Planting with Bare Root Stock is a Win-Win-Win

By Susannah Wood

While March can be cold and forbidding, the month officially kicks off spring and rouses us out of dormancy. Many of us start thinking about our yards and gardens in earnest. The Norfolk Nature Alliance is organizing a year-long effort to promote planting for pollinators in gardens and yards in town, big and small, but there are some drawbacks to relying on the more familiar sources of native plants. Buying a lot of potted herbaceous plants, or forbs, and shrubs can quickly get expensive, while trees with a root ball wrapped in burlap (known as B&B trees) are even more costly due to the heavy equipment and operators required to dig, ship and often plant them.

There are other concerns as well. Very few nurseries in the area promise to provide potted plants that have not been treated with pesticides by the wholesale supplier. The majority of nursery plants are sold in plastic containers, which are not recyclable at the town transfer station. Due to their bulk, weight and heavy doses of fertilizer, container plants are much more costly to prep and ship and come with a pretty high carbon cost. In addition, the soil and root balls may contain Asian jumping worms, an invasive species that threatens our forest ecosystem. (See Norfolk Now, June & July, 2024)

The bare root method has many positive benefits beyond no jumping worms and a lighter carbon footprint. When planting B&B trees, gardeners often plant the tree too deeply because the root flare is obscured by soil. With a bare root specimen, the root flare is plain to see. With trees in particular, bare root planting significantly improves the chance of success because they have so many more roots, especially the fine surface roots essential for water uptake. A study at Cornell found that bare root trees had 200 per cent more roots than the root systems of B&B trees due to the difference in harvesting methods. All types of bare root plants will tend to be healthier and grow faster than their potted versions because the roots come into direct contact with the local soil and its microbial life as soon as they are planted. A number of online nurseries offer bare root stock for planting. The right times to get them in the ground are just when the soil has thawed in early spring while plants are still dormant or later fall, when they have dropped their leaves and become dormant. The key is to be ready to plant as soon as the shipment arrives or to be able to store them with damp wood chips or potting soil in a cool location, such as the north side of a house or a cool garage, until you can get them in the ground. The nursery will provide explicit directions as to how “wake” the plants by soaking their roots and properly settle them in their new home.

Below is a list of a few nurseries that offer native bare root species appropriate to our area and a link to a Cornell flier on the bare root method, which lists a variety of trees according to relative success rates as bare root transplants.

Cornell Flier

http://hort.cornell.edu/uhi/outreach/pdfs/bareroot.pdf

Amanda’s Native Plants

amandasnativeplants.com

Elmore Roots

elmoreroots.com

Prairie Moon Nursery

prairiemoon.com

Cold Stream Farm

coldstreamfarm.net

Natural Communities

naturalcommunities.net