I just bought some new peach trees at a local nursery that were sold as bareroot. They were growing in loose dirt. All of them are flowing, with no green foliage yet. When i pulled them up, i put them directly in to a garbage bag with water in it. Its also a cool, wet day. I took them directly home and planted them. I was wondering if i should expect them to take right off, or be stunted back for a few months.
They should be fine. That’s normal procedure in CA. I’ve planted them showing leaves and they did fine. Keep them moist but not wet which here would be watering about once a week or less depending on weather.
1 Like
Jimmy you and I will learn at the same time. I just did the same with three plum trees. The two things I did was plant and secure the plant from movement. My opinion is that a tree needs some movement but not until it gets settled in. Good luck, Bill
Last year i did the same thing, but i wasnt careful about keeping the roots wet… at all. I thought it was fine because the roots were only dry for a few hours. Now i know that dry roots are measured in minutes. The trees quit growing for almost the entire summer. I attributed it, at the time to moving them while they had foliage, but now im sure it was because i let the roots dry out. They perked up at the end of the summer and put on some growth and now they are totally fine
It really depends on how much stored energy was expended on hair roots when you allow them to dry and die. Here, if a let my healed in peach trees linger long and they are fully leafed out when I get around to planting them, I do lose almost the whole year. Your trees should be fine in any case- I agree with FN on that. Of course, everything hinges on the level of stored energy in any given tree and any energy wasted will reduce the new growth a certain amount. It’s probably impossible to save those fine roots no matter how careful you are.
Plums, at least Jap. plums, are more resilient than peaches, and can suffer more root loss and still provide decent growth on the same season.