Starting Apple and Pear trees before moving to Hugel beds

Greetings.. I'm ordering some trees from the St. Lawrence Nursery to eventually plant in some Hugel beds I have at my cabin. The beds won't be complete til' spring, but I want to get the trees to my garden in the cities to get them started, and care for them. The new trees need quite a bit of water for the 1st few months, so I need to provide that before moving them in the fall to my hugel beds. Plus, It will give the hugel beds a chance to do what they do seeing the 1st year will be mostly cover crops, potatoes, and beets.

My initial thoughts are to plant them in buckets w/ holes for drainage. Or put them in composting starter pods like you can do for starting seeds. I'd then move them in the fall and plant into the beds. Keep in mind the hugel beds will be one for each tree of smaller dimensions with only cover crops initially.

This will be my 1st attempt at trees, so any advice is appreciated.

I will be planting cold weather zone 3 apple, and pear trees.

Cheers!

does your order info tell you if they are coming in pots or bareroot? If in pots you can leave them in the pots but protect the pots (esp black pots) from too much sun by wrapping them or burying them to the rim..check the trees roots also as soon as the pots arrive in case they don't have any (have bought trees with no roots before, bummer !)

if bare root you can put them in LARGE pots for quite a while..choose lighter colored pots if they will be in the sun..but you can always bury the pots and or wrap them.

you can also heel in your bareroot trees for a short time..just be careful when replanting them

Brenda, Thanks for the post. These will be bareroot trees. Do you think 3 gallon recycled plastic composting "root pouches" would be big enough, and suffice until the fall? I'm ordering these trees from a nursery that grows trees for colder growing climates.

I don't know if it's a "no no" to post links to a product I'm looking to purchase, but it's only for advice. They also make 3-5 year composting root pouches as well.

15-20month root pouch

http://www.greenhousemegastore.com/product/root-pouch-black-fabric-pot-15-20-month/biodegradable-pots