The Goodrums

So a few weeks ago, we noticed that one of the cute little dwarf blue spruces in our backyard was struggling. It had turned a funny grey color and was starting to lose its needles. We suspected that it might be getting over watered.

This week, we decided to check into the situation a little more. We started digging back the rock around the spruce and we were so sad at what we found. The poor little guy was sitting in about 6-8 inches of standing water. It's in a fairly low lying area of the yard and all the sprinkler run-off from that side of the yard must have pooled up inside it's hole. We ended up digging out the tree and found that it was in a true mush pit (boy did it stink!). We ended up having to dig out about 5 feet of sludge, replace it with new dirt, and compact the new dirt so hopefully water runs away and not down. We built the tree up on a mound now so it sits higher than the bottom of the yard. The spruce should do much better now. I hope we weren't too late to save it.













Sapling
The tree when it was first planted. The nice little berm around it did a great job of holding water - too much water actually.













Recovery
Hopefully now that it is built up from the rest of the area it will begin to do better. We're rooting for the little guy.