How to Plant Bare Root, B&B and Container Trees + Pros & Cons

Emily Mumford from Davey's South St. Paul office shares the scoop on bare root, balled and burlapped (B&B) and container trees, including the pros and cons of each and how to plant them effectively. 

In this episode we cover:  

• What are bare root trees? (:53) 
• How to plant bare root trees (3:18) (4:42)
• What are container trees? (6:14)
• What to do if your container tree has girdling roots (7:21)
• Additional planting tips for container trees (11:10) 
• Pros of B&B trees (12:54)
• Planting B&B trees (14:53) (15:31)
• How do you decide which of the three trees is best to plant? (16:06)
• Emily's career journey (17:42)

To find your local Davey office, check out our find a local office page to search by zip code.

To learn additional tree planting tips, read our blog, Tree Planting Guide: 3 Methods of Planting Trees or watch our two-part YouTube video series, How to Plant a Tree: Part 1 and How to Plant a Tree: Part 2.

Connect with Davey Tree on social media:
Twitter: @DaveyTree
Facebook: @DaveyTree
Instagram: @daveytree
YouTube: The Davey Tree Expert Company
LinkedIn: The Davey Tree Expert Company 

Connect with Doug Oster at www.dougoster.com. 

Have topics you'd like us to cover on the podcast? Email us at podcasts@davey.com. We want to hear from you!

Transcript

Doug Oster: Welcome to the Davey Tree Expert Company's podcast, Talking Trees. I'm your host, Doug Oster. Each week, our expert arborists share advice on seasonal tree care, how to make your trees thrive, arborists' favorite trees, and much, much more. Tune in every Thursday to learn more because here at the Talking Trees podcast, we know trees are the answer.

I'm welcoming back to the show, Emily Mumford. She's an assistant district manager for the South St. Paul, Minnesota, Davey Tree Office. Emily, welcome back to the show. I'm excited about our topic, comparing bare-root, potted, balled and burlapped trees. How are you?

Emily Mumford: I'm doing really well. Thanks for having me back. How are you?

Doug: I'm doing great. I'm excited about this topic. We've touched on it during the podcast here and there, but this'll be nice to do a deep dive on it. First, just start off explaining what these three types of nursery stock are.

Emily: Sure. I'll start with bare-root trees. Bare-root trees are grown in the field, and then they're dug up. All of the soil is wiped clean from them, and they're overwintered in a humid, cold storage area. When you go to purchase them, you see the entire tree all at one time, the rootstock fully, and the tree. They're very light and easy to handle. Because you can see the entire root system, you know exactly what the planting depth should be when you're planting them.

A big con with them is that you have to keep the roots moist. Because they're exposed, the soil around them isn't keeping it wet. If you're not able to handle them right away by either planting them right away or heeling them into mulch or gravel, you can have a high mortality rate with bare-root trees.

Doug: Do you use bare-root trees often in applications where you're working?

Emily: Bare-root trees are often used commercially because you do need a little bit of extra handling. You need a method of keeping everything moist. You can buy them in bulk, and they're really affordable. Looking at, say, you're getting a one-inch diameter tree, you can get it for $40 a piece. You need a tub to put it in, or you need a refrigerated box to keep it in, to keep things moist. It's a little bit more difficult for a homeowner to handle and do successfully.

Doug: It sounds hard commercially, too. Let's say, would you order 100 of those, or would you only order 5 or 6 for a certain property? How would you normally do that?

Emily: Before working for Davey, I did work for a municipality. We would pre-order 700 bare-root trees from Bailey's Nurseries, which is actually located here in the Twin Cities. We would get them shipped to us in a big semi-trailer that we could control the temperature of. Then we would keep them watered pretty regularly with a misting system in the container, and we'd go out and plant.

