Didn't have time to plant bare root trees...

I heeled 50 black locust bare roots in, knowing I would struggle to get them all in the ground. I managed to plant some, but not all. Those that I planted, are flying - but so are the heeled in plants...

Is there any way I can keep this until next year? I would assume leaving them heeled in for a year in a pile is a bad idea - roots will establish, all bunched together can't be good, I cannot protect them capably from browse.

Anyone come up against this and had an effective way to keep bare root trees for a year?

How many trees do you have heeled in still, and are they bunched super close together?

If they have room to leaf out and grow without all competing for the same sunlight, then I would leave them be. I suspect the root tangling wouldn't be such a big problem next spring.

If however they're all in a tight bundle then I would suggest finding a nursery bed for this growing season. The transplant shock wouldn't be ideal and you'd still have to protect them from browse but at least that could be managed in a relatively small space.

Nick Neufeld wrote:How many trees do you have heeled in still, and are they bunched super close together?

If they have room to leaf out and grow without all competing for the same sunlight, then I would leave them be. I suspect the root tangling wouldn't be such a big problem next spring.

If however they're all in a tight bundle then I would suggest finding a nursery bed for this growing season. The transplant shock wouldn't be ideal and you'd still have to protect them from browse but at least that could be managed in a relatively small space.

At the moment about 20 are still heeled in. They are bunched very close together, so it sounds like moving them is my only option.
Thanks.

If you can get a hose over to them, you could dig around the clump 1 foot away from the stems, then use the hose before moving them to loosen the soil from the roots without too much damage (unless it's heavy clay soil I guess). Then you can spread the roots out in their new home, water them in well, and trim off some of the lower leaves so they don't dry out. I used to separate daylilies that way and it worked great.

If it's a matter of time to plant (not space, or knowing where to plant), and if you are planting mass quantities of say, 1 year old black locust with roots only a foot long or so, and you are attempting to do so very quickly, check your tools and technique.  The dibble bar method works well.  Here is one example from an Alabama Extension:


Source: https://www.aces.edu/blog/topics/forestry/planting-southern-pine-seedlings/

If you don't have a dibble bar, a nice straight spade works just fine.  

Even if you don't use this exact method (there are others, and I've used even fewer and sloppier spade motions for planting black locust), just try to get good root contact and avoid air pockets, then heel in the weird divots, and the black locust will probably do just fine being a pioneer plant if it has adequate water.  

To give you an idea of how fast it can take to plant a bare root black locust tree, in the time it takes to have read this post, a couple trees could have been planted in average soil.  

George Yacus wrote:If it's a matter of time to plant (not space, or knowing where to plant), and if you are planting mass quantities of say, 1 year old black locust with roots only a foot long or so, and you are attempting to do so very quickly, check your tools and technique.  The dibble bar method works well.  Here is one example from an Alabama Extension:


Source: https://www.aces.edu/blog/topics/forestry/planting-southern-pine-seedlings/

If you don't have a dibble bar, a nice straight spade works just fine.  

Even if you don't use this exact method (there are others, and I've used even fewer and sloppier spade motions for planting black locust), just try to get good root contact and avoid air pockets, then heel in the weird divots, and the black locust will probably do just fine being a pioneer plant if it has adequate water.  

To give you an idea of how fast it can take to plant a bare root black locust tree, in the time it takes to have read this post, a couple trees could have been planted in average soil.  

Thank you George, that's really useful information. Just as a point of note, I didn't plant these not because I didn't know how, it was more I didn't know where. There was a last-minute adjustment in how space was going to be used and as such, many of these trees needed more consideration as to where they were going into the ground. The only open space gets seasonally wet and from what I gather, that's not a home a black locust tree will enjoy.