Bare-root trees

Last week at work we had a delivery of bare-root fruit trees from Waimea nurseries. A lot of the trees had been pre-ordered by customers so it was interesting to see which trees were popular. We spent the morning putting together orders. The trees were placed together in a recycled plastic bag with damp pea straw covering the roots and were labelled with the customer's name and number. We then put aside a selection of varieties to be potted up into PB 60s, the remaining trees were put in a sack with pea straw and taken to the shop to be sold bare rooted.

The boss kindly said I could take some pea straw and a nectarine tree home (I've been meaning to get one for ages!). I dug a hole about 3 times the size of the roots. It was a larger hole than recommended but the last time I planted a fruit tree it took a long time to settle in so I wanted to give this one the best start possible! Our soil is also very stony, so I filled the hole with compost and added some slow release fertiliser for good measure. While doing this I had the roots of the tree sitting in seaweed tonic to reduce transplant shock. Finally, I planted the tree, covered the soil with pea straw and gave it a good watering.

Hopefully it will be happy and grow well for me!💚