How Deep to Plant a Bare Root Crandall Currant

General Fruit Growing
1

20220521_111029
20220521_1110291920×2560 1010 KB

How much of a plant like this should be buried underground? The branch that hugs the trunk before branching away made me think it was maybe underground to there. Online searching has not given me any answers. Thank you!

2

Is that bark around the top of the dirt broken all around?

This plant may be a goner.

3

Sadly, without a doubt this plant is definitely dead. The photo is from removal last year.

I would like to try again, but saw a bare root crandall from another nursery and it looks similar. It is unlike any other bareroot plant I have ever received. Are they really tall sticks with tiny roots? Or a really long tap root with no sides roots?

4

The one on the picture looks like a poorly rooted cutting. If the same plant was from seed you would see something more like you expect to see. If it was a properly rooted cutting you would see a whole lot more roots. And fatter as well.

My guess is that whomever tried to root it did so with the cutting having green growth, as in too many leaves. When rooting a cutting it is imperative that the plant uses it’s energy to establish roots. If it has green growth it will divert energy to keep that alive at the expense of not building up a root system to support it. The result is either a dead plant or one that is stunted for an entire growth season while it sorts itself out.

1 Like
5

Bummer! Both nurseries were reputable ones from the growingfruit.org list. I thought maybe Crandalls just grew differently since they are not “real” currants.

So I (and anyone else) can learn from my mistake, do you think I should have planted at about 1/3 the way up between the branching top and bottom? I did closer to 9/10ths! - right below the two tiny upward branching sticks on the right hand side that are darker colored in the photo.

6

I suspect this was actually a root sucker (‘Crandall’ is not easy to root from cuttings). It was probably removed from the mother plant with a little bit of root attached, but then sold on too quickly without first giving it time to recover and develop a stable root system.

2 Likes