Trees and nurseries

Imagine planting fruit trees any time of the year

Deciduous fruit trees, such as apple, pear, cherry, plum, peach or apricot are purchased and planted in commercial orchards in Australia only as bare-rooted dormant trees.
However, there is no rational explanation why they cannot also be grown and sold as container-grown trees, like citrus.

One of the logistical or production issues is learning how to handle trees that are leafed and growing when planting the orchard, compared to the traditional dormant tree.
Building on the experience and logistics with ever-green plants in Australia, nurseries should offer container-grown fruit trees for orchards as well.
The window of planting bare-rooted fruit trees in winter is small. It is often a rush to prepare the block before the trees arrive and need to be planted, especially when the weather does not cooperate.
If necessary, bare-rooted trees can be cold-stored for a few weeks, but we know that trees perform well when they are planted early in winter and as soon as possible after lifting.
What about transplant-shock?
With any plant, including fruit trees, water must move from the soil through the roots to the tree above the ground and into the air.
This continuum is broken when trees are lifted in the nursery. The shock that trees can get when they lose many roots in the nursery, and then are transplanted into a different soil environment, can lead to poor or no growth of new roots. This is called transplant shock, and is often exacerbated when roots are not kept moist after lifting.
There is also a potential problem when trees arrive in big bundles and are heeled-in somewhere in the orchard or kept in cool storage.
The roots inside the bundle easily miss out on being kept moist. This becomes obvious sometime after the trees have been planted, when it is noticed that in a line of planted trees there are a few not doing well.
During lifting, transport and planting, trees often have to put up with a lot of 'abuse', which results in broken roots and feathers, buds rubbed off and bark damaged. And then it is expected that these trees burst into growth in spring and produce a crop perhaps in second year but certainly in the third year.
Benefits of container-grown trees
Many of these problems can be prevented and early growth of roots and tops can be markedly improved, when container-grown or potted trees are used instead of bare-rooted dormant trees.
There are many advantages in growing and planting container-grown trees: (cont next month)

See this article in Tree Fruit Dec 2020

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