Too many bare root trees, not enough time to plant them!

It happens every year. Despite my best efforts to plan ahead on my end and much communication with nurseries to try and get trees mailed within a certain time frame, I am now sitting at the tail end of my week of vacation (which was supposed to be used in part to plant trees) with four big boxes of trees that just showed up in the mail and not nearly enough time left to plant them all.

I should be out planting them now, but it's thunderstorming (as in DIRECTLY overhead).

Some of the larger bare-root guys are getting temporarily potted up in big pots, the smaller bundles of bare root stuff is getting bundled up in moist paper shreds and wrapped tight, and I'm crossing my fingers.

I lie and tell people that the haphazard layout of my tree plantings is to mimic a more natural distribution, but in reality it's just because I have to plant them all SUPER FAST.

heel them in.

Been there, done that.
My solution was a nursery license. Sell the things.

What do you have to do for a nursery license? We are thinking of trying our hand at a micro nursery next year.

Nursery licenses vary from state to state. You need to check locally. Some states are pretty relaxed, while others can get pretty anal about it.

Why would the state care if I want to sell you a bush or a tree and you want to buy it?

You really have to be licensed to sell bushes?

I seriously want to know why.

Finest regards,

troy

Troy Rhodes wrote: Why would the state care if I want to sell you a bush or a tree and you want to buy it?

You really have to be licensed to sell bushes?

I seriously want to know why.

Finest regards,

troy

The same reason the state cares about all the other stuff it has no business caring about... because they figure they can charge you for it.

That sounds frustrating. It's too bad you haven't been through the tree planting ' boot-camp' that is the silviculture industry...a good high-ball planter on prepped ground that's reasonably level and has soil could probably bang in more than two thousand small bare-root trees in a day....but it really takes a good season of work to pick that skill up. And when they are your trees, you want to baby them a bit more. Anyway, good luck on it!

Matt Smith wrote:

Troy Rhodes wrote: Why would the state care if I want to sell you a bush or a tree and you want to buy it?

You really have to be licensed to sell bushes?

I seriously want to know why.

Finest regards,

troy

The same reason the state cares about all the other stuff it has no business caring about... because they figure they can charge you for it.

Probably something more like this...

Generally, the more a state depends on agriculture for income, the tighter their restrictions become.
One person, doing as they damned well please, can cost the industry millions.

Andrew Ash wrote:Probably something more like this...

The presence of pests like Japanese Beetles, Emerald Ash Borer, and Asian Longhorn Beetle (as the names might suggest) has far more to do with international import restrictions than it does small-scale American nurserymen.

I've mostly been fortunate that they dribble in a few at a time, however, I did have to plant several up inside as we had freezing temps for 2 months after some of my plants came with leaves on them.