- Are you that gardener that's looking for a beautiful backyard oasis with some gorgeous trees and that luscious peach?

Well, you might be walking into a nursery thinking, oh my, those trees are way too much for me and my budget.

But if you're not looking to spend that much and you don't have those strong arms to lift up those trees, let me introduce you to my friend, the bare root tree.

Sure, it's a little skinny stick, but I promise you, with a little bit of love, this tree is gonna become lush, productive, and produce fruit for you in a few years.

But before we begin, I wanna give a shout out to our amazing sponsors, Merit Medical and Red Butte Garden.

The best time to buy a bare root is generally in the fall, knowing that it's going to ship sometime in the early spring of wherever you are.

For me, I'm in zone 7B, and that is in March.

Now, before I get into planting this beautiful thing, we're gonna talk about the benefits of why you may want to go with the bare root.

It's generally cheaper.

Now, when I'm talking cheaper, I'm talking like 30 to 50% cheaper.

So that garden oasis is actually a reality.

Another great benefit of bare root trees, you get varieties that you're not gonna find at local nurseries, and it's less of a carbon footprint because you're not using all the plastic, all the materials, you're straight up getting a twig with some roots on it and plopping it in the ground.

When you get those big, beautiful trees, that pot is enormous and it's hard to move, and it's intimidating.

For me, I find this easier.

There are a few cons.

Some people have more peace of mind buying a tree in a pot that's all leafed out so you know that it's alive before you plant it, right?

So that can be a con, is that you're getting a stick.

The next thing is you don't have all summer to decide where am I gonna put this tree?

And you gotta plan ahead.

You need to order that tree most likely in the fall, and then you gotta be ready for it and remember about it when it comes in.

For me, March.

You need to put it in the ground A-S-A-P. As long as I've been talking, I've been soaking, it's been like three hours.

You actually want to soak your bare root tree for three hours to maximum 24 hours before planting, just getting this tree nice and hydrated before it goes in the ground.

I am looking at my roots and I'm gonna determine, okay, how big do I need to make this hole?

Just kind of giving a little map out of where I'm gonna dig.

So I'm going about two feet wide, and I'll go about two feet long Right here a lot of times you'll see fruit trees, they are grafted, and right here is the graft.

This root stock is actually not a dapple dandy.

This part, the scion is the dapple dandy.

Especially on fruit trees, you wanna make sure you plant this correctly.

You're gonna plant right at the base, right where the flare is.

Time.

Time to set that to the side, and let's dig ourselves a hole.

And notice I'm not gonna go terribly deep because the roots not terribly deep.

Now, this ground is pretty saturated right now.

Because it's so saturated and I have a big winter storm coming in in about three hours, I will water this, but not as much as I generally would if I were doing this on a nice sunny day.

I would probably water on a slow drip for a good, solid, slow drip, slow, slow, slow drip for a nice hour.

All right, so I'm gonna look at that.

Maybe a little deeper.

Well, here come the chickens.

Hi chickens.

Hi ladies.

When I've put my shovel down, especially when the ground's wet, I'm basically making a basin, an alternative cement in some form.

So I wanna rough up those sides a little bit to help my tree penetrate in the soil when those roots start waking up from dormancy.

All right, here we go.

Let's see how we're looking.

Beauty.

Make sure it goes up nice and straight, straight and tall.

Okay, I'm gonna put just a little bit of soil right down here just to hold it in place.

Now I'm just gonna backfill this thing.

I got some very non-helpful helpers coming in.

Okay, ladies, move out, move out.

Okay, so I'm just making sure that my flare of my tree is going to be exposed, that the roots are going in different directions, it's not just going in one clump.

I'm gonna do a little back filling on this.

Look how easy it is.

Oh, when I plant a bare root fruit tree, I'm gonna be chopping this thing down.

You're gonna be shocked.

And because of that, oh man!

And because I'm gonna be chopping it down so much, I typically don't stake my fruit tree.

I also will wrap burlap around my trees that are young for about three to five years in the winter or right before winter, just to prevent from sun scalding.

Some people like to do it now, it depends on how harsh your sun is.

The other thing that I'm now looking at my chickens and hoping that they won't do is I'm hoping that they won't dig and scratch and knock my tree over, but I might have to put a cage to protect my tree this year because of these guys.

Okay, so I'm gonna look for my root flare.

I'll probably pull it up just a little bit, make sure it's all planted.

Then I'm gonna give it a little stomp down, make sure I have that flare exposed.

Give it a stomp and I'll do a little bit more back filling.

So I'm just lightly tugging it up, making sure it's planted deep enough, but also exposing the flare that is needed for the tree to be successful.

Tree is planted.

Got a little bit of a flare.

Another big thing to note is I did not put any amendments on this.

And honestly, my soil is good enough that I'm not concerned about putting amendments.

If you are concerned about it, do not mix it in with the root ball.

You can put it on the top and let it slowly seep in.

Remember, this tree is just waking up in a new place, a new location, and you don't wanna shock its system.

You want it to blend in and move in the soil naturally.

So by putting the amendments on top, it will slowly release and seep down into the soil correctly.

The other big thing to note is, again, I know my soil really well, but if you don't know how well your soil drains, I highly recommend digging that hole first, pouring water into it, and make sure that the water's gone within 20 to 30 minutes max.

If it stays there longer, find a new location for your tree 'cause it's not gonna live.

And now I'm gonna do something that is going to make you cringe.

See this beautiful tall tree?

Are you ready for this?

I'm looking between my thigh and my knee of where I want to snip it.

And yes, I am going to take it that low because I want my fruiting area from here up to the tips of my fingers.

I want at least four and a half, five foot fruiting range.

So I'm going to find a bud and from there, are you ready for this?

It's kind of scary.

Don't cut where the graft is.

Just kidding.

Here we go, ready?

At a 45 degree angle.

Oh, timber.

Okay, and that's it.

I planted my fruit free.

I'm gonna wait for these branches to come out.

I'll look for four nice lateral branches.

Once spring hits, I'm gonna say adios to this part of the stick, and I planted my fruit tree.

This is why I haven't staked it or need to stake this because it's so short already.

Another great thing about when you prune your fruit tree or any tree, what you're doing is you're forcing those sugars that are up in here and they're shooting messages down into the root system, saying, get strong, grow some fantastic roots, and send out some branches.

Now, there's a lot of information that I'm just gonna briefly glaze over, but you need to look this up.

First off, is your tree going to fruit in your location?

So if you're getting a fruit tree, especially like the apples, some of the plums, the pluots, you need to make sure it's not a self fruiting tree, but it may need a cross pollinator.

I have a pluot that will pollinize with this grate along with an apricot and a plum.

If I didn't have those three trees and I just put this in the ground by itself, it's not gonna give you anything.

You're not gonna get any fruit from it.

You're just gonna get a beautiful tree.

Next, sun.

Does your tree need sun?

Yes, so I do.

Okay, make sure that you get a full sunny location.

Don't be planting a fruit tree in some shaded spot and expect fruit.

Uh uh.

Generally, if you're wanting fruit, you always need to have it in a big, sunny location.

So when we're talking about location, you wanna make sure that you are putting this tree where you can walk around and prune it correctly in all the spots, especially when it gets big.

You're not going to run up into another tree, or worse yet, don't be that person that plants the fruit tree right next to your fence line and all the fruits drop into your neighbor's yard.

The other question I would ask is, does it need a certain amount of chill hours?

This tree needs at least 400 to 500 chill hours.

Now, that doesn't mean that every tree does, and you need to figure out if your area has that amount of chill time.

Thanks so much for watching this episode about bare root trees.

See you next time.

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