Tag: soil restoration

Boy it has been a busy month! It felt like the winter would never end so I could plant my trees. But here we are and the activities over the last few weeks have been crazy!!

I originally wanted to take you through the process of planting as we went along, but alas that did not happen. So, let’s rewind a couple of weeks and start from the beginning………

If you have been following my previous posts, we left off after drilling holes and adding lime to the soil as we filled them back in. After a few good rains we noticed that the soil within the holes had settled and we needed to add a bit more to bring it back to the top. We had some nice black dirt piled up from when we cleared the land, so we put this to good use.

So now we are ready to plant!

When we pre-drilled and filled our holes in previously, we planted a flag in the center of each one. This helped greatly in making sure we were planting in the actual hole. These are terribly hard to find later if you don’t!

Using either a hand rake or small shovel, we dug holes about 6 inches down and quite a bit larger than the trees we planted.

Next we added no more than 1/2 tsp of dry water crystals. This is very important due to the properties of the crystals.

I like to mix them into the dirt a bit prior to adding my tree, just to make sure you don’t end up with a bunch of crystals all together. The picture to the right shows them prior to mixing them into the soil.

The water crystals are added to help hold water near the roots of the plant so it doesn’t dry out so quickly during our hot Alabama summers.

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Lastly, we topped everything with our 18 x 18 pre-cut weed mats and secured them with rocks or landscape staples.

Once we had a routine established and a designated job for everyone, we were ready to plant our 750 baby Paulwonia trees. YES, you read that right. Over a 3 day period we planted 750 trees. This is definitely a labor of love and I can’t wait to update you on how well they are growing.

If you missed the previous blog posts, feel free to go back and start at the bottom of the page to get started.

The Empress Splendor tree has so many eco friendly qualities that I’m going to go for the obvious and start with the foundation. As many of us know, the type of soil you are working with is key to how well your plants will grow.

In the past the southern states were most widely known for growing cotton. One of the many problems with growing cotton is the negative effect it has on the soil. After only a few years the ground becomes almost toxic and unable to grow any other crops. Because of this toxicity many plantations have been left barren and mother nature has been slowly trying to repair the damage ever since. This is where the Empress tree comes in. They are natural lovers and producers of nitrogen. That means they continue to enrich the soil as the leaves break down each winter, putting back nutrients the soil needs to become brown an rich again. It also gives the tree the nitrogen it needs to thrive eliminating the need for commercial fertilizers.

The Empress is also a naturally fire resistant plant. While the trees are growing, they are considered a ‘wet wood’. This simply means that the plant naturally maintains internal stores of water. It is also hollow in the middle which acts as a waterway for the entire plant to help sustain it’s amazing growth. Because of all this water, it has the ability to limit or resist the spread of wildfires, even in dry conditions.

If you just have to know more and can’t wait for my next post, feel free to visit my site at Martens Empress Enterprises.