What to do when your bare-root trees arrive

Open the box the day your trees arrive, make sure the sawdust around the roots is still damp, and plant within a few days, holding the trees somewhere that stays at 33F or warmer until you do. Soak the roots 2 to 24 hours, dig a hole about 1.5 times as wide as the roots, backfill with one-third compost to native soil plus bone meal, and plant at the depth the tree grew in the nursery. Water deeply once a week, and in zone 4 and colder start shutting the water off in mid-August.

Open the box the day your trees arrive

Open the package carefully and look the plants over the day they show up. Our trees ship bare root, with the roots wrapped in moist sawdust and a vapor barrier. That sawdust should be damp, not dried out, and if it's dry you may need to moisten the roots. We take a lot of care packing trees for shipping, but they should still go in the ground as soon as possible.

If you can't plant right away, keep the trees in their box in a sheltered spot, like an unheated barn or garage, as long as it won't drop below 33F. Try to plant within a few days, and never let the roots dry out. Our friend Bob Purvis, who grows fruit in Homedale, Idaho, warns that direct exposure to 15F can kill bare roots. He also notes that a newly planted bare-root tree typically takes 6 to 8 weeks to get its roots established, which is why you want it in the ground early.

Depending on where you are, you're probably still getting frost. That's okay. The trees are dormant or mostly dormant, meaning hardened off, with no soft, vulnerable tissue to freeze. They ain't tomatoes.

Soak the roots, then plant on a cool, cloudy day

Soak the roots in water for 2 to 24 hours before planting, and no longer. That goes for shrubs too.

Then pick your day if you can. Bob Purvis says the best planting weather is cool and cloudy with no wind, and the worst is a hot, sunny day with wind. It comes down to the hair roots. Ten minutes of sun and wind will kill them.

So have the hole dug before the tree comes out of the water. Carry it to the hole in its bucket and keep the roots wet until you set it in place. If you're planting a row, dig all the holes first and bring the trees out one at a time, rather than laying them out down the row to wait.

Dig wide, rough up the walls and mix in compost

Dig the hole as big as the root system or bigger. Some folks say several times wider. We've always gone about 1.5 times the diameter of the roots, and we rough up the inside walls, because a shovel, excavator bucket or auger can pack them down. We take a shovel, dig toward the hole from just outside it, and break that wall up so the roots can push through.

To check drainage, use Purvis's test. Dig a hole 2 feet deep, fill it with water, let it drain, then fill it again. If the second fill drains in under 10 hours the soil is well drained, 10 to 24 hours is moderate, and over 24 hours is poor. On poorly drained ground he recommends planting on a mound several feet wide. Wet feet going into winter kills more trees than cold does.

For backfill we use one-third compost to native soil, plus bone meal (or whole bones, which break down slower). Never put nitrogen fertilizer in the planting hole. Purvis points out that fertilizers are salts that can injure young roots, and that a nursery tree goes out with enough nutrients to last well into its first season.

Set the tree at the depth it grew in the nursery

Plant the tree at the same depth it grew in the nursery. To find that line, wet a finger and rub the bark below the graft. There should be a fairly drastic color change where the soil used to meet the air. The graft is the crook about 4 to 10 inches above the roots, though on some of our trees it sits higher.

The steps, with Purvis's details folded in:

1. Trim broken roots with clean cuts, back to healthy tissue. Healthy roots are white under the bark.
2. Build a cone of soil in the bottom of the hole and spread the roots over it in all directions.
3. If a root won't fit, cut it. It's better to prune a root than to bend it into too small a hole.
4. Hold the tree upright at the right depth. In a sheltered spot, turn it so a larger branch faces southwest to shade the trunk in winter. In a windy spot, Purvis points the biggest limbs into the wind, usually northwest.
5. Backfill, but don't tamp the soil. Water it in to settle it.
6. Mulch heavily, preferably with hardwood mulch, though softwood is fine if that's all you can find.

Stake windy sites and keep the first cuts light

Stake the tree if your site is windy. Purvis goes further and says every tree benefits: staked trees come into bearing sooner and grow better, especially in wind, and their roots don't get broken by the trunk whipping around. Tie the tree to the stake in two places with horticultural tape or burlap twine, never bare wire. Rootstock matters too. Bud 118, which carries about 90 of our apples and crabs, stands on its own, while Bud 9 has brittle roots and needs a stake or trellis for good. Our rootstock page covers the rest.

