Sevy Bialke

@Becky

Thanks Becky! It's actually been rather cold here. We had a two week stretch with the lows in the 30's. I moved the mulch and dug down about a foot and the soil is is very dark and lightly moist. I water the grass twice-a-day lightly, i.e. maybe 5 minutes at a time. I now doubt that it's a dehydration issue so I'll back off on the watering and hope the upcoming warmer weather will help.

Side note - when I first purchased it, the lady at Gertens told me to water once day. But when I stopped in yesterday with my concern, they mirrored your comment about watering thoroughly once a week by letting the hose run for 20-30 minutes.

Thanks again!
Sevy

I planted an Apollo Sugar Maple in St. Paul, MN about 4 weeks ago. There used to be a Black Walnut exactly where I planted it. To combat the juglone, I completely dug the roots out and hauled away about 4.5 yards of dirt (10' diameter hole and about 2' deep) and brought in 5 yards of fresh top soil from Gertens. I lightly teased the roots, used root growth, and have been watering regularly.

When I planted the tree, it was dormant with no green visible. You can see the leaves (attached picture) have come out nicely which has given me a lot of hope. However they are very droopy, which is making me nervous. Am I over watering it (I lightly water twice a day for the grass seed's sake)? Did I not go deep enough to replace the dirt (I completely dug underneath the Black Walnut stump so there were no roots left below)? Am I just overly nervous and it's doing fine?

Any help and guidance would be greatly appreciated! Even if that's redirecting me to a more appropriate resource. I've done a fair amount of web digging with no luck. I'm much more likely to drop a big tree and cut and split it for firewood with fair efficiency so this planting-a-new-one is new business to me...

Thanks in advance,
Sevy