Keep Your Tree Healthy in the Heat
It’s been a long, dry spring and winter, but we all know the real heat begins after school is out for the summer. Your newly transplanted tree is growing through the process of photosynthesis. At its most basic – this scientific process that turns the energy from the sun into food for plants requires three elements:
- The Aforementioned Sunlight
- Carbon Dioxide*
- Water
Out of these three ingredients, tree owners can only help their trees with one part of the recipe: water.
In the first two to three years after your new tree has been transplanted, it requires 10-15 gallons of water per week during the dry periods of summer. 10-15 gallons is easy to quantify, a lot harder to estimate when you’re outside with a hose.
If neither hose nor bucket works for your life, try an ooze tube – Now Only $18
To ensure the water makes its way down to the tree’s roots, you want to do a deep, through soaking when you water.
You can help keep your tree hydrated by mulching around tree – Follow the rules of 3:
- Mulch should be applied in a 3 inch layer
- Apply the mulch in a 3 foot circle
- Keep mulch 3 inches away from the tree trunk on all sides.
Portlanders – Free mulch available at the FoT World Campus 3117 NE Martin Luther King Blvd. Bring your own bucket or bag for the mulch.
Help your tree thrive and stay healthy. Visit our website for more tree care tips.
*CO2, Concerned people worry about growing levels of this gas in the atmosphere. Carbon Dioxide is vital to life and as a bonus, it is wonderfully sequestered in trees where it’s stored as the tree grows, remains if a tree is felled and remains in part, if a tree is re-purposed as wood. Yet another reason to like trees.