How Long Should My New Crabapple Tree Stay Staked?

An email from Sue who says, ‘I bought a lovely seven-gallon coral burst crabapple from Rohrs last May. How long does it need 10 gallons of water a week under normal conditions and when is it safe to remove its support stake?’

Great questions. We get that all the time. So I would say removing the support stake really is going to be something we would recommend by tree variety. Some trees root in a little faster. That crabapple is generally pretty good. It also would be the site.

If it’s super windy there, we might leave it staked for a period of two years. Most of the time, if it’s a quicker rooting tree and it’s not crazy windy where it’s sitting, it should be fully rooted at the end of the first full year. So I would leave it, if we planted it in May, I would leave the stake on until May or June this year. It should be fine to take it off then.

With the watering, we had a pretty dry summer last year. So I’m glad that you did the heavy watering. We should be good going into spring here, so I don’t know that you would need to do 10 gallons a week this time of year. I would say as we get into June, July, and August, that second year, they can still use a little helping hand.

It’s significantly less important that second year than it is the first year because you’ve got to figure the root systems grew by 30%. So you have 30% more available roots to bring moisture up into the plant, but it is still important because the roots haven’t grown deep yet where there’s more moisture. So I would definitely keep an eye on that if we get really dry in May or really dry in June, July, or August. It’s not going to hurt a couple of times a week to go out there and give it a good drink.

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