 We are talking about trees here. Spring is a busy time for plant trees, and tonight we have extension forester Joe Zalesnick. He's going to tell us about how we can get our trees off to a healthy start. Joe, welcome to the forum. OK. The mute button is on. It's not mute. OK, we're live. All right, we're live. Finally, very good. All right, thank you, Tom, for the introduction. Thank you, everybody, for hearing Fargo, as well as around the state. Glad you could join us tonight. My name is Joe Zalesnick. I'm an extension forester here at NDSU. And we're getting to my favorite time of the year. I love spring. I love planting trees. And it's funny. The best day to plant a tree in the spring is when it's about 50 degrees of raining and muddy. It's perfect for trees. And people look at me strange. No, it's not. That's the best time. One of the first concepts we always talk about is the right tree for the right place. This is a really important issue when planting trees. I look at these elm trees, big elm trees, under the power line. I think this is not the right tree for the right place. Now that being said, there are some trees in the foreground here that are newly planted under those power lines. And those are most likely something like a crab apple, much smaller, shorter tree. That is actually appropriate under a power line. So a right tree for the right place. And in terms of a right tree for the right place, these are some of the things we look at. We look at distance to buildings. I think I still have that example in here. I'll hike to overhead lines, fire hydrants. There are certain setbacks that certain communities have of how close you can be to a fire hydrant. Distance the corner. Make sure that you're far enough away from the corner on the intersection so people can see around the intersection. Here's one that is the wrong tree in the wrong place. One of nature planted this tree. It was now planted by a person. This was a Siberian elm. And it was right next to the house. I was renting this place years ago. And I dug it up. And here's what I found. At about 30 inches deep, it was still 1 to 2 inches in diameter. The root system was. It was cracking the block on the foundation. And two years later it started sprouting back really good. So this is really a problem. Just digging it out wasn't the right thing or wasn't enough to get rid of it. So you might have to use a herbicide at this point. But these are examples of the wrong tree in the wrong place. We'll plant the right tree in the right place. Let's talk about planting stock. What type of planting stock do you like? And I'm actually going to pick on Kathy here in Fargo since she already presented. And I will give her an answer to you all. Kathy, of these types of planting stock, which do you prefer and why? They are good because they're good to start. Unfettered, they're ready to go, and they generally do quite well. OK, Scott, we're going to hear that. People on the stage, OK. These birds are better right. The roots are unfettered. They're ready to go. You can plant them. You can spread them out. And you can really occupy a site pretty fast with those better right. Let's talk about each one of these really quickly and talk about some of the advantages and disadvantages. Planting stock is just that. The roots are better. The advantage of this is, well, it's a lot lighter when there's no soil. Usually, it's a little bit less expensive to plant or to buy. You can put those roots where they want to go. You're not planting them sometimes like in a narrow slit. You could do that, but you can spread them out as need be. Disadvantage is these have to be dormant when you're planting them. You can't plant them once they've leafed out. There's one slight exception, but we won't get caught up in that exception. We'll leave it at that. I love Barrett because they're so much easier to plant, they're lighter. They're easier to move around. The number one thing, though, keep the roots moist. Keep the roots moist, keep the roots moist when they're being planted and before they're being planted. Don't want those roots to dry out. Balls and burlap stock is just that. It's ball, the root ball is dug up with the soil intact. It's wrapped. Sometimes there's a metal cage, wire cage around it. Sometimes there's not. And the burlap is wrapped around there to kind of hold everything together, hold the moisture in. It's got some great advantages. If you can plant this once the tree is leafed out, you can dig these once the tree is leafed out. That's definitely a big advantage. Disadvantages, it's heavy with all that soil, and you have to keep the roots moist. In this example here, I do think that root ball is a little small for a tree that size. I would prefer a bigger root ball. That being said, you have to make sure that you keep as much of the root system as possible and take the burlap off. This is not a golf ball tree. Believe it or not, it's an oak tree. But here's what can happen. And actually, this tree didn't turn out so bad. You could see where the burlap has restricted those roots from growing to some extent. It didn't do quite the damage that it