Need some help with airspade proposal

Mess from an air spade cleans up really well. It's the world's greatest leaf blower. Just blast it and it disperses really well.
 
Blast into the grass area. It's not that much soil until you start getting into trenching. Even most of that will stay near the trench.
 
Wider the better as the soil is compacted and others mentioned great depth may not be necessary and it's very difficult to blast it out past say 18" or so.
Do you have to retain/reseed turf or can you bed the tree further?
 
For now we are going to leave the turf and see how the tree does. Of course it would be nice to bed the tree further in the future. Probably only 1/4 of root zone is turf.


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For trenches Im thinking 1-2 feet wide by about a foot deep. And as long as practical. And we'll till the rest of the area with airspade just deep enough to break up compaction and incorporate amendments. Am I being more realistic now? Thanks


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Supersonic air knife x-hfa is NOT root friendly in high flow mode (large nozzle, 90psi, 330cfm with 375cfm compressor). It will stir up massive amounts of soil, strip all roots clean of bark and send all silty soil particles airborne.

Handy to have on very rare projects where this capacity helps and roots are irrelevant (aerating my septic field). The "flame" of blue compressed air is wild to see as well.

Otherwise the smaller nozzle and compressor is best.
 
Mangoes said:
Supersonic air knife x-hfa is NOT root friendly in high flow mode (large nozzle, 90psi, 330cfm with 375cfm compressor). It will stir up massive amounts of soil, strip all roots clean of bark and send all silty soil particles airborne.

Handy to have on very rare projects where this capacity helps and roots are irrelevant (aerating my septic field). The "flame" of blue compressed air is wild to see as well.

Otherwise the smaller nozzle and compressor is best.
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But super helpful in de-compacting a very heavily compacted area. Not sure if thats the case here. But I have removed entire sod lawns and made them into root space with the SSAK. But I agree not the tool for RCX or areas where your coming into contact with roots.
 
I make a point to blast away/kinda sideways for RCX with the air spade for same reason. Never used the air knife.
 
DSMc said:
Wow. that is some serious tree abuse, 802. It is always frustrating to be called in when the outcome is so poor. I asked about Willastonite because I have never used it so was curious. We rarely (almost never) have acidic soils to deal with, so liming is not generally considered.

Go ahead and contact the HBEF. At least go on their website, they have some very helpful/informative articles re this. It is also good to note these amendments were successful without incorporation into the soil.

The apparent popularity of using the air spade is a bit of a concern to me as it pulverizes the soil and destroys aggregation. So it is good to be sure it is being proposed in critical situations, not as a routine maintenance.

Sylvia
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Great point regarding air spading not being a part of routine maintenance. Dr. Glynn Percival spoke at the ISA international conference in Knoxville and gave a great talk on passive decompaction. He used vertical mulching and different species of worms to decrease overall bulk density. The study is pretty cool, I'll attach a link to the article.
 

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Urban Ecology llc said:
Great point regarding air spading not being a part of routine maintenance. Dr. Glynn Percival spoke at the ISA international conference in Knoxville and gave a great talk on passive decompaction. He used vertical mulching and different species of worms to decrease overall bulk density. The study is pretty cool, I'll attach a link to the article.
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Of importance to note in their study are two points. One is that the site was in Europe. The other is that they used two European native earthworm species to repatriate into the compacted sites.

In North America, exotic invasive earthworms are responsible for big problematic changes in forest ecology, and their introduction into soils is discouraged.

I've had very good success utilizing an Airspade 2000 with a 185 SCFM compressor to perform numerous root collar excavations and vertical decompaction assignments. (The 45 degree elbow really speeds up the process for vertical work). Operator knowledge and diligence are the keys to avoid stripping bark from tree roots. Just think of the tool in your hands as a surgical scalpel rather than an axe, or a gardeners trowel rather than a shovel and you can do good work.
 
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cerviarborist said:
... I've had very good success utilizing an Airspade 2000 ... Just think of the tool in your hands as a surgical scalpel ...
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Good analogy. The airspade has allowed us to correct some pretty drastic compaction issues with minimal impact, but like going to a surgeon, it should not take the place of long lasting health care planning and implementation.
 
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