A little gardening with the CyberBeast: uprooting a tree

[Nephilim]

I needed to move this Japanese Maple, but it is pretty challenging to carefully uproot it as the branches are very much in the way. After hand digging one side of the roots out and cutting them, I was able to get a rope around the root ball. CyberBeast took care of the rest.

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[Fugue]

I'll be doing this soon with a Pine.

 

[hemiarch]

Wheee did you attach to the truck? Is it better if the strap is elastic or more rigid like a chain?

 

[HaulingAss]

Wheee did you attach to the truck? Is it better if the strap is elastic or more rigid like a chain?

Elastic is better, but on a small tree like that it doesn't matter, especially considering it looks like all the hard work was done by manual labor before the pull. I would have just jerked the entire thing out of the ground with one mighty tug (and a beefy kinetic recovery rope with some slack in it). It would have left a larger diameter of disturbed ground (vs. manually digging a trench through the roots), but would have saved much time and labor overall, as long as you are not worried about damaging plants nearby.

I'm not naturally a violent person, but sometimes violence is a lot faster and easier. ?‍

 

[hemiarch]

So you attach to the tow hitch?

 

[HaulingAss]

So you attach to the tow hitch?

Yes, the hitch receiver or one of the two front bumper attachment points with a soft shackle. If you use the hitch receiver, don't use a trailer ball, use a recovery hitch inserted into the receiver.

 

[Nephilim]

Wheee did you attach to the truck? Is it better if the strap is elastic or more rigid like a chain?

I used a tow hitch with a hook on the end, similar to this: I just looped the rope around the hook and it worked well. The rope indeed had some elasticity to it which seemed to work out just fine.

Elastic is better, but on a small tree like that it doesn't matter, especially considering it looks like all the hard work was done by manual labor before the pull. I would have just jerked the entire thing out of the ground with one mighty tug...

This was a transplant, not a removal. While that may sound like a small detail, it makes the job SO MUCH harder! I would have loved to use the trunk as a lever and just rip the thing out of the ground. But that would have damaged the tree.

Instead, I carefully dug around the roots on one side, cut them, dug more, cut more roots. Then when I had enough big roots exposed, I used the truck/rope to go UNDER the cut roots and gently begin to pull the tree over. Rinse and repeat about 6 - 8 times. The video just shows the final pull, but there were actually many to get it to the state that the video starts in.

 

[HelligeGall]

I’d go with using elastic straps instead, they can handle the strain better and offer more flexibility when moving heavy stuff like a tree.

 

[Eka]

For this type of pull elastic isn't good. This is because if you build up too much stretch, it can launch the tree towards, and maybe into the truck. Straps are good so one doesn't damage the tree. The main line I'd use cable, chain, or dyneema.

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