Flowering Crabapple - Malus Prairifire Red

We have one in our front yard that did well this year, surviving the winter, and it is May and it's already blossoming. Pretty maroon blossoms. Beautiful. My husband wished that he had purchased more than just the one, but, he hadn't.

I was at Fleet Farm and their selections of trees were apparently on sale. There was a beautiful blooming tree just like ours, and I purchased it. We put it in the back yard in between two stumps of ash trees that my hubby removed this spring. Those trees were interfering with the Dish network signal.

I decided that when I dug the dirt, I would collect it on a plastic contractor bag, so I could easily pull the dirt to where I needed to pull it back into the hole. The extra grass I dug off the top of the hole, I placed in a spot where grass was recently disrupted, and I repaired the hole with my grass chunks.

First I started removing the top grass with a potato fork. I went in a circle shape and loosened the grassy top by poking the fork in, and pressing sideways and dislodging it from the rest of the dirt. I repeated the process until I had a complete circle that was a little bigger than my root ball.

Now that the tree is in the hole, dirt needs to be placed in between the root ball and the earth. Fill it in. Gently. Let the castings naturally fill the hole. Move the dirt with your gloved hand. Pull the plastic bag around the tree.

I decided that the crown, or bump needed to stick out of the ground, so I placed the plastic tube around the crown, then proceeded to scoop dirt around the tree. It will settle as it rains, but for now, it's protected.

Perhaps leave the crown uncovered. I don't know what a crown does, but I think it needs to be above the soil.