I pull circling roots free and spread them into existing soil when transplanting, sometimes holding them outstretched with staples or rocks before covering with soil. This helps them quickly establish those fine roots in new soil and increases a trees anchorage immediately. Woody roots are loaded with stored energy used to generate new fine roots- in the most common conditions soil periodically dries out during even fairly short droughts and the fine roots die. The bigger roots have a nice waterproof “skin” that allows them to survive except under extreme drought conditions. The richest top few inches of soil is the first to dry out so there is frequent cycling of fine roots there.
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I had 7 acres of irrigated large caliper hardwoods and evergreens growing either from bare root (McMinville TN), or liners from various sources.
The link here is a way to plant in and above ground without the roots circling. They also sell a “pot liner” designed to go into a container, plastic/wood, that is stripped away for shipping and tree/shrub can have soil removed for bare-root shipping with a water spray washing.
These work, have 150 apples in 2 gallons this year in-ground. Been using these for over 30 years, they work. Take a look at the root system without pot binding. It takes a bit more work planting but the results are worth the effort.
I am narrowing my market to local or on-farm sales next year so these whips will remain in the fiber bags with soil. I haven’t tried potting with liners on a gravel pad, but if it works as the bags do, no worries going to bare root.
Those look to be the bags originally designed by Carl Whitcomb, who tried to start a company to sell them, but OSU sued him because he developed it on their dime. He developed another bag so he could sell them and it lets more root out of the bag which means it tears up more roots when you transplant them, but also that in my NY climate they don’t require irrigation to grow trees in my nursery- the black bags do.
His company is called Rootmaker, so if you want to reward the inventor or just have a bag that requires a lot less water to produce trees (where it rains during the growing season, anyway)- check it out.
https://rootmaker.com/
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The bags look similar. These have been in use here since 1985. You know what a bradford pear rootball looks like, big roots with not much secondary. I took some apart to check and the bag did produce more root mass than without. The oaks were about the same results.
But the dogwoods with their fiber root system were impressive in the bag and were a breeze to pop out of the ground. The apples have a similar rooting system to the dogwoods.
The bags would improve with top twine in digging/shipping. I overhead watered back then when it was required.
I started using them in the '90’s but the black felt-like bags require drip irrigation to thrive here through short droughts. I switched to the bags Carl owns the patent on and the first year he sold them the manufacturer used the wrong thread- apparently cotton. The thread rotted and my nursery at that time was in a clay loam making digging up the trees bare root almost too much work to be profitable. I have since refined bare root nursery culture and it is more profitable for me than using the bags. I sell a lot more root when I sell them bare. My soil now is a light silt-loam. If I place some painter’s plastic sheeting about a foot down, it captures extra rain water and keeps roots shallow enough to make digging pretty quick. I do get a premium price for fruit tree varieties unavailable elsewhere in decent size.
Contractors often prefer a tree with roots in some soil, however. The majority of my trees are planted by me, at least most years, so that doesn’t always matter much, but I always grow about 40% of my nursery trees in grow bags. I sell less than 200 baring age fruit trees a year, so I’m talking about a small operation- but I can sell them to contractors in small quantities for up to $300 per for a 2.25"-2.5" caliber tree.
Last fall someone sent up a big truck from N.CAR. to pick up about 70 of them. Loading them about broke my back.