Doug: Before we move on to the other two and what they are, talk a little bit about planting a bare-root tree. I think from a homeowner's standpoint, it seems scary. It's like there's no dirt on there. Boy, if you don't keep that moisture, you're in trouble. You've got to know what you're doing. How do you plant bare-root?

Emily: If you're a homeowner and you wanted to do this, you could go pick them up at the nursery, have some wet burlap just for transplant to get them back to your property. Then you could immediately heel them into a mulched area or gravel area to stage them until you are ready to plant each one. That way, you can keep them moist. Heeling refers to a temporary planting location, like covering with the mulch or the gravel. It's not permanent.

Doug: How long could you heel something in? Would you want to get it in the ground as soon as possible?

Emily: I would say so. It's best to do it in the spring. Some people will do a full gravel bed system. You can take those bare-root trees and put them in these temporary gravel beds. There, you can keep them and grow a complex root system over about three months before you plant them.

Doug: Bare-root, you say, is best spring-planted?

Emily: Bare-root is best spring-planted unless you have a gravel bed system or something like that to take care of them throughout the season. Yes.

Doug: I'm digging my hole twice as big as we think those roots are going to go. How am I deciding the size of the hole? Do I have to have special support for bare-root because it doesn't have dirt on the roots?

Emily: For any tree planting, I would say you should dig your hole one and a half to two times the width of the root system that you have just to work with the soil and address some potential compaction issues that might be present. One of the cons of bare-root trees is that they don't stand up very well on their own, so you will need to stake. I say that's a con because there's a lot of bad things that can happen with staking. The tree can grow dependent on the stakes or the material that you use for staking can girdle up the stems of the trees. You have to be vigilant, watching that staking system and take it off when it's ready.

Doug: When Davey arborists have been here, I think they use something, I think it's called ArborTie. Does that sound right? Is that the stuff?

Emily: Yes. ArborTie is great because it's a flat strap, so it's less likely to girdle up the stem versus twine.

Doug: I guess if you're looking for a tree that would be hard to find at a nursery, shipping bare-root would be cheaper than certainly buying something in a 1-gallon container and having it shipped.

Emily: Yes, absolutely. Bare-root are definitely the most affordable option. Like you said, if you can get it shipped, you could have a lot more options available, too.

Doug: Okay. Which one of the three do you want to talk about next?

Emily: Let's move to container.

Doug: Okay. We know what that is. We see those every time we go to the nursery. Do you use a lot of those?

Emily: Yes. Container is great for those one-off tree purchases. We do sell a fair amount of tree planting for our customers. We'll go to the nursery and pick out the one tree that the client wanted. We're able to transport it to the site alone, plant it. Everything's successful. You don't need specialized equipment because they're a little heavier than a bare-root tree, but usually one or two people can manage the container. There's a lot of pros with that.

There's also a lot of root system in the container, so you're less likely to have some transplant shock that you would get with some of the other options. With that, there's also some bad root growth, which I'm sure you've talked about on the show as well, potential circling or girdly roots.

Doug: When we have that circling, it's also scary for homeowners to get in there and trim away. Is there a way to explain what we should be doing if we knock that out of that container and we see the roots are all spinning around in there?

Emily: Yes. If you take it out of the container and you've got roots that are the size of a pencil, diameter of a pencil, or thicker, they're darker, they're woody, and they're circling around the outside, you need to cut them off. Even if you pulled them out straight and laid them straight, at that point, those roots are big enough that they'll have memory, and they'll want to continue to grow in a circle after you've corrected it.

The University of Minnesota actually has done a good amount of research on this. They do a box-cutting style, that's what it's called. They cut off each side of that container root ball. It looks like a box when you're done with it, but all those roots are severed. As long as you've kept the soil moist, once those are transplanted into the soil, the ends of those severed roots are ready to grow again.

Doug: You've got to be brave to do that, Emily.

Emily: Yes, it does. It feels like you're going to kill the tree by cutting those roots. It does. In that study that I've referenced with the University of Minnesota, they showed no loss from that system. No, zero trees died from the hundreds of trees that they planted from the box-cutting system.

