Bare Root Tree Planting Advice

Hi Permie People!

My husband and I are receiving a large order of bare root fruit trees for our front yard edible landscape/food forest. We will be able to put some trees in the ground right away, but it will likely take a couple of weeks for us to get to all of them.

Do any of you have suggestions/advice/tips for successful bare root planting? Also, have any of you had success with keeping bare root trees alive and well while waiting to put them in the ground?

Any advice from any experienced tree planters out there would be greatly appreciated!

Happy Spring! (Happy Autumn to you southern hemisphere folks!)
Christopher

I don't have enough experience to offer advise, however, this thread may be of help until the permie experts can comment here. https://permies.com/t/73837/Bare-Root-Tree-Planting-Strategy

Thanks, Joylynn!

The best way to store bare root trees is to heel them in, that is dig a trench, lay the roots into the trench (trees will be leaning severely), cover the roots with the excavated soil and water well.
When you are ready to plant simply bring out the ones you will be planting and leave the rest.

Alternately you could pot them up like a nursery would do but that takes enough pots to do the job.

Redhawk

Our local nursery keeps them covered with damp straw for a while as they sell them.  Last year I had a one week delay between arrival and planting so I put mine in a cool dark place with their roots covered with damp straw and moss and they were just fine.  I think the idea is that you're trying to keep them dormant until you plant.  So cool/cold, damp and dark are probably good.  Warm, sunny, dry or soaking wet is probably not.

Bryant RedHawk wrote:The best way to store bare root trees is to heel them in, that is dig a trench, lay the roots into the trench (trees will be leaning severely), cover the roots with the excavated soil and water well.
When you are ready to plant simply bring out the ones you will be planting and leave the rest.

Redhawk

I love this suggestion! I was hoping for a way to avoid potting them all up. Thank you so much!

Mike Jay wrote:Our local nursery keeps them covered with damp straw for a while as they sell them.  Last year I had a one week delay between arrival and planting so I put mine in a cool dark place with their roots covered with damp straw and moss and they were just fine.  I think the idea is that you're trying to keep them dormant until you plant.  So cool/cold, damp and dark are probably good.  Warm, sunny, dry or soaking wet is probably not.

Great advice! Thank you! :-)

what the soil like where your planting them  ?
i add compost till the soil has some structure and a little fruit tree fertilizer that has mycrioza in it
then head back or prune depending on the size of the roots so there even.

The best thing about bare root trees is that you get to start the roots off in a good direction. Don't dig a perfect circle of a hole (make it have a lot of rough edges), and don't be afraid to handle the roots fairly roughly to point them in different directions away from the tree. Beyond that, I think the only suggestion that really makes a huge difference is fencing! That is if you've got deer / voles / bunnies around.

Two weeks should be easy to keep them alive. Heeling them in would be best, but mostly jut don't let the roots dry out.

I've been putting bare root trees in a bucket of wet sand when I can't get to them right away.  It's still pretty cold here so there's no dormancy breaking happening outside in wet sand.  Warm weather would probably be a different story, but hopefully I'll have everything planted by then.