Storing, Planting,
and Establishing
Arrival
Your plants have been in the mail for a little while. They are really tough while dormant, but generally they are ready to move on from their experience with the USPS.
The main dangers you are trying to avoid are the box heating up and/or the roots or plant material drying out irreversibly.
Ideally, open your package as soon as you can and start tending to your plants.
Realistically, if you can’t get to your plants right away, try to find someplace cool and dark to store them for now. A fridge can be great if the package fits, just don’t let them stay in so long they dry out.
Everything will be wrapped in plastic, with moist media all around roots and plant material. Remove the plastic when you’re ready to get everything situated.
For plants, either soak them in a bucket of water for a while (usually not more than 24 hours unless the water is aerated) or put them in a pot with some media and give them some water. Same thing would apply to root pieces for propagation.
With hardwood stem cuttings, the simplest thing is to get them in the ground as soon as you can. If you can’t do that right away, wrap them in plastic (to prevent dehydration) and stick them in a fridge with a little moist media.
I’ve switched to aged leaves as packaging material for shipping, so it is not critical to get this media off your plant material before going in the ground (whereas with my old sawdust packaging material it was very important before going in the ground). Ideally, the aged leaves will be washed off prior to planting.
In fall you have a lot more flexibility with timing as the plants are asleep and staying that way for a while. In spring the plants are more vulnerable as they are certainly starting to wake up, moving water up their stems and starting to break buds.
Holding Onto Plants Until Planting Time
If you cannot plant right away, a great option is to heel your plants in outside. All this means is you dig one big hole and put all the plants in it, and then cover the roots with soil. Lightly firm everything in place and you’re all set. Here is a link to a quick video showing the process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfN9sVVDlfs
Plants can be stored like this for a long time, even over winter (I store many plants this way), so if they stay like this for a week or two until you can plant that totally acceptable.
You could also store plants in a suitably sized pot filled with soil, compost, or potting mix. However pots are much more susceptible to wild temperature swings, so they should ideally be stored in a place where the temperature is more stable, like an unheated garage or basement. Realistically, as long as pots are in contact with the ground they will probably be ok even if they are outside.
Planting
Plant everything out as soon as you can!
For trees, shrubs, and herbaceous perennials, dig holes a little bigger than the plant itself to make sure you can spread the roots out naturally. Trimming a few roots is ok, especially if one is way longer than the others. Ideally you’d remove a bit of the top (in woody trees and shrubs) to compensate if you do trim roots.
Try to plant at the right depth, on woody plants you’ll generally be able to see the change in color from the roots to the stem, on herbaceous perennials plant them under the soil so they won’t pop out, but not too deep so that the stems can’t pop up.
Personally I put rocks back in the hole unless it’s something extreme, that way I don’t send them flying through a window with my lawnmower (email me to find out how I know).
With root cuttings and and stem cuttings, check your orientation!! You don’t want them to be upside down!
There should always be a node of buds on top and a section of stem below, and that pattern will repeat to the bottom of the cutting. If you’re holding your cutting and it starts with a section of stem, it’s almost certainly upside down!
You can also look for buds pointing up.
On root pieces I’ve either oriented them by having a slanting cut on bottom and a flat cut on top, or just included a tag with an arrow marking the orientation. If you lose the orientation, plant them sideways.
Check out this video for the full process on starting hardwood stem cuttings https://youtu.be/0y2NtndwA5E
Protection
*** Remember to protect your plants from predators! ***
In nature, the vast majority of plants never make it through year one because they get eaten at ground level. One of our tasks as cultivators is to protect plants when they are so vulnerable, similar to protecting our infants.
Guards made from hardware cloth or welded wire fence can be really durable and offer great protection when pared with a stake. Plastic tree wraps can be a great easy option for single stemmed plants.
Obviously plastic is not an ideal material, however I think there are arguments to be made that establishing trees is a worthwhile application of the material, and that the good done outweighs the harm of the plastic. Email me and I’ll gladly get into it.
I’ve had great success during the growing season by making an organic homemade repellent spray to stop deer and rabbits from eating plants. In a 5-gallon bucket, smash a dozen eggs, a head of garlic, extra hot cayanne and 32 oz of yogurt and mix it all in with 5 gallons of water. Let it ferment for a while, then strain it and spray it on your plants, ideally on a sunny day so it can dry. I’ve never used this spray for overwintering plants, but in theory it should work well.
With that said, there are a number of simple yet sophisticated ways to protect young plants, without physical guards or sprays, using context and guilds. See Edible Acres on youtube for ideas http://www.youtube.com/@edibleacres.
Establishment
Establishment is kind of a vague term, so I define it as the period of time we are working towards getting a plant to be independent, that is being able to survive in some form if you did absolutely no more interventions.
Monitor your new plants during spring and summer!
Keep them hydrated, but don’t over-water so the plants end up under-water. Watering is all about balance. Remember that both roots and microbes need a combination of air and water. Roots breath oxygen, and roots grow into the air in the soil with the help of water, they don’t grow into the water in the soil with the help of air.
Reduce root competition by weeding. Reduce light competition by mowing, scything, or carefully weed whacking.
Mulch does wonders by buffering the transition between the atmosphere and the soil. Mulch your plants!
Generally recommendations to not over mulch come from concerns surrounding grafted trees, where mulch surrounding the graft union introduces fungi that destroy the sensitive graft. Most shrubby plants love a lot of mulch, and I like to graft my trees high to avoid this concern.
In Closing
I really enjoy having this nursery. Thanks again for your support, and I hope one day we can meet and get to know each other better.
Feel free to send me pictures of how your plants are doing!!
Good luck to you and your plants as we work towards a world with a deeper connection between humans and plants.