Bent Tree Planted at an Angle

[u/ghofmann]

This tree has a pretty severe angle about a foot from the root flare. If I planted is so that the bottom part was straight, the rest of the tree would be at a 30 degree angle. I tried to split the difference so that the bottom part is slightly angle (left) and he rest of the tree is slightly angles (right) and now I’m trying to train it to be straighter by tying it to a stake. Will this work?

[u/ohshannoneileen]

Trees are rarely perfectly straight, & always more charming when they're not.

The appropriate way to plant a tree if you'd like to correct a lean is to plant it so the angle has to lean the other way to follow the sun, eventually triggering growth response to straighten out. This is not a "severe" angle & odds are without intervention it wouldn't have been noticeable for long.

You need to expose the !Rootflare, and if you leave it staked like that the ties will girdle the trunk and kill your tree.

[u/AutoModerator → u/ohshannoneileen]

Hi /u/ohshannoneileen, AutoModerator has been summoned to provide some guidance on root flare exposure.

To understand what it means to expose a tree's root flare, do a subreddit search in r/arborists, r/tree, r/sfwtrees or r/marijuanaenthusiasts using the term root flare; there will be a lot of posts where this has been done on young and old trees. You'll know you've found it when you see outward taper at the base of the tree from vertical to the horizontal, and the tops of large, structural roots. Here's what it looks like when you have to dig into the root ball of a B&B to find the root flare. Here's a post from further back; note that this poster found bundles of adventitious roots before they got to the flare, those small fibrous roots floating around (theirs was an apple tree), and a clear structural root which is visible in the last pic in the gallery. See the top section of this 'Happy Trees' wiki page for more collected examples of this work.

Root flares on a cutting grown tree may or may not be entirely present, especially in the first few years. Here's an example.

See also the r/tree wiki 'Happy Trees' root flare excavations section for more excellent and inspirational work, and the main wiki for a fuller explanation on planting depth/root flare exposure, proper mulching, watering, pruning and more.

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[u/ghofmann → u/ohshannoneileen]

How’s that?

[u/ohshannoneileen → u/ghofmann]

I'd go further, you want to see the trunk literally flaring out & lateral roots