How NOT to Plant a Tree

 Guest Rant by Ginny Stibolt, the Transplanted Gardener

I have no idea why I subscribe to his e-newsletter, but P. Allen Smith's latest one, which linked to this article on amending soil, really irritated me. What got me going was not so much the text of the article, although I do have some qualms about that, too.  It was this photo of how he's planting a tree.  What is he doing wrong?  Let's count the ways:

1) He has not removed the burlap wrapper and has not rinsed away the clayey soil that is usually used in balled and burlapped trees.  The roots should be spread out to give them a head start for establishment of the tree.  Burlap these days may be enhanced with nylon or plastic and won't rot away, but even if it's old-fashioned burlap, it will still impede root growth.  If there is a wire cage, it will cause even more root damage.

2) He's shoveling treated soil amendments directly into the planting hole.  It's been scientifically proven that amendments added to a planting hole do more harm than good.  The roots will spread out better if you backfill with only the native soil.  The old gardeners' tale of the 50-cent tree in the 5-dollar hole is false.  You can use compost as a topdressing (well after the planting) out and beyond the drip line so that the soil where you want to roots to grow is alive with microbes.

3) This hole is too small.  The planting hole should be at least one and a half times wider than the root ball, with the native soil loosened to make it easier for roots to grow into the surrounding area, especially with clayey soil, which he's complaining about.  This helps the tree become more wind resistant and more drought tolerant.

4) This is a fairly large tree to be planting and will require a large amount of water applied over many months to become established.  I don't see any water in this photo and there was no advice about irrigation.  See my last guest rant about large trees being transplanted.

5) The bagged amendment that he's using is inoculated with mycorrhizae, which is an important fungus type that develops a symbiotic relationship with the roots of plants and helps plants increase their water uptake in exchange for sugars.  But it's widely found in soils anyway and adding more has not been shown to enhance plant growth.

6) I also have some problems with his text on amending soil.  Apparently he has been left with a clayey subsoil in some areas of the property.  He did not mention that before drastic measures are taken to restore soils that you need to test the soil to find out what it really needs.  He talks about amending the soil with humus, leaf mold, compost, manure, and mycorrhizae-laden soil with no plan for what the soil lacks.

7) After adding all those materials to the soil, he recommends running a roto-tiller through it all.  This may be the drastic step needed to bring the clay soil back to life, but he should have advised that repeatedly tilling the soil will harm the soil's eco-system and that repeated mycorrhizae inoculations are not necessary or advisable.

Okay, let me pause while I cough up a hairball…

8) You can tell that he is a gardening personality, not a "real" gardener by the way he dresses.  A real gardener would not be planting a tree wearing spotless light-colored pants, shiny leather shoes, and a sports coat.  This is a setup photo shoot to sell the amendment, which is artfully placed by the hole.

My conclusion is that he has sold out to the producers of the Pro-Mix soil additive to make yet another buck to pay for his garden home empire.  He apparently doesn't need science or need to be bothered with the best gardening practices to sell a product; any schmuck can accomplish that. The biggest losers are beginning gardeners who think he's an expert gardener and who then follow his lousy advice and obtain poor results in their own gardening attempts.

Ginny Stibolt is the author of Sustainable Gardening for Florida.  Her sources for this post are below the jump.

University of Florida professor Ed Gilman has a great website with everything you need to know about woody plants. http://hort.ifas.ufl.edu/woody Dr. Gilman has done extensive studies on what actually happens to roots when they've been treated differently and he has shown over and over again that amendments in the planting hole are not necessary and may also cause roots to circle the area rather than stretch out into the surrounding soil: http://hort.ifas.ufl.edu/woody/amendments.shtml

His 2001 study: "Effect of nursery production method, irrigation, and inoculation with mycorrhizae-forming fungi on establishment of Quercus virginiana" http://hort.ifas.ufl.edu/pubs/abstracts/efg/efg0101.shtmhttp://www.informedgardener.com/: The Myth of Collapsing Root Balls: ( http://www.puyallup.wsu.edu/~Linda Chalker-Scott/Horticultural Myths_files/Myths/B&B root ball.pdf)“Balled and burlapped root balls must be left intact during transplanting”showed that there was no discernable effect from mycorrhizae inoculations on newly planted Southern live oak trees.

There are several articles on Linda Chalker-Scott's Informed Gardener website,

• The Myth of Fragile Roots:(http://www.puyallup.wsu.edu/~Linda Chalker-Scott/Horticultural Myths_files/Myths/Fragile roots.pdf) “You shouldn’t disturb the rootball when transplanting trees and shrubs”
• The Myth of Soil Amendments: (http://www.puyallup.wsu.edu/~Linda Chalker-Scott/Horticultural Myths_files/Myths/Amendments.pdf) "When transplanting trees or shrubs into landscapes, amend the backfill soil with organic matter." http://www.mastergardeneronline.com/preview/index.php?issue=0109 Master Gardener Magazine: Winter 2009 http://hort.ifas.ufl.edu/woody/mycorrhizae.shtml

Comments

[sarahammocks]

Ha! Wonderfully cranky post! I think P Smith's most important credential is that luxuriant blond hair that flops over his face a la Martha Stewart as he wields that shiny new shovel ("is this how you hold it?")

[frank@nycgarden]

Its easier to sell gardening if your clothes are clean. This is the standard for "personality" gardeners- men and women. Obviously intended for non-gardeners, new gardeners.

No matter, he's always bugged me.

[commonweeder]

The scary thing about Smith is how popular he is and the impact he has on new gardeners. Most experienced gardeners will notice all those errors - as well as intuiting that anyone dressed like that doesn't really garden at all.

