Bare Root Fruit Trees: Choosing and Planting

What is a bare root fruit tree? A young fruit or nut-bearing deciduous tree, offered for sale in the winter. “A stick with roots”. Fruits include apples, apricots, apriums, cherries, figs, mulberries, peaches, pears, persimmons, plums, pluots, nectarines and pomegranates. Nut varieties are also available bare root in the winter, including walnuts, almonds, pistachios, filberts, chestnuts and pecans. Vine and bush fruits are also for sale in the winter, including blueberries, grapes and kiwi. Citrus is an evergreen plant, available year round.

 

Why grow your own fruit? For better health and better taste. Nothing beats the taste of home grown fruit! What follows are some tips for

turning this...

 Into this!                                                                                                Or this!

 

Shop local. Your local nurseryperson knows your soil and growing conditions, and will carry fruit tree varieties that will do well in your area. Of those, choose fruit trees that you enjoy! Wondering which ones taste the best? Master fruit tasters have their favorites listed online, at davewilson.com, a wholesale grower of fruit and nut trees. Consider getting several trees that will ripen at different times.

Before You Buy, Plan Ahead. Fruit trees do best in a sunny location with good drainage. They need eight or more hours of sun. Six hours of sun is pushing your luck. Wet soils are a major cause of fruit tree failure. 

 

If that hole you dug doesn’t drain within 24 hours, build a raised bed, at least 4’ x 4’x 12-16” high. Cherries and apricots need the best drainage for success. The fruit trees most tolerant of slow-draining soils are apples and pears.

Don’t be too concerned about a crooked top. After you plant a three to five foot tall bare root fruit tree, you can cut it off at knee-height. That way, the fruit-bearing branches will be lower, within easy reach. If you don’t let the tree get taller than seven feet, that fruit will ALWAYS be easy to reach.

Pay attention to the bud union. This is the spot where the tree variety is attached to the rootstock. It should be straight, not bent.

Look at the roots. They should not be brittle, damaged or cracked.

Walk away from bare root trees that:
• Have tunneling around the bud union (they might be borers).
• Oozing, dark colored bark (might be bacterial canker).
• Have been at the nursery for more than two years, if they are in containers. If in doubt, ask the nurseryperson.

When you get the tree home: Treat it nice, immediately. Don’t let the roots dry out. If you are going to plant later that day or the next day, place the tree in a bucket of water or cover with a wet blanket. If it is going to be several days before you plant, bury the roots into soil (“heeling in”). This can be in your garden soil, compost, potting soil, or even a pile of wet leaves.

Dig a $50 Hole for that $20 Tree.
The hole should be wide, not deep. About four feet wide and as deep as the rootstock portion of the tree. Loosen the six feet of surrounding soil outside the hole to that depth. Feeder roots travel outward, not downward.

Plant the Tree Correctly. Set the tree on a slight mound in the middle of the hole, and gently coax the roots to face outward. Look for  a color change on the tree below the bud union; the tree should be planted no deeper than that. Ideally, plant the tree with that mark about an inch above the existing soil line to allow for settling. Set your shovel handle across the hole to determine that point. Use only the soil that came with the hole.

Top With Mulch. After planting, surround the tree with three or four inches of organic mulch; the mulch should extend out several feet. Mulch feeds the soil, suppresses weeds, cools the soil in the summer and helps maintain even moisture, too. Don’t let mulch touch the trunk, though. That can lead to rot problems.

Fertilize? Wait until the tree is actively growing, choosing a fertilizer that lists fruit trees on the label. Whichever fertilizer you use, read and follow label directions.

Add Water. Carefully. The primary cause of fruit tree failure is poor irrigation: either too much or too little water. Use a moisture meter or a soil auger to determine how wet or dry the soil is at root level. Or, grab a handful of the soil at a depth of 8 to 10 inches to determine how wet the soil is. Start doing this when that new fruit tree begins to flower. And, do it before you water.

  

Give the tree some sunburn protection. Paint that bare stick with a 50-50 mix of interior white latex paint and water; or, purchase tree whitewash at a nursery. That new tree is very susceptible to sunburn, which can lead to a cracked trunk…an entry point for insect and disease problems. 

In a few years, with a little bit of care, your kitchen counter will be overflowing with homegrown, healthy fruit.

Bring Out the Homegrown Mixed Nuts

Thanksgiving is next Thursday, an occasion certain to bring the nuts out. 

And we're not talking about your wacky cousins from Merced, the ones who attempt to balance spoons on their noses during dessert.

Or eat dog food on a dare. 

A more common assortment of nuts found at family gatherings this time of year is that ubiquitous bowl of mixed nuts, usually located far from the kitchen, a better way to keep those other nuts out of the busiest room of the house, looking for spoons. 

From top right: pistachios, pecans, filberts, almonds, chestnuts, walnuts

And no doubt the question has been raised during football timeouts in the TV room, as four hands reach simultaneously for the last of the pecans: considering the astronomical price of mixed nuts, why not grow your own?

