Planting Red Maples in Walnut Rootzone

[ddhlakebound]

Today I removed two black walnut trees from a customers back yard, and tomorrow two ten foot Autumn Blaze Red Maples are being planted to replace them.

I want to be sure that the juglone from the walnut root systems will not adversely affect the maples.

After several searches, and a bit of reading, I've seen that the juglone is toxic to silver maples, and that most other maple varieties are safe to plant near black walnut.

Does anyone have any experience or knowledge about Red Maples/Black Walnut interaction?

The homeowners purchased the maples from lowes, tag on them said $120 each, both have the root flare buried, root systems circling, one already has codominant tops w/ a tight V crotch, and the other had its top foot or so taken off, and six sprouts from the internodal cut.

I'm going to rinse the soil from the root ball, straighten the roots as much as possible, pruning as necessary (as little as possible), and get them in the ground w/ the flare at ground level. Then give them a good drenching, and mulch the rootzone. Hopefully they take well, and next year I'll do a bit of corrective pruning on them.

Anything else I should do in the planting process?

Will the juglone from the walnuts affect the red maples?

 

[ddhlakebound]

tap tap tap........hello? is this thing on?


just kiddin......


I was hoping someone would have a comment or some advice.

Anyone?

 

[Kneejerk Bombas]

It sounds like you have a good handle on proper planting.
As far as the toxicity, Silver Maples are sensitive, so you may be in some trouble. It sound like the homeowner has made up his mind, so go ahead, but warn them there could be some issues.
We don't have a lot of Red Maples, so I don't know about their sensitivity.
Maybe you could plant it high, then add soil around it to get it started, then in time as the roots grow out and into the native soil, the juglone will be breaking down.

 

[ddhlakebound]

Thanks Mike

Well, the red maples are in the ground. I haven't done alot of planting, but I was very shocked when we removed the rootball from the plastic tub. Both trees had roots circling the outside of the ball, 360 degrees from top to bottom, and the circling roots had created woven matts a half inch thick. Getting them unwoven was very difficult, spent about an hour and a half on each rootball just trying to get the bigger roots straightened and keep as many of the finer roots attached as possible. Its very easy to see how planting a tree w/ a root structure like that will kill it in due time, especially if corrective measures are not taken.

The planting holes were dug with a backhoe, and fairly large, w/ all the walnut roots removed. Everything I've read so far only lists silver maple as a toxicity issue, and says most other maple species should be ok. Here's to hoping.

 

[Kneejerk Bombas]

The Autumn Blaze is a Silver Maple, partially anyway. If you look, they seem more like a Silver Maple than Red.