Cal,
What kind of tree?
An evergreen or conifer?
In any case, the answer is yes.
Plant in the fall.
Mulch well.

"In any case, the answer is yes."

That is incorrect. In quite a few cases, the answer would be a definite NO! It depends on the particulars, which we don't yet know in this case.

I read a science report on tree roots a few years ago where they found out that tree roots grew as long as the soil was as least 5C/41F. That was ulmus glabra but I guess that is about the same for other trees.

its getting late for root growth in z5 ... as soil temps fall at root depth [it has little to do with air temps] .... but that isnt the issue ...

the issue is whether you will have a greater chance of killing it by leaving it in the pot ...

overwintering pots is not easy in the great white north .. and i have killed a lot of stuff trying to do such and i have what some might call.. experience ... lol

plant it.. and let ma nature take care of it.. and it should be all set to go.. when the ground thaws in spring ... as compared to severely stressed if not dead by that time...

see link for planting guide.. lets discuss bad clay soil if you have it

never forget.. ITS A TREE... NOT A BABY ... treat it as such.. plant it ...

ken

Here is a link that might be useful: link

The key points are what condition a tree (including its roots) is in at planting and what weather occurs between planting and establishment. Likely in this instance the winter buds were set some time ago and establishment, with roots extending enough distance into the soil to keep the top fully hydrated will not happen until next year. Even if existing, uncut roots may manage a little dribble of growth during the winter (for all practical purposes there isn't any). So if you plant it outside now it will need to be a really hardy kind that won't mind freezing up without having a good grip on the ground.

USDA 6 is the coldest zone where routine fall planting of less than hyper-hardy stock is possible. The general custom of planting bare-rooted stock in spring only is presumably based on the fact that bare-rooted plants are effectively partly rooted cuttings, the feeder roots killed by the bare-rooting operation not starting to be restored at all until the winter buds open in spring.

Species make a difference as well. Here, we've found, for instance, that Freeman maples do poorly when fall-planted. Lindens seem okay. Most very "fleshy" rooted trees, magnolias, Liriodendron, do poorly when fall-planted here. Species and location must be factored in to come up with a reasonable answer to this.

Finally, the placement of mulch can be of use in any fall planting, helping to mitigate the cooling of the soil, to a degree, perhaps two.

+oM

Ditto what +oM said.

I try not to plant marginally cold hardy Acer palmatum type trees in the fall. I figure winter is difficult enough on them anyway and when the big trees are stressed they are not as cold hardy.

Okay, so here's a conundrum-at least in my mind-to the whole planting in the spring versus fall thing: Some specimens are potted, some are B&B, and of course, some are bare-root. Now if we remove the bare-root from this discussion-I think we can all agree bare-root needs to be planted when dormant, whether spring or fall depending on species/location, what difference does it make whether an already-potted plant goes in the ground now in the fall, or spends another winter in the fairly unnatural condition of being in a pot, then getting planted in the following spring? See what I'm getting at? Same could be asked for B&B. The disturbance to the plant has already happened when it was dug and balled/burlapped. How does it better the plant to remain heeled in in a nursery bed somewhere rather than "heeled in" into soil where it has been planted? Now with potted, we all know that significant further disturbance to the roots may well be necessary to unwind/untangle, but what of B&B?

Then there are the species for which it doesn't seem to matter at all. My first exhibition of this tendency would have to be Thuja occidentalis: We have moved fairly large 6-ft) plants in mid-summer. The move seemed to have had zero impact on the plants. It just doesn't seem to matter-if the ground can be dug, the plant can be moved. Somewhat similar is the way things like spruce can be dug in mid-summer in some areas, having gone into a semi-dormancy.

The again, maybe I just like the word 'conundrum'.

+oM

During a multiple species study of tolerance of tree roots to air exposure little-leaf linden apparently could be left sitting out of the ground bare-rooted nearly indefinitely and would still grow. The least tolerant kind was sweet-gum.

