When do you buy your trees and bushes?

[jannel]

I find it interesting that here in Finland we tend to buy all out trees and bushes mainly during the spring time, but much less during the fall. And practically all that we have available here are potted plants, only few plants that are planted en masse in the infrastructure places are sold as bare roots. It is weird, since apparently bare rooted plants are sold everywhere before and after summer....outside our country. And somewhere I heard that we did that way way back, but for now the culture is different. I guess people don't know that the trees are NOT dead if there is no soil in the roots.

How do you usually do your buyings in your country/state/neighbourhood, with pots or bare rooted? And when do you prefer to buy bare rooted, spring or fall?

-Janne

[reed]

I think the vast majority of trees and shrubs are sold here in the US in spring because that is when the average consumer thinks about planting. It's completely wrong of course, trees are far better, in my opinion to be planted in the fall.

Transplanting my own seedlings I sometimes dig a root ball and sometimes I loosen the soil and replant basically bare root. If I buy trees mail order I order bare root. Potted are generally not available here in fall. Potted trees again in my opinion are the worse way to do it. Often they were grown to root bound state then up-potted and root bound again. You end up with such a deformed root system the poor thing will never grow well.

Your weather may be such that spring planting of bare root trees might work but in Indiana USA it's the last thing I'd want to do. Fall planting gives time to settle in and root down a little before the hot dry weather arrives.

[steev]

Bare-root trees are in nurseries now, but It tends to be iffy planting them this late, so I like to pot them for Fall planting, so they have the whole next rainy season to get established.

[mskrieger]

Hi Janne,

I prefer to buy trees bare root from nurseries that specialize in trees. It would be ideal to plant in the autumn so the trees can work on their root system in the fall, then wake up in spring ready to go, but it's difficult to find nurseries on that schedule unless they are local--most mail-order places have a spring shipping schedule. If you have a dry climate or a hot spring and summer, you have to conscientiously water the tree or bush an inch every week it doesn't rain that first season.

[steev]

I didn't mention that I pot them up so I can keep them in Oakland, keep them watered, and develop the roots before they go to the farm's rigors.

[mskrieger]

It's also worth noting that some trees and bushes can go into such hard dormancy when bare root that they appear dead, and take a long time to "wake" up. I received blackberries like that this spring. They looked dried and dead, and I stuck them in the ground and they sat for 8+ weeks and didn't do a thing. I almost called the farmer to request a refund, but then they sprouted and grew aggressively like nobody's business the whole summer long.

I'm a huge fan of bare root purchases.

[jocelyn]

We have dry summers now, so I plant in the fall. If it's something I can only get in the spring, I'll buy it and carry water for it.
I'm mailordering a canker resistant butternut graft, and can only get it in the spring. I'll just have to carry water for it.
It's for our woods, to spike the local population with resistance, so there is not hose/tap close by.

[jannel]

Thanks for all the answers! I do feel that we could sell more plants barerooted in our country, other than the infrastructure and roadside plants. Maybe I'll start a specialist nursery .

[prairiegardens]

I would venture a guess it also depends somewhat on what your weather is like. The fall for us in most of Canada CAN mean an abrupt drop to -25c anytime after Sept 1, and it might just stay well below zero for a month or more straight, which makes planting anything somewhat problematic. Or digging them out for that matter. Also, the cost of shipping potted plants for anyone other than the businesses selling meganumbers of plants is prohibitive, so pretty much all nursery stock other than in the big box stores tends to be bare root if it's going to be shipped anywhere, soil is heavy. There is an abundance of people on here who seem to have a somewhat gentler climate, although it does seem as though all zones are getting more erratic. One year in zone three I was planting tulips in mid
November as the ground hadn't yet frozen. So anything can happen!

[coppice]

I order trees in (SE-OH) late in winter, get them some time or another in spring, and transplant them to field in October.