could have done, although you can see it did restrict the stem from growing there. So take the burlap off. We always thought, oh, it's burlap. It's a natural fiber. It's just going to break down. And yeah, in the long, long run, it will. But in the lifespan of that tree, or depending on the growth rate of the tree, it's really not going to break down. Container ice, or container grown. You'll see that sometimes. They were grown in the container. They've been in the container for at least one year. We'll come back to that. Yeah, more than one growing season. Again, these can be planted when they've already leafed out. So you don't have to. You're not stuck just in really early season like you are for bear root trees. Disadvantages sometimes, if they've been in the pot too long, the roots can start circling around that pot. And you can get a lot of stem-grittling roots that are being formed. And we'll talk about that a little more. And pot of trees, you'll see the picture has not changed. Little trick of the camera. OK. Pot of trees are simply bear root of trees that didn't sell in the spring. Or maybe they weren't supposed to sell. But they are bear root in the spring. And they're put in the pot. And they're growing in that pot for one growing season or less. That's a pot of tree. I love these. We planted one for my mother-in-law years ago. It did great. Same advantages, disadvantages, as containerized. Even in just a year or less, sometimes those roots can expand out to the side of the pot and start spinning around. So you've got to be careful of that when you open up the pot, when you cut out the pot, and start to look at that root ball. And of course, tree spades, tree movers. These things are really great. Instant shade, just like that. And yes, trees are expensive when you move them with a tree planter. There are some tricks that have to be a trick. There are tools of thumb, I don't know, that have to be followed when using tree spades. Generally, we recommend the diameter of the tree spade has got to be at least 10 times the diameter of the stem. You have a 4-inch tree. Those 6 inches above the ground, if you have a 4-inch diameter tree, you have to have at least a 40-inch spade. That's a minimum. When you go below that, chances are that the tree is going to die. OK. The other thing with tree spades is, and I help the tree companies that are moving these trees know of this, but when the trees are just leafed out, or if it's a conifer and the needles are elongating, the shoots are elongating, they're really kind of tender, running it down the freeway at 60 miles an hour on a really hot day does not help the tree much. It's a really bad idea. And that's how we get some divac sometimes. Usually, tree movers know this, but sometimes people really want this tree now. And I would just say, be patient and wait for the right time for the tree. OK. What's the number one rule? Keep the roots moist during planting. And before and during and after. We'll talk about that. And then you've got to dig a hole. OK. And PhD, trust me on this. Dig a hole. Dig a good hole. All right. You got to keep the root collar at ground level. What is that? What's the root collar? The root collar is that point of the stem where it really starts to transition to become what? Where you get more of a flare along the side of the stem and it really becomes more horizontal. Is it a specific point that it's more of a zone? There's a little bit of give and take here. If you're an inch high and inch low, that's OK. It's when you're starting to be two inches too high, three inches too high, or low, that we start to run into problems. OK, we're adjusting the mic here. Mic too loud. Tone it down. OK. Be louder. OK. So this is the root collar. And this diagram, the root collar is at about ground line. And in this example, the hole they dug, they kind of mounted it up in the middle to make sure that the stem was at the right height. For bald and burlap, you might want to actually plant it just a touch high, because actually there's usually a little bit of settling later. It's not perfect. There's a little bit of give and take here. But plant it about ground level. OK. In this example, you see there's a little swollen area. Is that the root collar? No. That is called the graft union. That's where the top, the one that we wanted was grafted onto a rootstock, grafted onto a bottom that is providing the rootstock. This example is a maple. But we most often see this as infertories. Most often I see it as infertories, especially apples. Crab apple, certain crab apples make a great hardy, cold hardy rootstock. And sometimes they provide other things. And we want that top that is the fireside, the hum crisp, the zest star, whatever. And so we see this. That is not the root collar. We want that to be above ground. Years ago, they used to say, oh, that's where you plant it. And that causes some problems. Not all trees will have a graft union. I got ahead of myself there, sorry. Keep the graft union above the soil line, plant the root collar at the soil line. It's a sugar maple, I think. Here's an example of what happens when you don't plant