Easiest Way to Plant Bare Root Trees!! 

Yeah, mulch around the tree. Not growing grass.

I've also heard a lot of differing advice from different sources. So far I haven't fertilized my 2 newly planted plum trees. My biggest dilemma is to fertilize or not to fertilize. Directions which came with my trees said not to for the first few years, but a video from university of Santa Cruz said to top dress with granular fertilizer & compost. They also said to make sure the graft union is facing north, which I didn't know at the time & didn't do that. Now I'm wondering if I should go out top dress my new trees or not?

I think it can vary on the kind of tree you plant, like for adding compost, for my slender silhouette sweet gums, the advice was not to because if they grow very fast already and adding compost will only accelerate that, which can result in the top splitting into two columns instead of remaining a single column, which is the desired asthetic, but for my white oak tree, the advice was to add compost because it is very slow-growing and the roots want to grow before the top, so without compost accelerating that process, the white oak may not be established enough by the time winter comes to survive, or even if it does, the next year, it may not get established enough to grow leaves until July or August, meaning that even if it survives, it can set the growth back two or three years by not composting. The same goes for roots-- some trees have roots that are more prone to rotting than others, like if you have a tree that thrives it wet or even soggy soil, like a willow, overnight would be good, but if you have a tree that prefers loamy, well-drained soil, like a maple, then you'd only want to soak the roots for a couple of hours because they don't like to stay wet as they can quickly start to rot. The same for grass as some trees grow lots of surface roots, like maples, and would compete with grass that first year or so, while other trees grow deeper roots systems below the grass, like zelkovas and fruit trees, and so won't and the grass will actually help the underlying soil regulate and retain the ideal amount of moisture-- the thing to be careful about grass, though, is weed-whacking, because unless you put a guard around the trunk, you can easily kill the tree by weed-whacking around the circumferance of the tree and damaging the thin, tender bark all the way around, which cutting through the bark in a complete circle around its trunk is a death sentence for any tree, regardless of age.

@@benjaminharman1987 Great point you shared about protecting tree trunks to anyone who may not yet be aware. Earlier this spring when I had planted my own trees I protected their trunks by mulching each new tree with approximately a 4 ft. wide circle of mulch and also added very low height decorative fence around the outer edge of each mulch circle. This way there's no danger of mowing or weed wacking anywhere near our new trees trunks, plus It looks nice too.

dress it with a few inches of wood chips every year@@Earthy-Artist

How is it going? I have 6 pawpaw's coming in the spring. I really ordered them as an impulse buy while ordering some birch trees. Now I'm way more excited for the pawpaw's though. Lol

Latest science shows a very large, shallow bowl is the best approach for bare root. As deep as needed, three times as wide. Gives the roots lots of lateral soft dirt to grow into and accelerates time until fruit.

There's snowshoe hare and meadow voles around my place by the thousands. They have never touched the fruit trees I planted, funny. 11 trees and ten bushes so far.

From my 45 years of experience, you have been extremely fortunate. Many times over the years people have shown me young fruit trees that they believed were killed by deer browsing, girdled two to three feet up on the young tree. Close inspection of the tooth marks showed rabbit, vole and mouse damage. Deep snow gets those critters high off the ground. I experienced the same thing in my orchards before I started using tree protector/sleeves. Again you have been extremely fortunate. What area of the country do you live in?

Phil.Paula Stocks I also had moles/mice/deee strip new fruit trees as well.

Deer will eat any new growth on fruit trees they can. I've had an older apple tree almost killed by a moose and one of my cherry trees was almost eaten completely. Deer don't girdle a tree, they eat the growing tips of the branches.

Dead

I'll never remember that! Lol! 😂

Just make sure you have a plumb plum tree. haha I crack myself up....

I don't think this lady knows that much like she think she does about this matter. Most of her tips were already listed as common knowledge online, although she didn't offer much. Many professional growers put the tree higher than the ground level to promote drainage, and their trees grow very vigorous and produce hard-to-grow fruits at a respected level. They don't have to use a level to measure like she did ( I know she wanted to demonstrate to the viewers, but still). A layer of organic compost at the bottom of the hole would help too. She didn't cut back the dormant tree 's top, although that was recommended by growers, and her tree's top was very dried up. Cutting back the dormant tree would encourage the newer grow. The dried dead part could also a risky for disease and the top competing for nutrients while the small tree's root system hasn't yet established, Put back the grass is also not a good move. Even if the tree's roots are deep enough, so the grass wouldn't compete for water and nutrient with the tree, but later on they will become a problem when you want to add fertilize of any kinds. I have seen many YTers with tremendous knowledge, yet they remain humble enough to not begin their video clips with " Today I'm going to teach you ". I don't know why the internet has this clip in the front section when searching about bareroot tree's planting.

The broken grass turf upside down will just compost as time goes.

We order ours from Stark Bros. We've had good luck with them.

+oddo pops Yes.