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Dirt "boxes" around trees


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I don't know what you call them in English but my gardeners call them cajas. A circle of dirt (in the lawn) around tree trunks. Whenever the gardeners plants something they plant it inches lower in the ground than it was when the plant came from the nursery. Every week they build a pyramid of dirt about a foot high around the trunks and I scrape it away when they leave as it seems like the wrong thing to do. Where I came from you never had the trunk below the level of the dirt. "They" said it would kill the tree. I notice some foe trunks are developing splits What to think. I can't find anything on line about this.

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Local gardeners do this because "it has always been done this way", not because it is right. I tried the ock ring too but hte gerdener removed so he could pile the dirt high again. I have a new gardener now.

Trust yourself to know what you know and tell them what you want done. It is your garden. Tell them nicely the first few times if you must, then learn to insist on it when they ignore you, which they will. Old habits seem to die hard you are up against traditions. If they continue to ignore you anyway, you can choose to find a new gardener and start the process all over again until, eventually, you find one that listens. When you do, never ever let that one go...

In the meantime be sure to remove any and all cutting tools from your gardeners hands, or learn to say goodbye to all that you love about your current garden.

Good luck :-)

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Local gardeners do this because "it has always been done this way", not because it is right. I tried the ock ring too but hte gerdener removed so he could pile the dirt high again. I have a new gardener now.

Trust yourself to know what you know and tell them what you want done. It is your garden. Tell them nicely the first few times if you must, then learn to insist on it when they ignore you, which they will. Old habits seem to die hard you are up against traditions. If they continue to ignore you anyway, you can choose to find a new gardener and start the process all over again until, eventually, you find one that listens. When you do, never ever let that one go...

In the meantime be sure to remove any and all cutting tools from your gardeners hands, or learn to say goodbye to all that you love about your current garden.

Good luck :-)

Very interesting. I really suspect making a dirt pyramid around each trunk is wrong but I can't find any information on line to confirm this. I thought my new gardener might know something I didn't as he is also the head gardener at a large fraccionamiento but I now suspect he is wrong.

I chuckled at the thought of hiding all cutting tool as I was thinking of doing the same thing. This gardener prunes viciously- especially my bananas. I have asked him repeatedly to not prune palm and banana leafs until they start to go brown but he doesn't listen. Every time he comes he generates much more leaf cutting than the garbage men will take.

Last week he pulled out and threw away my prize red flowered passion fruit vine. Then he put gasoline without oil in my grass trimmer and told me it didn't work. I need a new gardener.

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I love my cutting tools - especially my chain saw!!! Let me at those pruning jobs..... yah!!

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Local gardeners do this because "it has always been done this way", not because it is right. I tried the ock ring too but hte gerdener removed so he could pile the dirt high again. I have a new gardener now.

Trust yourself to know what you know and tell them what you want done. It is your garden. Tell them nicely the first few times if you must, then learn to insist on it when they ignore you, which they will. Old habits seem to die hard you are up against traditions. If they continue to ignore you anyway, you can choose to find a new gardener and start the process all over again until, eventually, you find one that listens. When you do, never ever let that one go...

In the meantime be sure to remove any and all cutting tools from your gardeners hands, or learn to say goodbye to all that you love about your current garden.

Good luck :-)

Amen!

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Boy do you ever need a new gardener if he is doing all that!

Here is what ehow has to say about burying tree trunks. Much more on the internet about it if you google it.

http://www.ehow.com/info_8398281_tree-die-much-dirt-around.html

I always figured gardeners cut before things bloom just so they don't have to rake.....maybe cutting is easier? I guess I am a hopeless cynic.

Good luck finding your new gardener. Lay out the ground rules before they start and you may have a chance! (or not....or maybe for a little while...) By the way, my new garden just received a lovely red passion fruit...could it be yours gone awol?

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Working in my garden is something I love to do and brings me peace and happiness. I wouldn't let a Mexican gardener touch anything, except to trim high palm fronds and I'm standing right there telling him exactly which ones I want cut. A friend kept telling his gardener that he did not want him to pile and burn the garden rubbish, but rather to put it around the base of the plants and trees to conserve moisture in the long dry season. He even brought him over to my house to show him what I do. The gardener paid no attention, continues to rake up and burn everything, nor does he use the irrigation system my friend put in, which all he has to do is turn it on every few days, but continues to stand and hold the hose for hours. He also does almost nothing in the garden in the summer- instead of pruning in the summer so everything leafs out beautifully with all the rain, he massacres everything just before my friends come back down in Oct., Nov.

Just because someone calls themselves a gardener here and works as such, really doesn't mean they know anything about gardening. They just do it like their granddad did, so it must be right, yes? It would be okay if they were willing and interested in learning new methods, but in my experience, they are not.

And yes, you can't pile dirt around a tree trunk, bad, bad.

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