Since balled in burlap stock has usually been in pots before being lined out in a field the use of it does not avoid the root deformity pandemic.

In each case it needs to be judged whether the plant will be worse off planted with mauled roots in fall or sitting in a pot all through the winter. The annual elongation in fall, replacement in spring schedule appears to be a more or less general behavior that does not vary enough among hardy plants to be held up as a significant factor. As far as fleshy rooted subjects go, for instance, I once moved a Dawson magnolia during summer, after the shoots had matured but while it was still in full leaf, then dug it up again later, again before the fall leaf drop. At the time of the first move there was no remarkable root activity visible. But when dug up again there was an explosion of roots out of the original ball and into the surrounding soil, producing a marked increase in the size of the root mass. Showing, again, that when the shoots stop growing and set winter buds the roots take off - with fall in this context being whenever a tree reaches this condition, be it July or November.

I find it very hard to apply the "root elongation" rule. When I'm ordering plants, I need to know the month to do the ordering. Without knowing what month different trees do the "root elongation" thing, it isn't terribly helpful. It would be great if someone could make up a chart based on zone or species.

I think considering where the tree would be if it WASN'T planted is important, particularly if you already picked up the plants on Fall Clearance. Pines tend not to like living inside as houseplants, semi-tropical plants often do. I find in order to survive OUTSIDE in a pot a plant has to be able to survive one full zone north of your zone. Pines and Blue Prince holly can overwinter outside in pots here, Rose of Sharon and American Holly can't. (Even though they are fine in the ground.)

Another thing to consider is how early you could realistically plant it in the Spring. If you buy trees mail-order, when do they ship? When does the ground cease to be too muddy to plant in? If you are buying plants from North of you or have a lot of snow melt and spring rains that interfere with planting, the trees could easily miss the Spring rains or it might be too muddy to plant them until after the trees are out of dormancy. For that matter, one problem with buying trees by mail order is dormancy at the shipping location may not be the same as dormancy where you are. A lot of plants are grown in the South and may be out of dormancy earlier then your local plants. Planting mail order plants in the Fall lets you take plants that are dormant already and put them in the ground where they don't have to wake up for a while.

I've had problems spring planting bare root American Persimmon. One never "woke up" and one didn't wake up until late summer. Afterwards I read online that bare root American Persimmons have trouble waking up from dormancy if stored in a refrigerator for any amount of time.

I find I have a far higher success rate with potted plants then bagged and burlapped or bare root. Yes, yes, they are root bound...but you have more fine feeder roots and much more flexibility as to planting time. Even after I rip the root mass apart I still have way more feeder roots then with a good bare root tree.

I have a lot of luck planting potted plants in October in Massachusetts, zone 6. I usually plant my Christmas holly after Christmas..Blue Princess usually survives, Ilex opaca usually does not.

I did hear someone say bare root shouldn't be planted in the fall.

This post was edited by edlincoln on Fri, Nov 7, 14 at 11:55

When a given specimen of the same species stops making top growth and sets winter buds will vary with the situation, right in the same area.

I did here someone say bare root shouldn't be planted in the fall.

Bare root stock is not likely to be readily available in fall or in time for fall planting. It is only harvested after the plant in question is fully dormant, usually well into late fall or early winter. Bare root stock that might be available earlier could very well be held over (in cold storage) from the previous season, which is not at all desirable.

in my, much warmer zone (8a), we're advised that fall is the best time for planting, because it gives time for the roots to develop.

"We" by which I again mean the local urban forestry dept. plant roughly 1000 bare-root trees each fall, and an equal number in the spring. When we get our stock in the fall, it has been dug that same fall. I would not vouch for these plants being fully "dormant" in that many still have foliage, in varying degrees of senescence. Yet the vast majority-not all-still survive.

I don't know how it goes in the retail world, but wholesalers are shipping stuff like mad in the fall. We've learned, mostly through our own experiences, which species work in the fall. But I can assure you, these are not plants coming out of the cooler.

