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| Looking for some insight on what you guys would do. I put my order in this last winter for peaches, plums, and pluots. I had already started my raised beds last year for my peaches so as they came in they went in their permanent homes. The area I was planning for my plums and pluots wasn't ready so I purchased RootMaker in ground mesh bags, dug out an area on my hill side 15x40 and planted the remainder of the trees (about 3 feet apart). Well since I'm in zone 5 and my hill side is about 10-15 feet below street level and freezes pretty hard during the winter I was hoping to have them out of there by fall and in their permanent home. Life has since gotten in the way and I haven't even begun to start the (2) 5x40 retaining wall structures for them. I need to find some way of over wintering them. I was hoping that I could dig them up and store them in the garage until next spring, then replant them again. Any thoughts on how I can do this? |
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| That kind of depends on how you store them and how cold your garage gets. John S PDX OR |
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| Thats sort of my question. What is going to be the best way of storing them? My garage I don't think is going to be a huge issue. Its gets to around freezing, but only 2 times last year (with our CRAZY weather) did anything ever really freeze in it. It does stay cold however. I'm thinking that I can get the trees as close as possible and then cover them. But if anyone has any suggestions please let me know!! I want to start on my plan now before the weather really starts to turn and its too late. |
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| No other opinions or suggestions? |
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| A garage that stays cold but doesn't freeze hard is ideal for over wintering. You could hold in place with some insulation (like leaves piled over the roots) but that invites voles and such to take up winter residence while dining on your trees. |
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| thats what I want to try to avoid. Plus the area where I have my temp plantings is in a city easement. There has been talk about coming in at the middle of Fall and start to do work on the area. Since I have them in the RootMaker mesh bags do you think I just dig them up as is and store them on plastic? I had thoughts of wrapping the sides of the mesh bags in plastic to hold moisture and treating them like a potted tree when overwintering (cup of water every now and then to keep moist). If that doesn't sound like a good idea then what other ideas would you suggest? |
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- Posted by nyRockFarmer 5A (My Page) on Tue, Sep 9, 14 at 12:25
If left outside you could wrap a fence around to make a cage. The more space between tree and cage the better. Fill the cage with dry leaves collected this autumn. Oak leaves would be best since they don't break down easily. This protects from sun scalding and occasional extreme overnight lows, but is less effective for sustained lows over several days. Being near a thermal buffer and wind break, such as a building , could help with that some. Temps just below freezing in the garage shouldn't be an issue at all. The bigger issue is keeping them minimally hydrated. You don't want want them to be continuously wet, especially when there is cold spell that brings the garage down to freezing. The other issue is keeping the garage cold enough so they don't come out of dormancy earlier than you want. Depending on the specifics of the garage, it could get too warm in late winter from increased solar radiation on the garage. Obviously, you don't want to heat the garage to work in it either. Unfortunately, everything is circumstantial. Some methods work great until there is unexpected conditions that fall outside the norm. I did nothing to protect my first trees in their first winter. It should have been fine, but we had 2 major ice storms in late winter that each deposited around 1.5" of ice in the trees. There was significant tree damage, but not as much as feared. Ice storm like that are rare and we had two within weeks of each other! It was my initiation to to war with nature. |
This post was edited by nyRockFarmer on Tue, Sep 9, 14 at 12:27
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