them properly. These are Norway maples, south side of NDSU campus, planted years ago. And they hardly grew. And they hardly grew. Well, that's why they hardly grew. The root collar was about six inches too deep. We blew this out with an air spade. And you can see the soil of the line on the stem. That is the planting depth. That brown line where it goes from brown to gray. And then where you see the change in bark texture, that's where the tree was grafted onto a different rootstock. So the root collar was actually about three inches below the graft union. And here's an example from Pettinger, the Japanese tree Why is it not growing well? There's a variety of things. The soil here wasn't the best. But there's your little trowel claw tool. And that's what, six inches down. OK, we're finally getting to the root collar. We dug that out and hopefully gave that tree a little extra better chance at growing. And she wasn't too happy. She was very sad. The next picture I can't actually show in public, where she really expressed her displeasure. OK, the width of the planting wall. Try to dig it wider, two to three times wider than the root wall. And the reason is we're trying, just like your garden, we're trying to loosen up the soil to make it a good environment for trees to send out new roots. Some people often ask, well, should we just put a different soil in there if it's too heavy or too light? And I say, no, because that is where the tree is. That's where the tree is stuck. It can't get up and move to a better soil. It's got to adjust to that environment. You can loosen it up, but that's about it. If you have to do a lot of things, put in a lot of time, energy, and money into changing the environment to get a tree to grow there, maybe you shouldn't plant a tree there. OK, I have to tough on trees. Plant it and let it survive there on its own or not. If it dies, plant another one. If it dies, plant something else. So I'm a little harsh that way. Heavy clay soils, well, we'll try to keep the sides of that hole a little more vertical. We don't want them sloping down towards the tree because we don't want to have like sometimes they call it the teacup effect. That's one of the ways we get a teacup effect, where the water would run down and pool right at the bottom of the tree. We don't want to drown the tree. This is an issue of stem-girling roots, circling roots, that's been around for several years. And this is something that was identified probably 20 or more years ago. It was a great big study by Gary Johnson at the University of Minnesota. And it was really a great study. A big storm went through, and a lot of linen trees were blown over, and he analyzed them. And these were big linen trees. These were 25, 30 years old. And 80% or more of those linen trees that had fallen over had stem-girling roots. The roots had grown around the stem. The stem had grown out to the roots. And basically, the roots choked off the stem. Caused structural weakness there. Storm came through, put the trees over. And we often don't see the problem till 10, 15, 20 years later, even more. Especially a problem with potted or container-grown trees. And we'll talk about how to avoid that. This is some examples. University of Minnesota, some Norway Naples. Again, what's a Norway Naples? I don't know. Interesting tree species. So-so here, not so great. That's OK. We'll talk. OK. Stem-girling roots. Here's some examples that they had to cut out these roots. And there's some big, big roots they cut out. And the question I've had is, well, what's it's going to do to the tree? You're cutting out these big roots that are providing water nutrients to the tree. And my response is, OK, what's going to happen if you do nothing? If you do nothing, they will choke the tree off, causing structural problems or a stress point or break where insects or diseases can get in. So doing something is better than doing nothing. But again, we'll try to prevent this at planting time. And you can see the stem is getting undercut. That's pretty bad. OK. In the old days, we used to recommend, oh, just slice down the side of that pot one place or sometimes two places, three places to stop that effect of the stem-girling roots. And the research has shown it really doesn't help that much. It really doesn't help at all, unfortunately. So now we're saying, just get rid of them. Go in about an inch or so and get rid of them all the way around. And oh my gosh, that causes a lot of damage to the root ball, doesn't it? Yes, it does. But in the long run, it's for the best of that tree. And it tends to work. We're getting rid of those stem-girling roots before they happen. OK. Here's an example. We're planting a nice crab apple tree in West Fargo. And that root came out and hit the side of the pot and went down. There's a nice big root. Came out from the stem and went down the side of the pot and headed back towards the center of the root ball. And we cut it and planted the tree, got rid of that problem, and the tree is doing just fine. This was four or five years ago. That tree was growing very well. Watering. OK. Time says it got three minutes. Well, sort