[Craig @ Cornell]

There's a lot of good tree planting information -- particularly for folks in the Northeast -- on our Urban Horticulture Institute website: http://www.hort.cornell.edu/uhi/

There's a woody plant database for matching ornamental trees with the site, information on bare root planting and its advantages, deciduous woody groundcovers, videos and more.

[Kathleen H]

Great Rant! Amen!

[Judybusy]

Superb rant! I once got one of his books as a give-away, and it was REALLY worthless, with lots of pictures without captions naming the flowers. I also noticed his face was in a lot of the photos....always a bad sign!

[Dog Island Farm]

Wow! I think I'm the only person that's never heard of this guy! And for that I am thankful. Thanks for setting the record straight about planting trees.

[vicki]

Great Rant. Hopefully, lots and lots of beginning gardeners read GardenRant--for lots of reasons--but this post is one of the most important for those who are wondering who they should listen to/read.

[sara]

Thank you!!! This guy bugs the heck out of me and it is very unfortunate that he has such a cult of personality around his name which dwarfs his lack of hands-on experience.

I can't watch Victory Garden anymore for the same reason. I learned *so* much from Bob Thompson and Roger Swain. But now it's about "Hey, let's bend this rebar and make a nifty-o planter for a bougainvillea because we saw it at a botanical garden..." or "Today we're going to tour a place where they keep things perfectly groomed but we won't really teach you anything about keeping things perfectly groomed..." I get better advice and ideas from the Roger on Ask This Old House, actually.

Thanks for ranting, Ginny. I'm looking at planting some olive trees this year and will be checking out the links you've shared.

[Mr. McGregor's Daughter]

LOL - the only thing missing is the mulch volcano, but maybe he just hadn't gotten that far yet.

[Chiot's Run]

Kudos to you for noticing the commercializatin of this. I feel this way about everything - and I mean everything. Once you start deconstructing things this way you just can't read magazines any more. They're all ruined!

An BTW, whatever happened to finding plants that actually do well in your native soil instead of buying plants not suited to you natural conditions and fighting them to get the plants to grow.

I have clay soil, so I stick to tried and true plants and trees and do well in clay soil. I have tons of liatris and echinacia which thrive in my conditions, not tilling and spending tons on amendments. A little compost and leaf mold every year and they reward me with beauty and native insects all summer long.

[Benjamin]

I've only ever watched him on tv once I ran out of the house ripping my clothes off, screaming through the streets at the insanity. Amen to you, sister, on every freaking point! (Though a few times I wore nice shoes and pants in the garden because I'd just come home from work and couldn't wait to get outside.)

[Dorothy Borders]

Who?

[Tibs]

Amen to all the above comments. I have to confess that I think the trees I planted in my first years of gardening survived in spite of me.

[Cindy P]

Ginny

WONDERFUL! Now if we could get your rant the publicity that old P Allen gets think how much better off the world would be.

Thank you for voicing this so eloquently.

[Bladerunner]

I've tried to watch his show a couple of times (I was home from work, sick, and couldn't be bothered to get up off the couch). I 'bout horked watching the pretty boy in the garden. I also found his voice very difficult to listen to, but I suspect that's a 'me' thing. While I don't pull on my dirt-stained bib overalls to plant my front yard crops, I still think I'll stick with folks who don't get dressed up to garden.

[Town Mouse]

Not owning a TV, I've never heard of this guy either.

Great rant! I'm glad someone is speaking up!

[PlantingOaks]

I think I would rather watch reality tv than his garden show, which is a sad, sad commentary. It's worse than unwatchable, as seeing it in the schedule taunts me with the fact that this is what I'm supposed to like.

Not only is there the incompetence you've mentioned, the lack of any practical advice, or factual information...but his foppish personality is just grating, and the whole thing is focused so closely on his own little world of preferences.

And I hate his dumb pleated pants.

[Linda]

I kind of like him, though I don't really listen to any of his garden advice. I think most folks watch for the general feel and pretty pictures.
Same for his books. They are coffee table books not garden advice books. But maybe someone will get interested in gardening as a result and then find places like this blog.

[donna]

We have a local gardening show I enjoy that's really educational. But the national ones I don't even bother watching anymore. Just crap, really.

[Loree / danger garden]

Great rant! And I join the others who say they've never heard of him.

[Rachel]

Luckily, my only experience with P Allen Smith was a free book I got through some publicity junket. What a waste of time!
But I would disagree about discounting mycorrhizal innoculants altogether; I've done a lot of research on them in the past, and as with any living thing, results vary based on plant species, fungal species, fertilization levels, etc.

[John]

Deep down I hope that the truth is P has simply sold his soul to the devil and that "they" are telling him what to say, what to wear while saying it and which products to promote and that none of this is really his idea or his advice... and in a way I am jealous, wishing someone would offer me money for my soul. I can be your puppet for cheap.

[Sue]

Great rant, I love it! We don't know this fellow in Oz, but there are similar types on the TV here for sure! My pet peeve at the moment is an ad on the TV where they are selling insurance but planting a tree into a hole the exact size of the pot, and the "gardeners" have to jiggle the root ball into the hole as it is such a tight fit. It makes me want to scream every time I see it!

[Michelle D.]

Don't have a tv so can't comment on his clothing attire , but if you think it is that relevant it must be important to the subject.

In regards to removing the clay around a B+B, we have found that more damage is done by breaking off portions of the roots so we keep the root ball intact.
The burlap is always removed once in the hole or is ripped into decomposing size shreds.

If you have ever planted in a new development you will have found that there is no native soil. It has all been scraped away. So hence, a lot of comprehensive amendment is required when planting a new garden.
You can't expect everyone to have nicely undisturbed naturally occurring native soil.
This may have been the case in this TV stars situation.
Who knows, did you ask him ?