Daily Home Renovation Tips

In Part 22, we started the planting of our two fall additions, namely the Fireglow Japanese Maple and the pair of Sedum Autumn Fire perennials.

However, after digging and preparing the hole to receive the Japanese Maple water remained at the bottom.

 Here is why. Where we live there is a layer of clay about 3 feet beneath the soil. It’s everywhere. So, if you need to dig a hole for planting sufficiently deep that you hit the layer of clay, you should dig (at least this is what I do) another 6 inches or so to mix the clay with the triple mix.

Not only does this give an expanded area for the tree’s vertical roots to go but also prevents water from collecting and causing the new roots to rot. At least that’s my theory.

So, having done that, the tree was planted and covered with the garden soil. Are we done?

 Nope. We still have to put the supporting stake in the ground. How far should you place the stake? Well, to me it should go down all the way down into the bottom of the hole. So, that is what I did.

As you can see we were provided with very nice bamboo stakes from the garden center. The taller bamboo stake in the picture above is to simply illustrate how far down the lower stake has been placed.

Once this was done and the tree tied not once but twice to the stake, I then proceeded to plant the two Sedum perennial plants, one on either side of the Maple tree.

Our plan is in a few weeks to plant a collection of Tulip in front of the tree in between the Sedum plants. More on that later.

Tomorrow we’ll talk about what we did to the right side of our front garden in our fall planting efforts.

To continue to the next article in this series, simply select his link to Part 24.