of. OK. Water is a good thing. What's the number one rule? Keep the roots moist. OK. After the tree's in the ground, soak it with water and then walk away for a week or more. OK. Set a little tree in. Remove the air pockets. Keep those roots moist. And we want to keep the roots in contact with the soil. Hopefully not any air pockets in the soil. And once the tree's in the ground, it depends how often should I rain water. How much should I water? It depends. Has there been a lot of rain or not? Do you irrigate your lawn or not? For trees, we recommend every week to 10 days, sometimes even longer, depending on if there's been a lot of rain or not. And just a nice, slow, thorough soak. A simple way to see if the ground is, if the ground's already moist, don't need to water. How do you find out if the ground is moist? Real simple way is to take a soil probe or actually screwdriver and stick it in the ground. And see how easy it is to stick it in the ground. If it's really hard, well, then it's dry. If it's really easy or some soil sticking to it, you can feel if it's moist or not. Last thing, oh, second to last thing, staking. Should we stake the trees or not? How do trees stand firm against the wind? We should stake the trees. We should plant them really deep, because we've got such great winds here in North Dakota. Nice theory, but it doesn't work that way. Plant them at the right height, right depth, rather. And let them shake in the wind a little bit. Trees have natural wind furnace based on the roots and based on the taper of the stem. And what's the long candle, the thin narrow one, what's that called? A taper. OK. We want trees to have a taper rather than be straight up and down, because that provides more wind furnace. Let them develop that taper. And we do that. Yeah, we give them a chance that we stake them. But we want them to wiggle in the wind a little bit. You don't want to choke them. You don't want to hold them so tight that basically you're just creating a point where that's where they're going to snap off. You want to give them some support when they need it, but mostly let them wiggle in the wind. Nicely, nice with steak tree here on the Indian issue campus. Three staking problems are, number one, too high. Go only about a quarter to a third of the height, too tight. You want to cradle the trunk. Cradle it. Don't circle it. Don't choke it. Use some kind of strap as best you can. You don't have to do like $1.19 at the garden center. Use a strap and hook the wire to the strap, not to the tree. And too long. No more than two years, usually only one year. It should be about all you need. I had a tree in my boulevard that I planted. And it was there for four years, five years. And it kept wiggling. But you could see the root ball moving. My take-home, I tightly took it out. My take-home message was, yeah, free trees, you get what you pay for. I got rid of it and actually spent decent money on a good tree. OK. I'm going to ask somebody here in Fargo. I'm going to ask Tom, since he's right here. Tom, can you describe what you see in these trees? And maybe the next picture. Can you describe what you see? Take a look. Yes, Joe. I see a spruce tree. And it looks like it's a little thin on top. And let's see here. It's a little clorotic in the center. That's wrong with them, man. What's the? Oh, that's good. Right there. It's thinner on top. It's definitely thicker and fuller on the bottom. Thank you. Thank you for being a good story. It's definitely thinner on top. It's definitely thicker on the bottom. It's also more yellow on top, a little bit darker green, maybe even a bluish tinge towards the bottom. But yeah, more yellow on top. Well, I just caught my eye. And this is right near where my wife used to work. So I, of course, got out of the car and was nosy. And here's what I found. Yeah, that's a beaut, isn't it? Yeah, that never took the strap off. And that's what happened. OK, here's another example of spruce tree in Dickey County years ago. I don't know if they took the wire, the twine off from this, but it was digging into the stem, or the stem was growing into it at this point. And Kathy Wieterholz, who presents earlier, gave me a great picture of the spruce tree that I'm really looking forward to seeing this summer. Yeah, not recommended. Last thing, mulching. I'm going a little long. Those are mulching. Why do we add mulch? First is to decrease weed competition. There's one weed in that mulch bed. Yes, it's a rock mulch. We'll talk about that a little more later. Which, when you get rid of the weeds, you can increase the available water to your trees, which is great. It can reduce potential motor damage. This, I think, surprisingly is the number one reason to add mulch around trees. Keep the mulch away. This is a, what is this? This is a green ash tree here on campus. And I saw this one morning as I was walking to my office, and I started jumping up and down, going, this is great, this is great. The mower hit the mulch, not the tree. And people are looking at me like, I'm really weird. What's that guy doing? Excuse me, I got out of my camera to take a picture of those