Massacred Malus

Alright I admit it I am a girly girl who often cares more about how pretty my garden looks than I am concerned with the study of plants. So when weeks turned into months this past winter and trun my husband still hadn’t found time to help me transplant my nearly twenty year old dwarf Malus - Crabapple to a location in my front entry garden where it could be a shining star, I pulled a Tom Sawyer on a girl friend and together we first butchered this dwarf tree’s root system then dragged it to its new location. A few weeks later it flowered heavily without a hitch followed by the appearance of apples and leaves, but the apples remained the size of a pin head and the leaves were dwarfed as well. After a few weeks of this frozen growth new leaves of normal size have sparsely begun to appear. The tree has irrigation and good light conditions but I feel as though I need to encourage and support new root growth so it survives the winter of 08/09. Would you recommend a heavy/light/or none at all fertilizing and is there any other element I should add to the soil to promote new root growth? At nearly twenty years old is this Malus considered old, how long do they typically live? kt

close up

Just use a liquid root stimulator when planting or if it is already planted go ahead and water the stimulator in at the edge of the transplanted root ball. One or two applications only.Should be enough, then just keep the tree watered twice a week till fall if your weather is on the dry side.We just had the wettest June on Record.And its not over(june) yet.


Kyle

Know what's in the liquid root stimulator, too.

Depending on your "girliness", applying things regularly over a period of time may or may not fit your schedule. In these types of conditions, I usually apply a timed-release granular fertilizer once at planting time, geared to the length of the growing season (3 months; 6 months; 9 months; etc.) and put down mulch over it and walk away. Water, of course, as necessary. This only provides N-P-K; if you want mycorrhizal oomph or any other alchemy, see Eclipse's recommendations or the back of one of the horticultural periodicals.

Twenty years old is pretty hefty in Malus years (like 80 Quercus years, or 250 people years). You should've taken pictures of your "whitewash" episode, so we could all groan and opine over the effort. How much root system did you actually get...

The plant would flower and leaf out with respect to what it had "set" last fall. After you reduced the root system, that affects the current season's behavior. It seems your crabapple is none too happy with its twist of fate. So be it. The fert will give it some help, but it is going to take time to recover what you left behind.

With no more info in hand...your crabapple would have liked to you to have brought along 10-12 inches (25-30 cm) of diameter of root system for each inch (2.5 cm) of trunk diameter.

I can hear groans.

I am assuming you have pretty sandy soil, so getting roots would not have been as difficult as keeping a root ball together. More water under the bridge, though. The good thing is that there shouldn't be much barrier to free re-rooting of your crabapple. Making clean cuts at each end of a root helps a whole lot in re-establishment, too. Notes for next time.

One last thing: the less energy the plant spends on other things, the more it can put into regrowing roots. You might think about removing as much of the forming fruit as you can tolerate. These resources can then be steered into new foliage, which drives production of the resources for new root growth.

Hey! The pics loaded finally. It doesn't really look that bad from here in the Ohio River valley. Maybe 4" caliper? If you got 48" wide worth of roots, that poor devil has a shot.

VV,
Thanks for the great information and I am now wondering how large your ears must be to have been able to hear my groans all the way down in blue grass country. Your comment that making clean cuts at the end of each root helps a whole lot in re-establishment was interesting; as I rarely can keep a root ball together trimming up roots should be no problem at all. I am guessing that the theory behind this is similar to the practice of trimming broken branches?
“You should've taken pictures of your "whitewash" episode, so we could all groan and opine over the effort.” Happy to oblige this fall when I move a Styrax japonicas I’ll post a thread on how not to transplant a shrub but I am guessing the bloody massacre will be rated XXX for violence. Other than pre-soaking the soil any advise on keeping a root ball intact in sandy soil?
In terms of fertilizer I have turned a page and am trying to use only organic methods so I gave old crabby some Moo Doo with an organic fertilizer 5-4-5. When I started applying around the root base I did realize that I was lacking an equation for how much to apply.
Removing the fruit makes a lot of sense and the tree seems to be trying to do this as well, in each cluster of apples one out of six has turned red and dropped off. I’ll be sure to help the old guy out and remove the rest of them I suppose it’s the least I can do.
If you got 48" wide worth of roots, that poor devil has a shot.
Hmmmm....lets see I am 4'11 tall x 4' roots , dragged over 400 ft = not likely. Poor old crabby I suppose I should begin writing his obit. Thanks for the great info. kt

I've been using this with decent results, but there is no way of telling without full blown trials with controls how much of the success was because of the product. Espoma "Bio-tone Starter Plus" All natural Plant Food with mycorrhizae and beneficial bacteria. It's a 4-3-3 formulation with 4%calcium, 0.6% water soluable magnesium and 2% sulfur. Feather meal, dehydrated manure, bone meal, alfalfa meal, greensand, humates, crab meal, cocoa meal and sulfate of potash magnesia.

The nitrogen is 0.6% water soluble and 3.4% water insoluble. The label has an extensive list of the bacteria and mycorrhizae contents. Lets just say - A Whole Bunch - of that.

snapple
Intersting that you have been playing around with "Bio-tone Starter Plus" as I had a recent conversation with a friend regarding Espoma's latest lines of organic/beneficial products and they were pretty surprised by this companies willingness to include some important beneficial microbes. This old crabby apple was transplanted probably a month ago, am I too late to apply? Thanks for your recipe I will certainly use it with my next transplant. kt

No. I think you could apply now. Another two weeks would be too late in my opinion. But isn't the MooDoo 5-4-5, with which I'm not familiar, still supplying nutrients? The two combined might be more than old crabby could handle. It's very hard to burn with organic slow release fertilizers but there is still a possibility of pushing too much green growth at the wrong time. You be da judge!