Selling trees with bare roots – that is, roots with little or no soil on them – has revolutionised the fruit industry and made it easy for people to plant anytime in the winter.
If there is one word in horticulture that I can’t stand it is dormancy. We’re told to do such and such a job on the tree when it is supposed to be dormant, as though it was hibernating, a strange sleep while it is too cold to grow. The truth is that deciduous plants, those that lose their leaves in the autumn, are not dormant at all, they are simply saving nutrients and water during the winter, a period when it is too cold to make the process of photosynthesis a profitable exercise.
In fact, all plants are doing something, even the dead ones! Most deciduous trees are growing internally, layers of tissue-producing cells called cambium are busily dividing – producing the wood that will expand in the spring to make the tree bigger.
The real benefit of deciduous trees is that you can do all sorts of things to them and they won’t drop dead so long as they have no leaves. As soon as leaves appear, the tree has to be left alone with its roots in moist soil for the rest of the spring and summer. This is because it’s the leaves that act as a heart, pulling moisture through the plant from the roots and in turn forcing sugar-rich sap to all the other parts of the plant. Once the leaves are gone, water and food movement slows to a trickle and the plant switches into winter mode.
Bare or ball?
There is a difference between bare-rooted and ball-rooted trees. The former usually come in a plastic bag which has the tree branches already pruned and bare roots in the bottom – sometimes wrapped in moist newspaper. Ball-rooted plants come with their roots in a net
Bare rooted fruit
This time of year is the best time to plant bare rooted trees of all kinds.