Doug: One thing that I never thought about that I was taught by a Davey arborist was that buying a tree in a container, sometimes you've got to brush off the top to find that root flare. I always assumed that it would be ready to go from the container. When I saw him do that, and this was a dogwood, and he had to take off a good 2 inches off the top. I was like, "I never thought of that."

Emily: I'm glad you brought that up. That first woody root that comes off the trunk is called the flare root. That flare root should be right at the top of the soil surface or slightly above. In container trees, you do see a lot of buried root flares. Sometimes that's just happening from the tree being grown in one container and then moved to another container as it grows. Then to another before it's ready for sale. You just have this addition of material being piled against the trunk of the tree over time.

Doug: From doing the podcast, that's how I've learned that one of the biggest mistakes that homeowners make is planting that tree too deep, and it could be by accident in the case of a container or a balled and burlapped, but be sure you can see that root flare and it's above grade, right?

Emily: Yes. If you're feeling like nerding out and knowing more about the reason why that is. There are these dormant buds that are underneath the trunk of the tree, and they can be activated for several reasons. They could be activated if there's dieback in the crown above to form new shoots for new leaves. When the tree is buried, those buds get activated under the soil, and they form what we call adventitious roots. Those roots, for some reason, are programmed to grow more circular than a standard root system. That's why you don't want to bury it too deep. That and you could get more decay on the base of the tree as well.

Doug: Wow, that's some good info. I don't think that's nerding out. I like that. Anything else about container trees before we moved on to balled and burlapped?

Emily: Yes. The only other thing I wanted to say, we mentioned staking with the bare root trees. With the container trees, typically you don't need to stake unless you've had to cut off a lot of that or you're in a really high wind area. That can be a little bit better if you're trying to avoid potential issues with staking.

Doug: Let's say that we feel that it has to be staked, that there's not enough root there, or we're in real windy, how many stakes, and then we have to use the right material, how long do you leave it on there?

Emily: It really is variable depending on the situation. When I did work for that municipality before working with Davey, a lot of our sites were in very windy areas. We would do three stakes, three straps, so you have that strength of a triangle, I guess. Two stakes, though, I would say, is pretty standard. Then, on average, a year is normal. Again, if you're in a really windy area, you might need to do it for longer and just have to redo the straps so you're not girdling the trunk. The main thing is you test it. If you move the trunk around a little bit and you're seeing the roots rise up out of the ground, that means that they haven't established, so it's not going to hold your tree up.

Doug: Are you doing it pretty tight, or should the tree be able to move a little bit, or does it depend on the situation?

Emily: Yes, I do try to let them move around a little bit because if you let the tree sway, then the roots will create more stable structures underground.

Doug: Okay. When I think balled and burlapped, I think pros. Big trees with people that know what they're doing to put it in because it's a scary thing for me as just a regular homeowner. What am I supposed to do with the burlap? What am I supposed to do with the cage? Again, I know to keep that root flare up, but how high should it be? Those can be really big trees, too, right?

Emily: Yes. The pros of balled and burlapped trees are you can have a lot more options with size and you can have a lot more options with species. Balled and burlapped trees are field-grown like the bare root trees are. They use a tree spade to dig the trees out. That keeps that soil ball intact around the base of the tree. Then they'll lift it out of the ground, wrap it in burlap, very often securing it with twine and a metal cage around it. They're very heavy, like you alluded to, and it's quite difficult for a homeowner to do that planting method without some specialized equipment.

Doug: When you're doing a really big tree, is it usually balled and burlapped or not necessarily?

Emily: Yes, it usually is. It's hard to have pots large enough to contain a root system without risking some of those circling roots that we discussed. It's interesting, actually, when they do that tree spade process. They can cut up to 95% of the root system off of the tree at that time. The key there is just that those stable structural roots are intact with the soil ball. We talked about that you can have a little bit of transplant shock with the bare-root trees. You can definitely have transplant shock with the balled and burlapped trees as well as they're establishing.