Shipped trees likely don't need much pruning. Cut any broken branches back to healthy wood. If you picked up whips (trees with no limbs), head them at breast height, and always cut above the graft so the tree doesn't revert to the rootstock. Down the road, you want to be able to throw your neighbor's cat through the tree if it's a dwarf, a goat if it's a semi-dwarf, and a calf if it's a standard, full size tree. Our guide to training young fruit trees shows how to get there.

Water deeply every week the first year

Give a newly planted tree at least one deep watering a week through its first year, and preferably two a week in the heat of summer. Sandy soil may need more. Drip irrigation is our go-to in Montana. When in doubt, give more water than less, unless you have super clay soils or it rains all the time. In all our years of doing this we've seen one overwatered tree, and that was because a pipe burst under it and left it in standing water. Granted, this is Montana, where it's dry.

Develop your internal calibrator. Dig down into the soil and see whether it's moist or dry. Dry soil can be hard to rehydrate, and roots won't grow out into dry soil looking for water (another Purvis point). Watch the shoot tips too. You don't want the terminal buds to set (the shoots stop growing) while you're still watering, because it's a sign the tree isn't getting enough.

Good weed control matters as much as the water. Purvis keeps a weed-free circle 3 to 4 feet across around each tree for its first 3 to 5 years.

Start shutting trees down in mid-August

In zone 4 and colder, start tapering the water off in mid-August and stop watering altogether by late August. We know it may still be hot. But first frost may be a month away and serious below-zero cold two months away, and the tree has to shut down and harden off before then. It matters most in the first few years. If you're not sure how cold your ground gets, our cold-hardiness calculator gives you a number to plan around.

Here's why we're strict about it. In late October 2020, Missoula went from mild fall weather to -10 to -20F almost overnight. It wiped out a lot of trees rated plenty hardy on paper, because they hadn't gone dormant yet, and we lost almost all of our own 1- to 3-year-old Bing cherries.

Fertilizer follows the same logic. Don't feed through the roots into July, since that can keep the tree from shutting down. Foliar nutrient sprays can go on until early August.

After the leaves drop, give each tree one final drink so it has enough moisture to get through winter.

Stone fruits can wait until midsummer to leaf out

Some trees are slow to break dormancy after transplanting. All the stone fruits (peaches, nectarines, apricots and plums) sometimes hold off until midsummer, and Purvis notes that any newly planted tree may take 2 to 6 weeks to leaf out. Before you give up on one, scrape the bark low on the trunk with a fingernail or knife. Green tissue under the bark means it's alive. Be patient.

We guarantee our plants bud out. If a tree still hasn't by August 15, write to us, but not before then, for the reason above. We'll send a form, and we issue store credit for the following spring covering what you paid for the plant plus its share of the shipping. Credit codes are single use and don't expire, so put everything on one order. A tree that leafed out and then failed the next spring counts as winter loss, which is outside the guarantee, but write to us anyway. For a single plant we can usually work something out as long as your next order meets our $200 minimum. Details are on our FAQ page.

First-year calendar

Here's the first year at a glance. The August water steps are for zone 4 and colder.

Related guides

• Training young fruit trees and the cat, goat and calf rule
• Water for young trees in dry country
• Winter protection for young fruit trees

Where this comes from

This guide is our own planting guide, filled out with Bob Purvis's planting notes where they agree with ours.

• Our planting guide for customers, our FAQ (guarantee terms), and our cold-hardiness calculator, zone hardiness guide and rootstock page.
• Our own records from Missoula and Florence, Montana, including the October 2020 freeze and our Bing cherry losses.
• Bob Purvis, Fruit Growing for Homeowners lecture notes (Purvis Nursery & Orchard, Homedale, Idaho): bare roots and freezing, root establishment time, planting weather and hair roots, clean root cuts, the soil cone, no tamping, staking, limb orientation, the drainage test and mounding, weed-free circles, trunk paint and spiral guards. We left out the parts of his notes that call for synthetic fertilizer and herbicides, since we don't use them.

Updated September 2026.