I’m super excited to get my Jiro Persimmon and Loring Peach from Ison’s Nursery today. It was packaged and shipped well and arrived quick with the root balls still covered with gel. I opened it right away, as the Fed Ex guy was pulling away from my drive. Can you tell I’m excited?
First question, are bare roots normally cut back this drastically? I assumed there would be more roots to help these guys survive. I’ll be planting today and tomorrow as I want to give them the best odds possible.
Secondly, any recommendations on planting additives to help them survive? And develop roots?
Lastly, I figured I would cut off one scion from the Jiro in order to try to get it to branch. Should I wait to do this until the roots have some time to develop? I don’t want to stunt the growth.
Any and all advice would be appreciated. I’m new to both these types of fruit trees.
It’s fine to cut back the roots quite a bit in a lot of species. It’s better than j rooting, which is when someone plants a bare root plant with a long root system incorrectly, and in a hole too small for the size of the root system, causing the ends of the roots to hook upward forming a J shape. Some nurseries cut the roots way back like this to reduce the risk that a novice will screw up the planting in that way.
If you want to cut some scion wood off the dormant plant, that’s fine, but do it while it’s still dormant. Not after it wakes up.
Thats how Ison’s mostly does it. They hack them small to fit in those boxes then toss them in a cooler for many months.
Just take pics of before you plant them and then if they die take pics of the roots again when you pull them out.
All of the Asian pears i ordered from them had hacked off black roots and all budded and leafed then died. I dug them out and the roots were the same as when i planted them. I gave them the best of care but the roots never came back alive.
YMMV. I had some nectarines that lived but the roots werent hacked and werent black.
My Asian pear I ordered from them last year looked worse than that and never came out of dormancy. I had a bare root apple from them as well that had very sparse roots, but it did quite well, putting in several feet of growth.
I have bought trees from Ison that were not as heavily pruned. There are two concerns with this IMO: First, a tree will store energy for next year’s growth, mostly in the roots, amino acids and sugars, in the form of proteins and starches. Second: you have all these open wounds close to the trunk that provide entry for pathogenic fungi. You should prune the tops and don’t put any nitrogen fertilizer (organic or synthetic) in the planting hole. I would not apply any fertilizer the first year. Really not good practice to cut so much of the roots.
Okay this is probably a no, but is there any benefit from adding rooting hormone to the root tips before planting it. Remember, I am a newbie when it comes to bare root plants. Thx
I don’t think that a rooting hormone does anything, because you got already rooting tissue there. You’d use a rooting hormone on a scion, encouraging it to form new rooting tissue.
