Homeowner seeks advice after attempting to correct cardinal landscaping sin: 'How'd we do?'

Whenever somebody shares a picture of a tree surrounded by a dreaded mulch volcano, the consensus among commenters is always to remove it. But in a recent Reddit post, one homeowner revealed that removing a mulch volcano was not as simple as digging up the mulch.

"How'd we do [with] the volcano?" the poster asked the other members of the r/arborists subreddit. "Hoping for passable. Didn't have an air tool and was worried to damage too many roots with the rakes. Got 4-5 inches of improvement."

The accompanying pictures showed the before-and-after of the mulch volcano removal process, with the after consisting of a huge mess of tangled roots that had grown into the mulch instead of down into the dirt. 

Though it presented quite a headache for this Redditor, it is a neat visualization of what experts are always warning about when it comes to mulch volcanoes — mainly, that they confuse the roots, depriving the tree of vital nutrients it would get from the soil, instead of simply protecting the base of the trunk as intended.

Luckily, the other members of the subreddit had plenty of actionable advice for the original poster.

"Take a set of hand snips then cut everything you see within 1 foot of the tree that is pencil sized or smaller," one said in the most upvoted comment on the thread.

"Woo, you really busted that volcano up," another wrote. "I'd prune some of those feeder roots and maybe try to redirect and cover some of them with some mulch or soil. Your tree buddy is probably going to need some water help because of the loss of all the feeder roots."

While the major takeaway from all this is, as always, don't create a mulch volcano in the first place, it's nice to see that this homeowner saved their tree before too much damage was done.

What's the hardest thing about taking care of your yard? Mowing the lawn 🏡 Controlling weeds 🌿 Keeping pests at bay 🐿️ I don't have a yard 🤷 Click your choice to see results and speak your mind.

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