Planting trees

Disclaimer: Our grass looks absolutely terrible! We've hardly gotten any rain the past few weeks and it's going dormant already. We inherited a really awful lawn when we bought the house and it'll probably take us a few years to whip it into shape. We plan to aerate and overseed this fall.

Moving onto the trees. Our house had no landscaping - zero zilch nada. The yard looked lifeless so we've been planting perennials like crazy this spring.

I know you're not supposed to plant trees in the summer, but Home Depot had their trees marked 75% off and I just couldn't pass it up (you know me)! We bought three trees and spent about $40 total. We saved $110 since they were on sale!

I lost one of the tags, but it was another crabapple.

We bought these tree rings from Home Depot to use instead of mulch. They're $9.97 each. Make sure they're even with the ground and then you can mow right over them. There is a darker brown color on the other side which we used. Water will penetrate through them and they should keep weeds at bay.

We placed the tree rings where we wanted the trees and then spray painted around them so we knew where to dig the holes.

Before digging any holes, find out where your utility lines are. They will come out for free and spray paint / put flags in the places you need to avoid. Click here for a website with more info on this process.

This Old House has never steered us wrong so check out this video on how to plant a tree. Here are their recommended steps:

1. Measure width of tree’s root ball; multiply times three to calculate tree-hole diameter.
2. Mark the tree-hole diameter onto the ground with line-marking spray paint.
3. Use shovel to remove grass from marked circle; place grass on tarp and add to compost.
4. Measure height of root ball up to the root flare.
5. Dig hole depth to equal height to root flare.
6. Stretch taut string across hole and measure down to check hole depth.
7. Roll the tree into the hole.
8. Cut twine from branches.
9. Rotate tree with best side facing the street.
10. Use bolt cutters to remove the wire basket from the root ball.
11. Pull the burlap away from the root ball.
12. Add superphosphate and starter fertilizer to the hole.
13. Back fill around root ball with excavated topsoil.
14. Force garden hose deep into hole and fill hole with water.
15. Water tree every day for the first week, twice a week for the second week, and then once a week every week until the ground freezes.

The bucket contains compost and we used the blue tarp to put the dug up dirt on. Makes it much easier to shovel it back into the hole once the tree is in.

This crabapple is supposed to bloom pink flowers in the spring.

This crabapple blooms white flowers in the spring and turns red in the fall. Might be a while before it's big enough to do this though :(

This is the flowering Red Pear 'Redspire'. It should be really pretty in the fall and is supposed to be a good shade tree so we put it in our backyard by our deck.

Next year we want to landscape all around the back of the house and under the deck. I planted some cannas there in the meantime.

It's important to water the trees a lot especially the first few weeks. The only bad thing about trees is that they grow sooo slow!