Hi M.D.,
I'm glad you started this thread. A little less than a year ago my video guy asked if I could transplant a Japanese maple for him. I said I'd do it in trade for him videoing the process. This morning I finally sunk a few hours into editing all the footage and got this project finished.
I had what I thought was a somewhat original idea of how to dig up and move a tree. I was pretty sure it would work, but you never know until you try. So we tried.
We shot the video in real-time, beginning to end and it took us 43 minutes. This was just the digging up, lifting and moving of the tree. Re-planting it brought us up to about an hour.
Since I can't post an hour of video, what I did was eliminated the replanting of the tree, since that's pretty obvious of how to do. Your question seems to ask of medium-sized trees, since you refer to mebbe using a crane. The video is smaller-scale, but I think possibly this method could be used for bigger trees with some modification.
I didn't use a crane to do the lift. I used a log arch, which worked magnificently. One could use a skid steer / bobcat, a lull, a crane truck, tow truck, etc as the video will clearly address your question of
containment of the rootball and the rigging necessary to do the lift.
Since this section of the video was 40-some minutes long, I had to crop out quite a bit, and what was left of the pure action I sped up into fast motion, whacking several minutes of activity into 20 or 30 seconds. I did this repeatedly until all the clips were squeezed and I pumped it out into a streaming Quicktime that was 14.87 meg. The total view time is just over 4 minutes in length.
Since Arboristsite limits videos to about 4 meg, I posted it to a server so it will stream. That way I don't have to bust it up into 4 seperate chunks.
I hope it comes across smoothly. I wanted to attach some music but the file would end up being humongous. It was a really fun project. If my income transplanting trees could be that of my being a climber, I would probably do more of it.
Click
here to view the video and be patient. Dial-up guys, it may really take awhile. Broadband, about a minute and a half. Enjoy.