+oM

Hmmmmm......must be a regional thing - earlier dormancy in colder climates? Even in my very mild climate where planting can usually be done throughout winter, bare root stock is not available until late winter. All the larger wholesalers of bare root stock here - Carleton, Ekstrom, J. Frank Schmidt, Bailey, JLPN, etc. - harvest in early winter for late winter delivery. Bare root stock is simply not available until January at the earliest.

I once did a mass planting on a local estate of a hardy Floribunda rose cultivar because the family had seen it used that way along freeways in Germany. The supplier was offering discounts to customers taking the plants in the fall instead of the spring, when asked about this I said it should be okay. As luck would have it the coldest weather of the year came that November, right after the planting was completed. There was significant die-back, presumably because even though this was a more cold tolerant type the stock was nevertheless in a bare-rooted condition. As I remember it I also didn't have time to mulch before it froze up, there wasn't enough mulch to put on more than a superficial coating, something like that.

This post was edited by bboy on Thu, Nov 6, 14 at 18:50

Stock is coming from S Wisconsin and New York. Sure could be differences from place to place-we've done a lot of fall planting for so long, I just got used to it being a thing.

Hey, speaking of bare roots, don't Schmidt and all the big guys in Oregon ship bare root stuff on open flatbeds? I don't know why I think that-must've been somebody told me they saw this or I read it somewhere-but open trailers of trees and shrubs going down the road!

+oM

Cal, I have been a grower of containerized Trees for many years for Bower & Branch. I want to provide you with some very practical advice based on my personal experiences over the years planting my own trees at home as well on the nursery.

I prefer to plant in the fall and I am have and will continue to plant trees as long as the soil allows me to do so. Over the years, I have had more failure planting in spring as compared to fall. I know that roots do grow late into the season in most years and I know that the tree benefits far more than not from fall planting.

Plant today with confidence. Most trees will benefit from this and I have seen and experienced potentially higher risk in the spring than in the fall overall. Container grown Trees make Fall planting even more successful.

wisconsitom, what trees do you find work particularly well when planted in Fall? What would you stay away from?

I have thought it would be good to mail order bare root trees from some place North of you in Fall...there would be more time between them going dormant and your soil freezing. Unfortunately, the only place I know that ships are root trees in the Fall is way south of me.

> Container grown Trees make Fall planting even more successful.If you don't have to cut the roots at planting due to deformities caused by careless container culture - and you get the tree in early enough that it roots out well. Otherwise, there is little advantage to fall planting or using container stock - the key difference is that the fall planted stock establishes enough to be less susceptible to summer drought than spring planted stock, which does not make as much root growth because there is new top growth drawing on stored energy in the stems and roots at the same time.

And the plant has low energy reserves because it has just gone through a winter.

Soil conditions are also less favorable to root growth in spring than in fall as the soil is in the coldest and wettest (where there are heavy winter rains and spring snow-melts) condition it will be of the whole year.

Nevertheless healthy stock (condition of plants at planting is critical to the subsequent outcome) shouldn't be dying outright because it was spring planted, when that happens some major aspect of the operation has not been accomplished.

In zone 5 close to nothing unless you have an exceptionally mild late fall/early winter.

These are just general observations in my zone.

Conifers - July/August
This is why they aren't typically harvested in fall but rather July.

Trees - August/September

Shrubs - September/October

I begin fall planting in August and wrap up late September. Sometimes planting a plant here or there in October, avoiding zone 5 plantings all together in October. What does get planted in October gets "limited" root correction. Then full correction in March/April when the soil thaws and is workable.

September and April are the ideal planting times here.

Soil will be frozen by end of next week.

Got 8" lemon plug 6 weeks ago. Need to grow roots?mycorizza added to soil still need Roots?

very cryptic tina.. and has absolutely nothing to do with this old post ...

try the citrus forum ... or maybe even the fruit forum ... and try to add some words i between those above.. to help readers understand a bit more...

ken