[jspash]

I'm curious what HN thinks about the current trend of root washing when planting trees. From what I've read the science is still out and people tend to be split 50/50.

The root washers say that by removing all media that the sapling was grown in will give the roots more "incentive" to move into the native soil and thus it will establish quicker.

Whereas the anti-washers say you are slowing the establishment by washing away the helpful microbes as described in the article.

Then there are the people who say, DO wash the roots, but save the water. Plant the tree bare-root, but fill the hole with 50% of the saved water, and use the rest to top-water over the next few weeks. The idea is to get the benefits of bare-root planting along with saving the beneficial organisms.

The reason I ask is that my yearly tree just arrived in the post and I've yet to put it in the ground. I'd love to know what the current thinking is.

[hinkley]

I buy bare root plants because tree nurseries repot their seedlings too late, after the roots had already begun circling the pot. The worst one I ever saw had three layers of circling roots. I got it at my favorite froo-froo gardening center. I took it back and showed their plant buyer. He said that's normal. The fuck it is.

Bare root plants never have this problem.

There is definitely a tendency of trees to behave as if they are in a pot when they encounter a huge change in soil medium. The dead tree I dug up this spring had virtually no roots outside of the original cone section of the pot it came in.

The other problem, especially with bushes, is they often put those little plastic time release fertilizer beads into their soil mix and so I'm putting microplastic into my yard. Often the roots are too fibrous to get all of the beads. I sometimes get the smaller plants because of this.

I don't actually 'wash' though, I use a chopstick to tease the dirt away from the roots. They're still coated.

[tastyfreeze]

I recently received a camellia sinensis (tea plant) from a nursery that was root bound. That wasn't much of an issue. The problem I has was the nursery was required to drench the soil in bifentrhin pesticide. First thing out of the box is a warning to wear gloves and keep kids and animals away from the root zone. No thank you. I have been cultivating an environment for the critters in my yard. I regularly have frogs, toads, birds and occasional deer and bear in my yard. No pesticides allowed! In this case I did wash the roots and repotted in my home soil mix.

Bare root plants do sometimes have issues getting started but I will only be ordering seed or bare root from now on.

[MetallicCloud]

I'm not a gardener at all, but it shouldn't be hard to figure out, should it?

Get like 9 of the same plants at the same point in the life cycle, wash 3, leave 3 and do the 50\50 for 3. Compare results.

If it's as big a deal as people make it out to be, it should be obvious, no?

[jspash]

In theory, yes. In practice it would require me buying 9 trees and waiting for 3-5 years to see the results - and i'm getting old ;)

But I do like a good experiment! And my neighbours garden is quite bare. Now you got me thinking...

[thomasfromcdnjs]

Haven't transplanted many trees at all, and there are probably a million factors.

A little rule I follow is;

If the plant already looks quite unhealthy, I prefer to just put it as is straight into the ground, feed it and water it. It will take longer to recover but I believe it minimises the risk of outright killing it.

If I get a very healthy plant, I will play around with it more, slice its roots, rinse it out, make a soil mix for the new roots etc

This is completely speculative but the best results I've had so far.

[sgt101]

I think that washing the roots and planting the tree without damaging the roots is a really hard trick to pull off.

I think that you don't want the rootball to be limited to the old pot outline, so opening it up a bit gently (so a few shakes and a little digging around) and encouraging a bit of a spread of the roots is the best way to go.

You might incentivize the tree, you might kill the tree... I don't think that this is a good plan :)

[speexmex]

Just wash half the roots?

[senectus1]

probably not a stupid idea. might try that going forward