Permies Poll: What is your preferred transplant technique?

I find that transplanting from a container plant tends to get off running faster than bareroot. I won't shy away from bareroot if the thing I am getting is not easily acquired but I do prefer potted plants.

I like bare root because they are easier to ship, work well when planting in the fall (which is when I often plant trees and shrubs), and I think they are easier to make sure you don't plant too deep.

I voted other because any of those methods may work, or not, depending on the plant and situation. I've been doing it long enough to know the differences. I know how to accommodate a plant of any type and when to reject it if it doesn't pass my inspection.  No matter, late fall or early winter is the only time I will plant a tree or other woody perennial with the exception of grape vines, they seem to prefer spring planting.

I prefer bareroot for trees because I haven't seen a potted tree that didn't have circling root bound roots in the pot. For perennials potted is just fine.

If I get a plant in a pot I will wash or rub the soil out and any root knots—or cut them if need be. Then I try to intertwine as best I can with the native soil and water in. This is usually successful for me, and the roots tend to develop more naturally. Thus I chose bare root.

I have also had lots of success with bare root trees. But not from Fedco, I think they sent them in too late in spring—right at the time when I was busiest, and when it’s starting to get dry and so very few of their bare root plants survived. I prefer to get them in fall as a result, and I heel them in until I can plant them.

It's not a brag but just a fact that very few people have personally, on their own, by themselves planted more trees than I have.  There are sixty-foot-tall oak trees in the town where I grew up that I planted. Eventually, I got tired of planting trees with all that digging and watering and fussing; I rarely do it anymore.  It is sooooo much easier and more effective to plant tree seeds. I've planted thousands of tree seeds in the general area where I live now and many of them are thirty feet tall or better.

I guess my actual answer to the specific pole question with the options presented should have been, other - none of the above.

I like the amount of soil I have to move around with bare-root trees.

Assuming this question is not limited to certain members of the plant kingdom, I am choosing air layering. Not because I am good at it, but rather I think it's so ingenious and also challenging. I have had moderate success. It's fun!

Mark Reed, can you please share your methods of just seed planting for trees please? I have about 90 acres, 50 or so of which were logged heavily before I acquired it. I would like to replant from seed oaks, evergreens, maples, poplars, trees that were logged and try to reduce/eliminate much of the brushy privet that has taken over in place of the Hardwoods that were logged. Thanks!

Hello!
I preferred bare root planting, less importation of foreign bacilli etc, potted is less hassle apparently and now I leave most planting to my critter neighbours.
There are many baby trees popping up all over the place, oak, holly, birch, beech, cherry, plum, peach, apple, hawthorn, sweet chestnut, hazel, walnut and I am sorry to those I have missed. Sometimes I comment: well I wouldn`t have thought of planting that there!
The mulberry is not spreading and the pawlonia is sporting loads of seeds for the first time so who knows?
Giddy aunt, I forgot to mention the willow and the invasive ash...... I love them all and I hope that it`s reciprocated.
And I haven`t voted.
Chilly blessings with just a hint of sun, bring on the morels
M-H

Bare Root; Potted; or Balled and Burlapped depends on where I got the trees.

The Method for planting is more important:

https://permies.com/t/160325/Ellen-White-Method-tree-planting

Martha Stephens wrote:Mark Reed, can you please share your methods of just seed planting for trees please? I have about 90 acres, 50 or so of which were logged heavily before I acquired it. I would like to replant from seed oaks, evergreens, maples, poplars, trees that were logged and try to reduce/eliminate much of the brushy privet that has taken over in place of the Hardwoods that were logged. Thanks!

A long time ago I would start trees in pots or in the ground and transplant the seedlings but that got pretty tiresome and if you do that large scale, just planting and forgetting a lot of them don't make it.  I started planting oak, walnut, pecan and hickory seed using a hand shovel fixed to a piece of pvc pipe. Just basically made a crack in the ground and dropped the seed down the pipe and moved on. That also got a bit tiresome after a while, but I discovered when the squirrels got into my stash that a lot of the nuts they stole ended up growing all over the place a year or two later. Then I just started letting them do most of the work. The little town where I grew up and most of the other little towns near the river have lots of large, old oak and pecan trees. There are so many sometimes that I can collect them from sidewalks and parking lots with push broom and a snow shovel. One of my favorite trees is in a fenced yard with a long shed running by the alley. There is no gutter on the shed, so lots of pecans end up in a long pile, easy to scoop up.

Smaller seeds like poplar, maple, apple, pear and so on don't work as well like that, so I still start and transplant them. I've scattered the nut and oak trees all over the state-owned hunting ground nearby and all over back-forty parts of my and my neighbor's lands.  I'm amazed that it really worked but young trees are everywhere within a mile or so of my house and I'm hopeful they will replace all of our wonderful ash trees that died some years ago.

I love those big, sweet cherries from the store and didn't know if they would grow here, but they do. Our own wild black cherries, pawpaws, plumbs as well as adapted wild peaches and pears are much harder to collect in quantity like I do with the nuts and acorns, so I either start them to transplant or spend a bit of time preparing a spot to plant. I never go back to check them, not that I would remember where they are but years later, I see them here and there, especially when they bloom. Actually, most all of those I start to transplant now, I sell at the flea market or farmer's market for a few dollars apiece.

Evergreen trees except for native Eastern red ceder and American holly are much harder to establish in numbers, so I don't mess much with them except for very close by. Holly is actually pretty hard too and ceder just does its own thing. I clone a lot of grape vines, but they of course have to be panted so my range for them is much smaller. I'm learning to clone Southern Magnolia trees which grow fine here but they will just be for my own land and to sell.

I don't know what brushy privet is, but large acorn and nut trees do pretty well in tall weeds and grubby areas. If you can source the seeds and if you have squirrels, you can just dump them out in piles and a few years later you will notice some of your trees claiming canopy space above the shorter stuff. The squirrels will eat some of course, which is their due and some won't make it to crown out above the shorter stuff but if you plant a thousand and five percent make it that's fifty trees. Fifty oak or pecan trees can go along way on occupying fifty acres. Plant ten thousand and you have a forest. Well, you probably won't but someone or something later on will.

I'm convinced overall that my methods, along with being much easier is far more effective at establishing new trees than shoving little bare root sticks in the ground, especially if you have a large area to work on. I think people mostly believe you will get bigger trees sooner by planting trees and that's great for a front yard tree or an orchard but to plant lots of trees, seeds is where it's at.

*I don't think squirrels range very far especially if there is big pile of food in one spot so dump you seeds in smaller piles well-spaced. More than they can eat at once, so they bury some but not too many so they don't plant them too crowded.