I've read conflicting information about collecting deciduous trees - some are saying to treat them as gently as possible, others are saying that you can basically chop it down to a trunk. Being as I'm about to start on collecting unwanted landscaping plants (with permission, of course!), what are your suggestions?
I'll have to do the work in a matter of hours; I won't be able to turn it into a prolonged project, because these folks want these plants gone and I doubt they'll look kindly on turning what was supposed to be something quick and easy into an ordeal. Most of these plants are more or less unidentified as I haven't been out to the properties yet. I'm mainly in it for the practice (and a rose bush, what with falling ice having killed my wife's), but if someone has an unexpectedly good piece of urban-dori tucked away I don't want to kill it with an easily corrected mistake. Right now, I'm planning on lifting them with as much of the intact root as practical, tucking them into garbage bags to take home, and then cleaning them off to replace the dirt with something better once I get home. It's still second winter here and nothing has budded out yet, which means that evaporative losses will be minimized, so I think that I can get away with not meticulously extracting every fine root from the planting site. I'm also going to be grabbing some bags of topsoil from Home Depot to fill the holes back in, 'cause it's never a bad idea to not be a dick.
I'll have to do the work in a matter of hours; I won't be able to turn it into a prolonged project, because these folks want these plants gone and I doubt they'll look kindly on turning what was supposed to be something quick and easy into an ordeal. Most of these plants are more or less unidentified as I haven't been out to the properties yet. I'm mainly in it for the practice (and a rose bush, what with falling ice having killed my wife's), but if someone has an unexpectedly good piece of urban-dori tucked away I don't want to kill it with an easily corrected mistake. Right now, I'm planning on lifting them with as much of the intact root as practical, tucking them into garbage bags to take home, and then cleaning them off to replace the dirt with something better once I get home. It's still second winter here and nothing has budded out yet, which means that evaporative losses will be minimized, so I think that I can get away with not meticulously extracting every fine root from the planting site. I'm also going to be grabbing some bags of topsoil from Home Depot to fill the holes back in, 'cause it's never a bad idea to not be a dick.