But was wondering how do you bare root, root-bound potted trees you may buy before planting in-ground? Or is it even worthwhile to do for getting better growth?
Some of these trees I buy are massively root-bound. I use an awl to pick some roots loose, but it would be a tough job trying to get it all loose like a bare root tree.
Also…
A lot of the root-bound trees I get are not dormant. They may have leaves or buds forming to open. Would bare-rooting a tree with leaves be advisable?
Ill take potted plants and turn them upside down then run my fingers through the roots, intially doing what looks like a tickling motion lol to loosen up the intial dirt then slowly untangling the roots and bring out the long ones without tearing fibrous roots.. Sometimes ill take 5 mins doing this on 1 plant. Opening them all up undoing crossed roots. Then water with rooting hormone powder or willow water. Sometimes 80% of the soil falls out but i never pre rinse. Its good to keeolp soil attached to the inner roots i believe, but the outer ones, im untangling by hand. Its extra work but i enjoy it.
Bog’s advice is good, but most fruit trees will recover if you just pull out the biggest roots on the very outer part of the ball and spread them away from the trunk- you can even use rocks or landscape fabric staples to hold them out away from the trunk before filling in with soil. In fact, with apple trees, most of your new root growth may originate from the crown and the tangled mess rapidly becomes irrelevant to future growth.
In all my years I’ve never seen a single fruit tree killed by girdling roots and apples seem to weld to them from trunk to root so damaging girdling may be impossible. They graft together and become one, in other words.
@alan For me (in the little experience i have) it depends on the root growth. If there are barely any roots visible ill just separate and spread out a few big roots that are visible(if any). If there are tons of roots ill open up the big roots and spread, sometimes even trim but taking care to leave any fibrous roots… never disrupting the inner rootball either way. Thats the 20% of dirt i was talking about in previous post. I leave that be. If there are only fibrous roots visible ill tickle the soil with my fingers gently and loosen up the roots on the outside with finesse only losing maybe 5-10% of the soil, 20% at max and most of that is coming from the bottom portion of the soil not attached to roots.
Yeah I do something similar to what alan described, just tease out the worst of the circling roots on the outside and get them pointing outward. Never bothered going further than that and haven’t lost a tree to it yet. The really root-bound ones look scary but they seem to sort themselves out once they’re in the ground with room to grow.
for really potbound plants/ trees i take a sheetrock knife or my pocket knife and cut a x on the bottom going in about a inch, then its quicker and easier to pull the roots apart and the plant recovers very quickly.
I’ll dunk the root ball vigorously in a tub of water and it works off the potting soil pretty well. Then you can untangle the roots if you need to, but more importantly inspect the roots. If there is an obvious root disease lurking in there then I’d like to know it.
My main experience is with my nursery trees that have been growing for 2 years of more in 25 gallon pots after placing them there as pretty big trees I’ve sized up in in-ground bags. I set the containers in soil to encourage escape roots anyway, but I still get circling roots within the pots. I end up with potted trees with some bare roots that are spread into the soil when transplanted… this speeds their establishment and allows them much better access to water much sooner. However, I don’t want to disrupt the fine roots in the potting mix more than I have to so trees don’t stagger when transplanted.
I’m far from expert on the very best ways of dealing with potted trees that are completely contained within the pots.
@alan I never really disrupted roots in potted plants until i received a bare root plum tree from stark bros that had its roots cut back so much it was crazy, barely anything. I thought it would die but it ended up being the most vigorous tree in the garden. Every plant is different and some are more sensitive than others, but im less careful with young plants roots overall.
I think the most helpful thing is watering any plant with homemade willow water or rooting hormone powder the first month after planting.
It helps to understand that there is lots of generative energy stored in whatever roots are left and probably nearby trunk, I bet you are talking about a Japanese plum which on myro is the most vigorous species I grow, though some varieties more than others.
I got a tree like that with just a few short, larger roots from One Green World. Maybe cutting a tree’s roots, supercharges the tree somehow. I will see what happens to the OGW tree. Planted it 3 weeks ago and it is growing.