Doug: Does all the burlap come off, or how do you do it when you put it in?

Emily: The International Society of Arboriculture recommends that you remove all of the burlap that you can, because even if it says that it degrades under the soil, research has shown that it does not. That will inhibit root growth. As far as the twine goes, you want to take all of that off as well. The cage, they say, to cut off the top 50% of it, but it's okay to leave that lower 50% of the cage underneath the tree because that's going to keep the soil ball intact.

Doug: Do you put the tree in and then just cut the burlap and pull it out, or you get the burlap off first and then you're putting it in the hole? How does it work?

Emily: Yes, that's a really good question, too. It's not. I would say it's awkward, no matter what you do, even if you're really good at it. Yes, if you are digging your hole two times the size of the root ball, like we talked about, then when you put the tree into the hole, you have room to work with it. Usually, we'll put it into the hole, and then we'll cut and remove everything that we can. Just minimizing that movement after we start removing that outer structure.

Doug: We've talked a little bit about it, but discuss the right place for those three different trees or the right situations for those three trees. How do you decide which one of those three you're going to want to do when you're on a property?

Emily: Yes. I would say a lot of our clients just want the biggest tree that they can get right away because they want to see something beautiful for the money that they put into it, and they want to enjoy it right away. I understand that. If you're doing those one-off trees and you have the right equipment, B&B can be a really good option. Container trees are great. Like I said, as a homeowner, you don't have to worry as much about the trees drying out. You don't need special equipment. It's less likely that you'll have some transplant shock.

The bare-root trees, actually, are my favorite. As long as you're a planner. I like them because I know I'm planting it correctly right away. A lot of times, they are smaller, but they will establish faster after that first year. That's really nice. Maybe people have said this on your show before, but they say for every inch of diameter that the tree is, that's how many years it will take to establish. I'd prefer to plant something correctly smaller and know that it's going to take off quicker within those first couple years.

Doug: I like the smaller ones, too, for that reason, but also because I'm cheap.

Emily: There is that, yes.

Doug: Emily, I know we've talked about it before, but could you remind me, how did you get into this? Why is this job right for you?

Emily: Yes. I had a biology degree. I was pre-med focused, but I went to school actually in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. My main reasonings for going up there was for the little mountains, and the lake, and just being outdoors and everything. I quickly realized that I needed to be in a job that was outdoors. I took a volunteer position with the City of St. Paul after graduating and was doing some tree surveys and realized trees are my thing. I got a job with the forestry department at the city that I talked about. Got my Arbor certification. Then, I was looking to move on, and my forester actually recommended that I apply to Davey Tree, and I did.

Yes, the more that I learn, the more skills that I gain, the different positions that I have. I just love it more and more. I don't know. I said this before, but I feel like you get bit by that tree bug, and it just grows.

Doug: All right, Emily. I'm going to leave it right there. That's good stuff. Thank you so much for educating us on those three types of trees. Like I said, we've touched on it, but, boy, it was nice to really get a great explanation. Thanks for all that information.

[music]

Emily: Yes, thank you so much for having me again.

Doug: Tune in every Thursday to the Talking Trees podcast from the Davey Tree Expert Company. I'm your host, Doug Oster. I need you to do me a little favor. Subscribe to the podcast so that you'll never miss a show. If you've got an idea for an episode, maybe a comment, there's two ways to get a hold of us. You can send us an email to podcasts@davey.com. That's P-O-D-C-A-S-T-S-@-D-A-V-E-Y.com. Or you can click on the link at the end of our show notes to text us a fan mail message. Your ideas might be on a future podcast, and we'd love to hear from you. As always, we'd like to remind you on the Talking Trees podcast, trees are the answer.

[00:20:07] [END OF AUDIO]