How do you like to send trees through the mail?

Excuse me if this question is well answered somewhere else.  A quick search yielded no good results, but maybe my forum search-fu is not what it could be.  

I'm wondering about best practices in shipping small trees.  With things opening back up a bit, I’d sure like to trade some plants.  Some of them trees in maybe ½ gal or so pots.  Standing 3 or so feet high.  Sure, nurseries ship trees cross-country all the time.  Being a cheapskate, I have never received such a tree and have no idea how they might be packaged.  Any advice about packaging and preferred carriers or classes of shipping would be appreciated.  Naturally, I know some trees being hardier than others might endure rougher handling.  But a general guideline for fruit/nut trees would be what I’m looking for.

Thanks!

Most of the trees I've ordered were shipped bare-root while they were still dormant. The best-packed ones I've seen were from St Lawrence Nursery. The bare-root trees had clearly been uprooted very carefully, so as not to break off too many roots. Then the roots were wrapped with damp sphagnum moss, newspaper, and then several layers of plastic. There was a wooden garden stake tied to the trunks, with twine tied around them every few inches going pretty much the whole length. Then the whole works was wrapped in more plastic, and then coated entirely by layers of packaging tape.

It actually takes me a long time to get them back out of the packaging, but I've never had one that was DOA.

Gurney's was at the other end of the spectrum. The last trees they sent me were also bare-root, but what arrived were rootless twigs. There was so little damp material that 8 of the 10 trees were completely dried out, beyond the brittle stage. Several were broken before they arrived. Of the 2 trees that were not DOA, only one recovered enough to survive. In all fairness, that survivor was the most productive elderberry bush I've ever seen, before or since! But still. . .

That was back in the 90's. I've made a point not to order live plants from them ever again.


If you decide to ship potted trees, it would still be best to wait until they're dormant, the same way you would with bare-root trees. Pack the top of the pot with a thick layer of something damp like sphagnum or coir. Make sure that whatever stake you support the trunk with, it goes all the way to the bottom of the pot, otherwise you might get a hinge effect that breaks the trunk at ground level. Wrap the end with the pot first, with enough tape to make sure the dirt and moss won't move. Then wrap the whole thing.

Whichever way you choose, the main dangers are dehydration and breakage. By using something damp around the roots, supporting the trunk with something solid, and wrapping the whole thing with enough plastic to pad it, you should be ok.

I just got a shipment of potted plants from Edible Landscaping that were very well packed. These were not full-size trees, but the general idea should apply. They were shipped in a large, long box with one plant at each end. The pots were bagged, with lots of packing tape holding the bag over the top of the pot at the base of the plant, and then holding the plant into place in the box so it couldn't slide. Each plant had a bamboo stake to which it had been carefully tied with soft ties at 3-4 different places to make sure that no foliage was broken. The medium inside the pots was very wet, not dripping, but soaked through, as if the pots had been immersed in water and then left to drip out thoroughly before packing.