often have a precarious energy balance where pruning just a small portion of the canopy causes the tree to go into decline.

The tree produced few, if any, blooms in 2015. It was a heavy pruning and I knocked a lot of the buds off working in the tree to gain access for all the cuts. Had the pruning been done in January, perhaps the buds would have been in a firmer state. The tree produced great leaves, though, and in 2016 had a good crop of fruit.

Unfortunately, it’s the last of the three apple trees originally planted in the location and pollination is more difficult now. Here is an article on Apple Tree pollination.

For more information on pruning, see the Trees Are Good website.

Shrub Removal Service

Have a house built in the last 20 years? You’ll find that the builders in almost every case installed shrubs too close to your foundation. Now you’ve got 10 foot Hollies growing against your siding blocking airflow, 15 foot Viburnums blocking access to your watering hose, Loropetalums growing over your foot paths, and Euonymous that have lost their touch.

Make your landscape match your home by planting shrubs you actually want to look at, varieties that grow to the size you want, and by planting them 3 to 8 feet off of your foundation.

If you hire someone to cut them down to the base, you’ll still have stumps left. Landscape shrubs are bred to be tough and vigorous, so these stumps will grow back unless you apply herbicide and then they’ll still take years to decay.

Instead, hire Just Small Trees to remove your unwanted shrubs AND their stumps. I bring my qualifications (insured, certified, & licensed) plus a few more things that allow me to offer you excellent pricing on shrub removal:

I’m strong.
I have excellent tools.
I know how builders plant shrubs.
I know how shrubs grow because of how they are planted.
I have the experience of removing hundreds of shrubs.

It may take you two hours, a broken shovel or two, and some mild swearing to remove one 8 foot Privet. Hire me and I’ll get it out in 30 minutes and dispose of it so you don’t have a pile of yard waste sitting around with stumps that decay slowly and don’t burn well.

Shrub Removal Pricing:

My regular prices apply to Aucuba, Buddleja (Butterfly Bush), Buxus (Boxwood), Callicarpa (Beautyberry), Camelia, Euonymous, Ficus (Fig), Forsythia, Ilex (Holly), Juniperus (Juniper), Lagerstroemia (Crapemyrtle), Ligustrum (Privet), Pittosporum, Rhododendron (Azalea), Rosemarinus (Rosemary), Syringa (Lilac), Ternstroemia (False Cleyera), Vaccinium (Blueberry), and Viburnum.
I have lower prices on Berberis (Barberry), Hydrangea, Loropetalum, and Nandina (Heavenly Bamboo) because of their shallow roots.
I have higher prices on Ilex cornuta (Chinese Holly), Phyllostachys (Bamboo), Pyracantha, and Rosa (Rose) because of their dense thorns or difficult stumps.
Prices for older shrubs are higher than younger ones of similar size because the stumps will be bigger, even if the shrubs have been pruned to the same height every year.

Dead Oak in Apex

The oak was dead. 45 feet tall, 11 inches wide, leaves and bark all. Before Hurricane Matthew came through NC, I received a call to take this dead oak down in its fenced-in yard. Get it down under control, not under the heavy winds and rain of Matthew.

The homeowner advised there was one corner of the yard where the tree would fit, correctly so. In addition, the yard was well gardened with flower beds and plenty of hardscape – overall a beautiful yard you don’t want to damage. Moving blankets protected the pavers, a tarp the fence.

Why was the tree dead? Lightning was one possibility as the tree seemed to suddenly die. Lightning strikes can go without visual damage for seasons, too, so when it happened was hard to say. When I dug around the base of the oak to inspect the root collar, I dug over 8 inches and still didn’t reach the roots. Suffocation may have killed this oak as tree roots need oxygen too. Construction is often the cause even though years pass before the tree suddenly dies.

I sounded the tree with a 3 lb. hammer. Dry but solid. The outer phloem was completely dead, the leaves totally dry.

I used a rope to control the oak with a rope puller, then the usual notch, back-cut, and wedges. Look at the stump and you can see two patterns on the back-cut, the obscured portion with a dull chain, and the clear portion a sharp one.

Stump - Dull vs Sharp Chain — Stump – Dull vs Sharp Chain

The tree landed right on the spot. The homeowner chose “downing” only, so I cut up and stacked the oak into a few portions and cleaned up. No damage to the hardscape and minimal damage to the tender salvias and torenias around the base of tree. The wood was dead heavy, each section 100 pounds easy. Only the top fifteen feet were completely rotten.

Have a dead oak you need down? Contact me.

