How To Store Bare Root Trees

Digging blank root Japanese maples for later potting.

These are rules for excavation trees and other plants.

1. Only dig trees or plants when they are fallow. Here in Ohio dormancy occurs ordinarily correct before Thanksgiving, subsequently we've had at to the lowest degree on dark with temps down around 28 degrees F. or lower.
2. That's when digging season begins, and for us it commonly ends virtually the third calendar week of April in the spring. One time the plants start to make leaves digging and transplanting flavour is over.
3. You tin not dig a plant that has leafed out or has actively growing leaves on it.
4. The size of the root brawl you dig is based on the caliper of the trunk, measured six″ higher up ground. For every one inch of trunk caliper you lot should accept at to the lowest degree 11″ or 12″ of root ball.
5. Bare root trees like you lot see in the to a higher place photo can not be left out in the open up similar that for very long at all.
6. The blank roots should never be allowed to freeze while exposed to the air. Of class they freeze in the ground, but that'due south unlike and information technology does not damage them. Merely if they freeze while exposed to the air they will be killed.
7. They can not dry out. One time dug they demand to be heeled back in and watered as quickly as possible. Anything more than an hr is not good and less than that is fifty-fifty amend.

What to do with them until potting?

Bare root trees heeled into my potting soil pile until we can go them potted.

All I do dig into the potting soil pile a bit, put the trees into the trench or opening that I've fabricated, place them root ball to root ball, then I cover the roots with potting soil.

Happy, happy Japanese maples, quietly waiting to be potted.

In one case they are heeled in like this there is not a great bargain of urgency to go them potted as long as the roots stay moist. Of course the sooner you pot them the sooner they become established into the new pot. Merely if they leave out while in this holding identify that'southward non an result because any root impairment was washed when they were dug. Potting should not exist a traumatic experience for them.

I also sometimes shop plants under ground, especially if I am going to take them over the winter and it's too cold to get them potted. This video shows my first secret bunker.

My first secret bunker for storing plants.

Interestingly plenty when I congenital this bunker I drove dorsum into the brush and bramble at the back of the nursery and said to myself, "This is perfect, this is far enough dorsum that information technology won't interfere with annihilation."

Wrong, I had to fill up information technology in or else it would be in the middle of my at present parking area!

And Here You Tin Encounter My New Underground Bunker.

My new Cloak-and-dagger bunker.

Questions, comments, mean things to say? Post them below and I will reply. Until then, by any and all means stay inspired!

Source: https://mikesbackyardnursery.com/2021/01/digging-and-storing-bare-root-trees-for-later-potting/

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