Hi all - - I need to move one of my Italian Plum trees a few yards. It's 8 years old but well-pruned and healthy - it'll be a chore and risky indeed but it's gotta be done.
My options are:
1. I can either have friends move it today and tomorrow, knowing there is snow in the forecast for early next week OR
2. I can move it March 9 when I can be in town, knowing that it's possible it might be budding out at that time. I would prefer to be there and move it March 9 but will I be missing my window (will the tree likely be budding out) if I wait that long?
Photo taken 2/17/19
Thank you!
Seems to me, the more dormant the better. Less stress, pushing flowers is a stress/takes a lot of energy.
Pay attention to clean up any damaged roots and remove some of the top growth to compensate for inadvertent root loss to reduce stress from the transplant. Make sure your planting hole is of adequate size and the sides are not shovel glazed. Common wisdom is now to not highly amend the planting soil; maybe a little compost mixed in with your native soil, but better top-dressed, as I read it.
Others have more experience/expertise.
Good Luck.
This is a large specimen of a very hardy species.
I agree with James that dormant is better.
Do it carefully either way and it should be fine.
Like James alluded to, triangle for example, is better shape than circle.
Rough/gradual edges are better than smooth and sharply defined.
I agree about less changing of the nutritional content of hole on planting.
I would probablly try to assure the hole has adequate drainage, especially since it's stone fruit and if you have clay.
Gravel and old wood are two ways of improving drainage. Old wood also improves the bacterial to fungal soil ratio.
Also as James said, new wood chips are great on top, not mixed in.
John S
PDX OR
Thanks John and James. Well, best laid plans . . . neither of my options seem like they're going to work. I've been calling around to find someone I can hire to do this move but no luck. Any ideas on someone experienced who might want to take on a paid tree gig?
Out of state, thus the loop, I’ve no known contacts with those capabilities beyond ‘around here’ 
Agreeing with what’s been posted, if it’s a matter of the tree being sacrificed to another project, I’d do whatever you can to remove it; they’re resilient. After some root loss, I’d suggest some serious limb pruning for balance. That would be thinning ‘secondary limbs’ and not scaffold or small fruit/ leaf producing ‘twigs.’
It appears to have been wet, and cool, so I’d get a hole started, see how much root can be dug extracting the tree, expand the new hole to accommodate, do the serious upper-structure pruning, and monitor it well for water this summer.