Planting Bare Root Plants

Plant your new purchase in a hole deep enough to accommodate the roots well without bunching or crowding them. Cut off any broken or badly misshapen roots. Be sure the level of the root flare begins at the soil surface when you are done. Planting too deeply is a slow death sentence for trees and shrubs. Refill the hole with the soil you took out and water the plant in with the soaking solution. Don't add "goodies" to the hole. Research has shown the putting the "goodies" on the soil surface as a mulch, rather than in the hole causes the new roots to reach out for them. Otherwise, the roots would remain in the hole with the "goodies" creating what is called the "flower pot effect". The roots need to reach out as quickly as possible both to anchor the plant and to establish drought tolerance. The best "goodies" for mulching new plants are compost, composted manure and chopped leaves. Don't fertilize newly planted woody plants until their second season.

From here on the care is the same as any newly planted tree or shrub, but there is one last caveat: don't prune the new plant. The conventional wisdom was that the size of the top had to be cut smaller for the limited roots to support. The new wisdom from the latest research shows that the parts you would cut off, the younger growth, is the easiest for the plant to bud from this spring. Cutting it off makes it harder for the plant, not easier as it tries to establish. Of course, you should still trim off any broken branches, but leave any shaping it will need until the next dormant season, not now. Another piece of conventional wisdom that has bitten the dust, is that new trees need to be firmly staked. It is now known that if they are staked this should be done loosely so that they plant can sway with the wind. This is the signal to develop good anchor roots. If they don't sway, they don't develop good anchors. Remove any staking after six months.

If you think this is too tricky for you to try, consider this: at many local garden centers, some of the trees and shrubs you might buy growing in a pot later this summer were planted in that pot by the garden center this spring, shipped from cold storage just as

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