    Patient gardeners with some space can start their own "mixed nut" garden in the weeks ahead. Nut trees in bare root form will be available at nurseries from late December through February. 

Here are the nut trees that do well in our area (with links to more information about each variety):

* Walnuts. This important agricultural commodity here can thrive in your yard, if you have room for a couple of trees that can get 50 feet tall with a spread of 60 feet. Varieties for the Valley include the "Hartley" and "Chandler". For smaller yards, choose "Pedro", which is about two-thirds the size of other walnut trees.

* Almonds. Good choices for smaller yards include the "All-In-One" and "Garden Prince", which grow less than 15 feet tall and do not need another tree nearby for pollenization. Bigger almond trees for our area include "Mission", "Butte" and "Nonpareil", all of which need a pollenizer.

* Chestnuts. Large trees (40-60 feet tall) that prefer acid to neutral soil pH (5.5-7.0) and don't like soils that are too wet or drain poorly. For best pollination, plant one of each variety: Colossal and Nevada.

* Filberts (aka Hazelnuts). More than one variety is necessary for pollination in order to get a good-sized crop of filberts. Try interplanting "Barcelona", "Butler", "Casina" and "Ennis". And good luck; we've attempted to grow filberts at our place for more than 15 years. Total nut harvest in that time: 8 filberts.

* Pecans. Another tree that needs a lot of space, with a spread of 50-70 feet. Another iffy choice for Northern California; pecans do best south of Fresno. Good choices for home planting include "Mohawk" (a self-fruitful variety) and "Pawnee". The tandem of "Western Schley" and "Choctaw" work well for pollination.

 * Peanuts. Not a tree, but an annual crop that grows in the summer in sandy, well-drained soils. Try the "Jumbo Virginia", "Spanish" and "Valencia Tennessee Red" varieties. Peanuts ripen underground, by the way.

    Two commonly found mixed nuts that are best left to gardeners closer to the Equator: cashews and Brazil nuts.

Instead, add a couple of pistachio trees to your mixed nut garden. A male and female pistachio tree are needed, such as the combination of "Kerman" and "Peters".

The Crow in the Walnut Tree

In our nut tree orchard, I might as well put up a sign for the crows: "Will This Be For Dine-In or Take-Out?"

That seems to be the only question on the minds of the crows as they swooped in for all the ripening almonds last year. I knew a slim harvest awaited as I approached the tree, only to see about a dozen crows take flight, carrying those tasty morsels in their beaks.

Crows, although quite clever, will wait until nearly all of the hulls have split, exposing the shell to their Dremel-like beaks. Then, their drilling through the almond shells begins in earnest to harvest the nut meat.

This year, we got smarter. After checking "Harvesting and Storing Your Home Orchard's Nut Crop" from the University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, we found out that the best time to thwart the birds is to begin harvesting almonds when 75% of the hulls have begun to split open (usually in late August here). As a result the 2010 almond crop was saved by a timely harvest.

 There are several strategies to thwart marauding birds at harvest time: netting, red and silver mylar flash tape (which resembles flames to them) and noisemakers such as bird bombs, shell crackers, gas cannons and electronic distress calls. 

Clever Crow

The effectiveness of alternating flash tape and noisemakers, though, is quite limited against clever crows (I'm pretty sure there are no stupid crows). 

 University studies have shown crows will return to the trees and tolerate those sound and vision deterrents within a few hours. Think of it as Dinner Show entertainment.

And this Remington euphemism from the University of California on crow control: "However, given their abundance and damaging nature, they can be removed by landowners, tenants, or persons authorized by landowners or tenants when damaging crops."

But that UC Integrated Pest Management information on bird control advises: "Where permissible, occasionally shooting at a few birds will increase effectiveness of your noisemaking techniques, because birds will begin associating loud noises with the real hazards of firearms. However, shooting is not permissible in most urban or residential areas."

Oh, yeah...there is that little problem.

Bird netting is the best preventative measure, but can be a chore on trees of any height above eight feet. And, if you don't secure the netting to the ground, well...I have seen scrub jays hop beneath loose netting to get to ripening cherries. 

Although the almond problem was solved, we forgot that crows have a varied diet. Yesterday, while moving mulch, I noticed a single crow flying away from the WALNUT tree. My dread turned to relief quickly. Good news, I thought: there was no nut in his beak! 

 

But I went up to the tree, and saw these, still dangling on the branches:

The dine-in crow was back!

A quick check of that UC harvest information on walnuts was in order: "Begin harvesting walnuts when most (85% or more) of the nuts can easily be removed from the tree, and when the hulls can readily be removed from all or nearly all (90%) of the harvested nuts."

 

Sure enough, the green hulls on many of the walnuts were beginning to crack, exposing the shells.

Guess what we did that evening?

Apparently, the problem of crows swooping in for nuts is a worldwide issue. Here, Danish instrumental folk band Basco spreads the warning.