wonderful. This is the example I needed. This is why we mulch trees. In the urban landscape, and of course make it look pretty. Can add a really nice touch to a bed, a planting bed. Oh yeah, no mulch volcanoes. Don't pile it next to the trunk. Leave a small gap around the trunk, maybe two or three inches around there where there's no mulch where it's mulch free. And keep the mulch about three or four inches thick. Much more than that, it starts to catch too much moisture, too much rainfall, or irrigation moisture, and they'll get caught up in the mulch and not actually sink into the soil. Rock mulch, plastic mulch, used together, although this is not really rock mulch, more of a decorative accident rock. A lot of people hate rock mulch. I'm not a big fan of it. A lot of people love it. They think it's beautiful. It can tend to be a lot hotter under that. It can tend to be a bit drier. The reason I don't like it is because it migrates. It gets legs and it walks up out of a planting bed and goes in the lawn where the lawnmower hits it. And then it shoots it in the neighbor yard and it kind of sharpen the blades of the mower. That's my personal opinion. Oh, it does not burn though. That's an advantage of rock mulch. I've read a scientific study once that said, it was a scientific study that rock mulch does not burn. So if you're worried about wildfire around your own, rock mulch is the way to go. And the last one, fertilizers and amendments, not needed. Not needed. Yes, you can fertilize a tree. Will it help it grow faster? Probably. But when we actually look at the research, does it help the tree? Not really. Just having good soil moisture is the biggest issue, especially in this part of the country, providing appropriate moisture to help the trees grow. And that's all I have for this. And I'll go to Tom and we'll talk about questions people have. And then we'll go to the website. Charlie. Okay, thank you, Joe. And keep the questions coming people. How about with the Baldwin-Berlab tree in a cage, should we cut open the cage? Yeah, not only should you cut open the cage, you should get rid of the cage as best you can. I have a great example. I actually took that out of the slideshow, but we have a tree that has ice green ash and moffatins that died after about 15 years and still had the cage on the root system. And in nature, there are no cages. Joe, if we can get some evergreens moved with the tree mover, do you have a, when's the best time to do it? The best time is when they're still dormant. After the frost gets out of the ground, once the soil falls, but before they start to break bud, it is really the best time of year to move evergreens. How about in southwest North Dakota near the badlands, do you have any ideal tree species to grow? The ideal tree species are what grows there naturally. Ponderosa, Pine, Rocky Mountain, Juniper, in terms of deciduous green ash, Boxelder. If you can hackberry, yeah, if you can get the moisture, I would actually, it's just one of the northern badlands, there's a variety of paper birch called Kildere, it's released from NDSU, I think it's called Kildere. What is it, Prairie Green? Prairie Green, that's what it is. It was selected from the Kildere Mountains. So if you can find an area that has some moisture, might be a good tree to try. Okay, with the bare root trees common now, how can you keep bare root trees viable before you plant them? How can you keep bare root trees viable before you plant them? If you happen to have a cooler, that'd be great, you know, walk-in cooler, but obviously not everybody has access to it. One thing, there's a couple things you can do, keep it in as cool places you can find. Shaded garage, for example, I would suggest putting the roots of it in like a tub, big tub, and you can keep it moist with something called shingletoe or even wet newspapers would work. Shingletoe, stagnant moss, but keep the roots moist. How long can you keep a tree that way? Oh boy, that's a good question, I don't know. Especially if it's not a controlled environment. In a cooler, they can keep several weeks, even a month, if you can keep it really cool, like 40 degrees or lower. But as it starts to warm up or in a garage where it tends to fluctuate, you might just have a couple of weeks, depending on the tree. Any tips about moving a three to four-year-old caragana? Three to four-year-old caragana? I would just re-plant a new caragana. That's a very common shrub in three or four years. You know, boy, there's a couple different ways to do this. You dig out as much of the root system as you can and keep it all together and move it while it's dormant. That being said, you could do it such that you cut down the top, leave about a, you know, three to four-inch stub at the base, then dig out the root system and re-plant it, it will sprout back. It'll take a little while to adjust to the new site, but that could work. Joe, what do you think about slow watering bags for trees? I think slow watering bags work great. They do just fine. Good. What's the best way to fix a tree that's planted too deeply? Should we dig the soil out around it? As best you can, if you