Eight Steps to Planting a Tree in Iran: From Choosing the Spot to Mulch Clear of the Trunk

Most sapling losses in Iran are not caused by a poor species; they are caused by planting too deep, a tight pit, circling roots, and watering with a cup every three days. The eight steps below are the same for a garden bed, a street and an industrial site, and they are tuned to the plateau climate, calcareous soil and a hard summer. If you take only one sentence away from Farkesht, take this one: plant the tree while it is dormant, do not bury the collar, and carry the first year with deep water and mulch rather than with a lot of fertiliser.

Eight steps, in the order they are done

1. The right tree in the right place: look at the wires overhead, the distance to the foundation, the building's shade, the salinity of the water and the prevailing wind before you buy the sapling. Do not plant a thirsty plane tree on a one-metre median in Yazd.
2. A pit two to three times the width of the root mass and no deeper than its height: a compacted base means the sapling sinks after watering and the collar gets buried.
3. The collar, or the point where the main roots begin, must still be visible slightly above ground level once the soil has settled. In calcareous soil, a buried collar means gummosis and suffocation.
4. Slice the circling roots of a container plant and comb them outwards; on bare-root stock, shorten broken roots back to sound tissue.
5. Take out the nursery stake that has been nailed to the trunk itself; that stake is for transport, not for the life of the tree.
6. If the site is windy, use two stakes outside the pit with a broad strap; the trunk must have a little play so it thickens.
7. Build a soil berm around the circle of the pit so the irrigation water does not run off, then soak that circle deeply so the air pockets fill.
8. Mulch over the surface, a few centimetres clear of the trunk; not a mound of mulch against the bark, which rots the collar.

A wide pit, a visible collar

The common mistake among workers is to dig a deep cylindrical hole so the roots have room. Tree roots spread mostly horizontally. A wide, slightly roughened wall in the clay of Isfahan lets the roots leave the new pot of soil. If you loosen the base and set the sapling on soft ground, after two irrigations the whole mass settles and the collar goes below the surface. Keep the base firm and level with the bottom of the root mass. Do not backfill with fresh manure, or the roots stay in a fertiliser pot; the site soil, lightly amended if it is compacted, is enough. Spread the fertiliser later, on the surface and outside the pit.

Free the roots, remove the nursery stake

If you plant a container sapling with its roots still circling, five years later that same ring strangles the tree. Four shallow vertical cuts on the side of the root mass and combing the surface out is enough; do not shatter the core of the ball. The plastic bag and synthetic netting on balled stock must come off. Take the thin stake nailed to the trunk out on the day of planting, even if the trunk then looks a little bent; you correct the bend with two proper stakes, not with a dried nursery stick that wounds the bark and creates a rubbing point.

The berm, the settling water and the mulch

The berm helps keep the volume of water you have calculated inside the root profile, especially on the sloping ground of the orchards around Isfahan. The first irrigation must be slow and generous enough to drive out the air pockets; if the soil settles, add surface soil but do not pour it over the collar. Mulch lowers the July temperature over the roots. Think of the gap between mulch and trunk as an empty ring. Give the later irrigations deep and spaced out, so the roots follow the moisture outwards instead of your turning the base of the stem into a swamp every evening.

The planting season in Iran

The main window for deciduous trees runs from late autumn after leaf fall until late winter; in practice from December to March on the central plateau, avoiding the nights of severe frost when the soil freezes. In the warmer south, if the sapling is dormant and the soil is workable, January and February are excellent. Set July and August aside for new planting unless it is an emergency project with guaranteed irrigation, shading and accepted losses. Evergreens too are better moved in the cool of autumn and late winter, not in a heatwave. Bare-root stock outside dormancy is almost always a failure. If a contractor insists on planting now to close the project, write the cost of summer replacement into the same minutes. Farkesht prefers to align the handover date with the soil's season rather than deliver a row of saplings in a heatwave.

• December to March: the best window for bare-root, balled and containerised deciduous stock in most provinces.
• A frosty night: put the planting off; the collar is damaged in frozen soil.
• July and August: do not plant; the cost of water and losses exceeds waiting until autumn.
• The first year: no heavy nitrogen; deep water, mulch and a check on the collar are enough.

Treat the first year as a maintenance programme, not as finished once the planting photograph is taken. Every two or three weeks, pull the collar clear from under the mulch if the soil has settled, loosen the stake tie so it does not cut into the trunk, and keep herbicide away from the root circle. In March after an autumn planting, one inspection round for exposed surface roots is enough. If the sapling still has no leaves in May, do not rush to dig it up; look first at the moisture at depth and the health of the collar. A Friday planting with ten guests and no berm or mulch is exactly the pattern that hands over a dead sapling in September. Calculate the spacing from day one for the mature size of the tree, not for a crowded opening-day photograph. Two plane saplings two metres apart will wound each other ten years later and create emergency pruning. One properly planted tree with enough room is more durable than three crammed into a narrow median.