Finally figured out why my oak trees kept dying after I planted them

For years I planted oaks in the fall and lost almost half of them by spring. Turns out I was planting them too deep, the root flare was always buried. A guy from the county extension in Des Moines pointed it out on a job last March, and I've been checking every tree since. Now I expose the flare and dig the hole wider instead of deeper, and my survival rate is way up. Anyone else have a planting habit they had to unlearn the hard way?

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sam_wood6024d ago

Wait, the county extension guy just spotted it from a job? That's wild. Fifteen years of planting and nobody ever mentioned the root flare thing to me. I bet I've killed a ton of trees that way too.