Foggy mornings, cold nights, and soggy ground - that means it’s a perfect time for planting bare-root trees and shrubs! Our first shipment of bare-root berries and shrubs have already arrived, and our bareroot fruit trees will all be coming in over the next few weeks. This is a great time to start putting together your 2022 edible landscape wish list.

Bareroots, for those unfamiliar with them, are dormant plants (generally fruiting trees and shrubs) that are sold with exposed roots. We hold them here at the nursery in bins filled with soil, to keep the roots from drying out. When you buy them, we dig them out, pop them into a plastic bag, and you’re on your way! And although bareroots look a little…unimpressive…at first glance, there are a lot of great reasons to consider planting a few this winter.

              Selection: You’ll find the biggest selection of fruiting trees and shrubs of the year during bareroot season - ranging from nut trees (walnut, pecan, and pistachio) and hard-to-find food plants like quince, jujube, elderberry, and currants; to a larger selection of sizes (dwarf, semi-dwarf, and full-sized) and varieties of fruit (four kinds of strawberries, four kinds of grapes, ten kinds of peaches and three persimmons!).

              Price: Because these are bareroots, nurseries have a lot fewer costs invested in them: no containers, no soil, no fertilizer - and they haven’t spent months (or years) caring for them as they’re growing out. Those savings are passed along to the buyer, and they can be significant.

              Mid-winter is a great time to plant: It might seem counter-intuitive, but this is a wonderful time for planting trees and shrubs. The ground is moist and plants are dormant, so plants are far less likely to go into transplant shock than they are during warmer and drier times of the year. In addition, because the ground is soft, tree-sized holes are a lot easier to dig!

              Getting to the root of it all: Plant roots are amazing structures: they hold plants in place, pull water out of the soil, and store the nutrients plants need to grow and be healthy. And root structures are incredibly variable. Some plants produce lots of thin, fibrous roots; some rely on a long taproot; and others have root structures that branch as widely and intricately as the above-ground part of the plant. And yet, we rarely get to see them! This is probably the only time you’ll have the opportunity to see the whole plant you’re working with. And that can help give you a better understanding of what your trees and shrubs need in order to grow and thrive.

There are just a few things you’ll need to keep in mind when planting bareroots, in order to get your new plants off to the best start possible:

• Try to get them planted within a few hours of getting them home. Your bareroot plants are dormant, but they’re not indestructible. If you can’t get them planted immediately, make sure you keep roots from drying out between the time you bring your plants home and the time you get them planted. You can keep them moist inside the plastic bag for a couple of days, but it's best to heel them into some soil or moist bark if you can’t plant them right away.
• Hold off on fertilizing your new plants until all risk of frost has passed. Fertilizing too soon can push leaf growth before their roots have had a chance to get established. In addition, new leaves are thin and tender and can be killed by late frosts.
• It is best to prune back the branches of your bareroot tree.  You want the top of the tree to be more in line with the root system.  This will help give the roots a better chance at supporting what is up top. 
• Please feel free to ask us questions! The staff here at Shooting Star is happy to help you with suggestions about the best varieties to plant, how much space your plants will need, and what pollenizers (if any) your plants will need in order to produce fruits. We can even give you a few simple pruning suggestions to get you started on the right foot with your new plants.

What do figs, pomegranates, persimmons, almonds, peaches, apricots, and grapes all have in common (aside from being delicious)? They’re part of a group we like to think of as “the Fruits of Persia’, as they all originated in the Fertile Crescent region and figure prominently in Persian cuisine.

 

  

 

When we plant berry bushes, we look forward to picking handfuls of luscious berries all summer long. To achieve that, it's best to get your pruning and cleaning up of your berry patch done now. I love late winter for pruning- most leaves have dropped so you can see what you are doing and nothing is actively growing so no damage is done.   

 

 

LEFT PHOTO: Here is a 'before' photo of a blackberry patch that has been in the ground for 4 years or so. Notice there is a lot of growth from the previous summer.

Prune out the dull-colored, more hollow stems that fruited this past summer, and any small scraggly stems. Choose 3-5 main, healthy new stems that were the new growth from this past summer. These will be green in color. Train them up to be your fruit-producing canes for this summer.  

RIGHT PHOTO: Here is what it looks like after removing the spent canes. It's actually fairly simple to prune blackberries once you know what to look for.