Soil Management

Soil helps to keep trees upright and stores the trees needs for water and nutrients. Soil is like a living organism, that provides the living environment for millions of soil organisms, live and dead, that assist with nutrification, aeration, and hydration of the soil. Healthy soil for growing should be 50% air space and 50% solids. The air spaces are partially filled with water. For a large number of reasons, urban soils can be less than ideal physically, biologically, or chemically. For example, soil compaction or toxification can be significant problems for tree health.

We’d love to help you out if you think you may have this kind of a problem. It can be tough or impossible to bring tree health back if it is in decline, but, dealing with a growing problem in advance can prolong the life and health of your tree, by making it as strong as it can be physically, biologically, and chemically.

For decompaction of tree root areas we have had great success with our AirSpade. The AirSpade is an excavation and decompaction tool that is used for digging around tree roots because it does not damage them. This tool uses ultra-high pressure (180CFM) to shoot a concentrated stream of air into the ground. Depending on the soil, it will inject air 12 inches deep in one pass. To de-compact a tree root zone, we simply work the AirSpade over the tree root zone, fluffing up all the compacted soil. Easy schmeezy! We normally recommend adding compost over the area at this stage, mixing again with the Air-Spade, and finishing with a rake and a layer of mulch.

If you’d like to schedule a viewing of your work or are commissioning private proposals in the Saanich and Victoria area, please give us a call at 250-652-9223 or fill out our online contact form and we’ll get right back to you.