It’s bareroot planting season
NOVEMBER has always been the traditional start of the bareroot planting season. Bareroot plants, as you may have ascertained, have no soil on their roots. Sorry, no points for that one. In fact bareroot planting used to make up the major planting season with most nursery stock being grown in open field conditions.
Today for our planting convenience and for the extension of the selling season for nurserymen virtually every plant is available in pots and containers.This allows planting all year round and with our wet winters when soils can become unworkable this is if truth be told a boon.
But I have always loved the bareroot season. Its a time of muck and mud when you can lift a bundle of 200 plants in your arms or pick up a 10-year-old tree with one hand. It’s real horticulture and gardening in an era when cranes are used to lift mature containerised trees into place all to hide a neighbours gable wall. You could plant a whole woodland of barerooted sapplings for the same money.
That said planting or moving large trees is not a new phenomenon, as Sir Henry Steuart, a Scottish landowner, was at it in the 19th century when he was said to ‘move fully grown trees around his parkland like milk churns’.
He claims to have never lost a tree and never to have paid more than 12 shillings to move one. He also never staked a tree as it was so carefully reinterred that it wasn’t required. So accomplished was he that he wrote a book on the subject and his methods were copied here in Ireland. He continued the practice all his life, or a least until it began to cost him more than 12 shillings.
Us humble more spartan gardeners can still expect to buy a good sized barerooted tree, nothing near the magnitude of Sir Henrys, but one that will still make an immediate impact in your garden and not break the bank. Any thing up to 15 feet high with a girth of around 6 inches should transplant well as long as it is a species that is suitable.
Beech, birch, Nyssa and some flowering dogwoods need at least to be rootballed in these larger sizes. These trees will need well staking and tying however and you are probably best using two three-inch-round stakes with a cross support on which to strap the trees trunk.
It is not only tree that are available bareroot. Shrubs, roses and even perennials are supplied in the winter soil-free, although the selection of varieties available seems to diminish year on year.
Whatever you are buying barerooted, the rules of looking after your product remain the same. Most bareroot plants will be supplied in a plastic bag tied at the top or sealed, don’t buy anything that is laying around in the open air. Once purchased open and check that the roots of the plants are damp, if they appear dry spray a little water on them, barerooted plants should never be allowed to have their roots dryout .
Next check if there are any damaged or broken roots if so you can root prune these to just above the damage with a clean secateur cut. If you are not planting immediatley reseal the bag.
Ideally bareroot plants should be planted as soon as possible, leave for no longer than a couple of days in the plastic bag. If you can’t plant for a longer period than this it is advisable to heel the plants into the ground i.e. bury the roots in soil or with herbaceous plants you can compost over them. When it comes to planting trees and shrubs plant to the depth of the existing soil mark, with roses bury the graft union about two inches below the soil level.