can, yes. It depends how long it's been in the ground, how old it is. If it's a really big tree, there's not much you can do. But I would suggest trying to dig out some kind of a wide, shallow bowl, very wide, very shallow, again, as best you can. That's really tough to fix deep plants and trees, especially the longer they've been in the ground. Okay, does anybody else out there have any questions about planting trees before we broaden our discussion? Anybody in favor? Joe, do we have some questions? I just want to show one more thing. Oh, it's up. Okay. This is a website that we've developed here at NDSU. It's known development needs some work. We call it the North Dakota Tree Selector. It has a wide variety of trees and shrubs, over 100 right now. It's still growing. That can help you decide what types of trees or shrubs you'd like to plant. These are other things that are all hardy in North Dakota. Every tree has advantages and disadvantages. Some of these you may not want to plant in your yard. Some of these are more shelter-built, appropriate species. But all these are hardy enough and will grow here. And there's a wider variety available and appropriate than a lot of people realize. Okay, we've got a few more questions here. What do you think about those round, rubber wings people put around their trees? Are they beneficial? They are an artificial mulch, just like fabric. Landscaping fabric. They work. They do that job. They work to keep moisture in, to keep weeds down. I'm not a big fan. I just don't like how they look. But they do work. They do work. They got to be careful though, as the tree grows, that it's not going to, in theory, that rubber should flex. But you know, you got to make sure that that does happen. Okay, Joe, we're going to, since you are an extension forester that is so broad in knowledge beyond planting trees, we are going to expand the questions now. Are you ready for it? Here we go. Ready or not? The branches and the small twigs are very brittle. Why? The tree's 50 years old. But those branches are alive. That'd be my question. They're really brittle. There you go. They're dead branches. That's what I'm wondering. What's the answer? OK. The person asks, OK, is the bronze birch borer in Lake Dakota yet? The bronze birch borer. Oh, a trick question, sort of. The way you raised an ear earlier tonight with that, you showed me a long distance picture on a diagnosis. I got a call. So that was tricky, Joe. It wasn't fair. They're trying to make me look bad. OK, how about the bronze birch borer? Is it here yet, Joe? The bronze birch borer is a native insect past to North Dakota and to this part of the country. It's native. Been here, it's always been here. The bronze birch borer attacks birch trees, especially those that are drought stressed. The emerald ash borer, which is not a native species, which is from China, which attacks ash trees, as far as we know, is not here. There's a broad effort, trapping effort by North Dakota Department of Agriculture and a bunch of their cooperators as well as a lot of eyeballs out there looking for emerald ash borer, EAD. And so far, we haven't found it. It could be here because they say you don't find an infestation until it's been there for three to five years. So it certainly is possible, but as far as we know, no. OK, that was an easy one. Here you go, Joe. How about a tough one? Is there anything you can do to put on a stump to get rid of it? I've never ran any research on this. I've simply heard a few things. The one thing that people have suggested is to drill holes in it and put borax in it, and that would help it to decay. OK, how about this person has an armor maple that did not drop its leaves? What's going to happen when it starts to leaf out this spring? What's going to happen? When trees don't drop their leaves, it's usually not a good thing. OK, yes, there are some species that hold onto their leaves. Like ironwood holds onto its leaves most of the winter. That's just natural how that one works. Armor maple does lose its leaves while it's supposed to. Usually when trees hold their leaves into the fall and well into the winter, it's either their disease or there's a pest problem. Or they weren't hard enough for winter. They didn't harden up. And often we see that when the lawn is watered and fertilized all throughout the summer and the trees are still nice and green and tender and they never really got a chance to harden up. As an example, my wife and I just bought her father's home in the last summer at the beginning of August and he had a nice watering regime set up for the lawn and late in the fall, our own trees didn't lose their leaves. And we'll see how they do. It didn't harden up enough. What you might see is some dieback on those twigs. You might see a large amount of dieback on that individual depending on how cold it got, how hard it got in the fall. And we'll see what happened. Kathy wants to add something. I just wanted to say that I feel like we saw that on a lot of trees around Carrington. A lot of trees seem to have held their leaves until the wind whipped them off sometimes in the winter. So maybe it was a