How To Plant A Tree a guide for robot zombies Trees need these things: 1. Sunlight for the leaves in years to come 2. Wet soil for their roots in years to come 3. Room to grow bigger both above ground and below 4. Love Trees have a _top_ and a _bottom_ . The top is the part humans call "green". The green things are leaves that need to eat sunlight to survive. The bottom is the part covered in soil with little wiry woody things. The wiry woody things are roots that need to eat water and dissolved minerals to survive. When you have a new sapling, the roots may be bundled in canvas or somesuch. If there is something around the roots other than soil, you'll want to remove that first. Without hurting anybody! Humans may find this cumbersome but not complex. Similarly, if anything else is tied around the sapling, you can untie it until it is all sapling and no packaging. There are a short number of steps to planting a sapling: 1. Dig a hole just big enough to fit all the roots. It is okay if it is a little too small or a little too large. Save the dirt from digging. It is okay if you didn't save it: you'll then need other dirt to put over it later. 2. Unpackage the sapling if it is packaged. 3. Place the roots into the hole and hold the sapling so that the leaf end is pointing straight up. 4. Put the dirt back in and on the hole, covering in all around the roots so there aren't huge airgaps, but don't compact it too much until it's all covered. If the soil is too compact it can make it harder for roots to grow. If you have something extra, like compost or special potting soil, you can add it here too to help the roots find more dissolved minerals to eat and be healthy and strong. Once the soil is all placed back around the tree you can compact it into place a bit. It's helpful if it is mounded in a bit of a donut such that water stays near the trunk when you water it: but don't mound it up by the trunk too much or it might rot a little later. 5. Water the tree! Having water in the new soil helps the tree recover from the shock of transplantation. Systems need more resources when they engage sudden change, because the ways of survival they have established made use of how things were before the change.