Hickory in Raleigh

Earlier this year I cut down and disposed of a 32 foot hickory (Carya sp.) tree with a 12 inch base growing on the side of a customer’s house in Raleigh. Not only was this tree rubbing against the flashing and shingles of the roof, it had also grown so large the fuse box for the A/C unit could no longer be opened. I love hickories and pecans, but this one was totally out of place.

The tree was a simple removal because there was a favorable window in the yard to lay it down. I cut away branches to the roof line with a pole saw to get them out of the way. Rope installation followed and then a standard open-face notch with back-cut. I pulled down the hickory nice & easy by leaving the hinge wood a bit thicker. “Nice & easy” is the best way when dealing with hundreds of pounds of wood and many targets – house, A/C unit, and patio.

Tight control on the chainsaw was critical when finishing the downing phase by cutting the trunk away from the A/C unit. It was right on top of the fuse box with the large power cable going to the condenser only inches from the nose of the chainsaw’s bar.

After that, it was a simple job to load and clean up.

Have a tree growing into your air conditioner or the side of your house? Show me!

Mulberry in Downtown Raleigh

I picked up a tree work request recently that led me to downtown Raleigh. The pictures the owner sent me caught my eye: during a recent storm a 30 foot Mulberry (Morus rubra) trunk had split off from its larger partner and fell across the roof of his shed and the fences on three properties. Amazingly, there was minimal damage to all the structures from the initial fall. My task was to get this piece down without additional damage. The split was 8 feet off the ground and Mulberry is dense wood so this took some planning.

My overall course was to rig the trunk, suspending it off the remaining trunk with a line about 25 feet up that connected back to a monster of a Black Walnut (Juglans nigra) with a two high-strength slings and a rope puller. This way I could reduce the pressure the piece put on all the structures and have control over how the piece would drop.

I started by removing everything from the fences and cutting back so the trunk ended at the peak of the shed. A key here was to use moving blankets in between the limbs and fences before cutting to prevent additional damage. I also used multiple blankets to protect the shed roof. I reached the halfway point when the trunk was down to 10 feet long and off the shed.

At this point it was hanging by the rigging line on the right side and the split on the left. It was still over one fence, so I couldn’t just drop it. I cut off sections and lowered them instead. This prevented damage to the hard surfacing beside the shed. Then I used the rigging to pull the remaining stub up and back over the fence, took a short walk around the neighborhood to get into the other yard, and cut the last piece off.

It was one of those NC summer days when the temperature and humidity were the same number, probably 90, and I was fairly soaked at this point. But the finish line was in sight. I bucked up the logs for firewood, removed all the small limbs and leaves from the property, and raked & blew up the saw dust for a clean look.

Work sites like this are complicated with three properties, three owners, and fences in between them all. I was grateful that all involved were easy to work with. I’ve even been back since this job to do additional tree downing and disposal. One of my favorite jobs so far.

Do you have a tree split that you need taken down safely? Show me!

Sweetgum in Garner

The sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua) I often hear negative comments about. “To many seedlings.” “They drop gumballs everywhere and I step on the damn things.” I like the tree. The smell of crushed sweetgum leaves takes me back decades. Of course, don’t use it as a lawn tree unless you purchase a non-fruiting cultivar, but in the woods or in large natural areas the sweetgum is a fine tree. Good fall coloration, good lumber, and it burns well.

This customer called me and said he wanted the tree down because he didn’t like it. That’s almost always enough reason for me, unless you have a beauty of a tree. Arriving at his home you could see the tree was in poor shape with a ton of new growth mid-trunk. Once the tree was down I could see that the top was dead as well. Likely when the house was built this tree was saved. Being only 10 feet from the foundation, roots were cut and heavy equipment compacted the soil. Large branches could no longer be hydrated, died, and the tree produced new branches everywhere. This was a tree with no future.

That hardest part of this job was using a pole saw to cut out a large number of these small branches so I could get my rope high into the tree. It had a 5-10 degree lean towards the backyard and I needed it to fall towards the road. My initial rope location about 15 feet up wasn’t enough leverage, so I moved it up another 10 feet before getting started. I used a rope puller attached to a noticeably large pine tree on the edge of the property and with a proper face cut and wedges, this tree came down just right.

The customer ordered log bucking to use the wood for burning. This generally costs 20-30% of what it costs to take the tree down, whereas disposal is 75-150% of the cost. If you’ve got a tree that burns well and like to use your fireplace or firepit, get it bucked, save money, and have wood to burn.

Have a sweetgum tree you want cut down? Show me!