more common thing this year, something to do with the weather? It certainly could be a more common issue. I don't know, did we have an early fall frost before it had hardened up? Or, you know, if it's a nice wet summer and conditions are really good, really late, the trees will continue to hold their leaves a little longer. One thing I always tell people, and a lot of people looking in weird for this, I recommend giving the trees a little drought stress in August because the process that they go through for hardening up for winter is related to the process that they use to respond to drought. And giving them that drought stress a little bit, a little bit, don't kill them, but a little bit of drought stress starts to kickstart the whole hardening process for winter. So I always recommend a little bit of drought stress in August. Common management technique in tree nurseries. And is that the whole truth for evergreens? Yes, but after about mid-September, water the evergreens until all the ground trees is up. That will help to minimize winter injury. I want to keep those as much moisture into those as possible, but only late. So do you have some favorite trees for tree boulevards? I have a lot. There are so many. I suggest looking at the tree selector. It depends on the size of the boulevard and how wide it is. Are there power lines there? Because with the tree selector, you can look at that. And I'll have the guys here go through one really quick one. And if you could go to where it says tree or shrub, go to tree. It says leaf retention. Go to deciduous. And under growth where it says power line. Yes, are they power line compatible? Are they short enough? And here are several, there's 11 options for you to look at. Apples, yeah, I have a common apple here, but there's a wide variety of crab apples that are hardy enough for North Dakota to have good tolerance to diseases. And some other, a lot of other things that you could use. I've seen a lot of them. They're very commonly used under the power lines. I've seen a lot of them a little more. And I don't see as much, but it certainly could be planted. See what we got. See buckthorn, probably not a power line. So that's more of a wind rake species. It's not buckthorn, not the invasive. This is also called seaberry. Cathy, are you growing these seaburys? They're delicious. How come? They're pretty invasive. They're locally invasive. They have a lot of suckers, but I also found some seedlings growing around. And there's secret, secret thorns that will press your fingers when you need to expect it. So don't like them. Okay. Still available for tree planting in shelter belts. Delicious fruit. Wonderful fruit. Oh, Cathy's making them. I was making this base. It is rather tart. A lot of vitamin C. Joel, how about this person planted an Ohio bot guy a few inches too deep last spring? They removed the dirt to expose the crown. Over the years, can she let the hollow area fill in or does she have to keep that crown exposed for the life of the tree? I think over time as the tree grows, those roots will grow. And it should actually raise itself, raise itself. Sort of. That actual additional layers of wood will build on that root system. And it will actually come up out of that. It'll look like it's coming up out of that. So over time, it should correct itself. Okay, Joel, how about when's the best time to prune an evergreen like branches too close to the ground? This is a great time here, right now, while they're still dormant. You know, you can do it in summer too, but dormant season pruning is really the best. It's just on the other end. Evergreen? Yes. Wait a minute. What's anything in that birch tree that you recommended that you found in the Kildere area? It was a prairie dream. So we could look it up here. Or is that the other one? Okay. I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to do a Stanley and what that's really sweet. Oops. Except they don't want to talk about it. Since you're a multitasking type of guy, I see a bump on a hackberry leaf. Should I be worried? Hackberry? No. The bumps are an insect called hackberry nipplegull. That's a psyllid insect, a soft-bodied insect. Super common. It causes more visual damage. It doesn't look nice. More aesthetic. It really doesn't cause any problems for the tree. Okay. Here's a tough one for you. A linden tree has nice foliage on the bottom half, but the top half of the tree has almost no leaves and it's dropped branches. Any idea what could be wrong? There's a variety of things that couldn't be wrong, but I would really suggest looking at that point where you see that if there's a clear line between nice leaves and bad, look right there and see what you find. There could be insects boring in there. There could be physical or structural damage. There could be a rope tied around it. We had some great photos from Mandan. There's a big giant tree. We did it one part of the top. And it wasn't until I started climbing up that I saw the rope around the stem. Okay, Joe, do you have any last words of wisdom for our crowd here? Keep a rough noise before planting. Okay, Joe, we're done with you. Thank you.