Potted vs. Bare Root Fruit Trees: Which to Choose? 🌳 🍑 🥑

When you're starting a home orchard, you're presented with two major choices when you're choosing your trees. And that would be buying a bare root tree versus buying a potted tree. Kevin Espiritu here from Epic Gardening, where it's my goal to help you grow a greener thumb. And as I developed the orchard here at the Epic Homestead, this really was the dilemma. Do I go with bare root trees, which we have over here? These are a couple of jujube varieties. Or do I go with some containerized trees that are already growing and pretty well-established, like this avocado and this flowering peach right here? So in today's video, we'll talk about the pros and the cons of each because there are benefits to both and there are downsides to both. And then as a little bonus at the end of the video, we'll talk about how to know for your exact needs in your backyard or front yard orchard, which one to go for, so you make the best use of your time and your money. So without further ado, cultivate that Like button and I will personally bless you with abundant harvests for two to three decades. And let's get into the video. All right, let's talk about bare root fruit trees first, which are these two right here. I've got two jujube varieties, li and lang, one of my favorite fruits to eat, but that's actually a story for another video. These don't look like bare roots because they're in pots with soil, right? So what are bare root plants and why would they be beneficial? The first thing to know is how they're produced. They're grown really closely together at larger orchards and then they're hilled up and unearthed and the whole root structure comes out at the same time. So the soil kind of gets shaken away and you have the entire intact root structure, which is then wrapped up in a peat moss or some sort of shredded bark type of product. And then it's shipped out to nurseries or shipped out directly to your door. Now the benefit of that is that you're actually getting the entire root structure intact. So bare roots are really designed to be purchased and then planted pretty quickly. The reason why mine look like this is because I haven't quite decided where they're going in the Epic Orchard. So if you aren't planting them right away, you have to do what's called healing them in. So I grab some native soil, using native soil because that's the soil they're going to be in anyways. I don't want to put some special mix in and have them get used to that. And so the roots are sitting in this right here. So huge benefit is that you just get the entire root structure and you can pop that directly into the ground. Another massive benefit is that they're about 30 to 50% cheaper than our friends over here. They don't look as nice cause they're dormant right now and that's typically the type of bare root tree you're going to get is one that goes fully dormant so they can pull it out of the ground without damaging the growth of the plant. So those are some of the major benefits of bare root trees. And now we have to talk about some of the downsides to bare root trees. So I brought my friend Cam from The Busy Gardener to share about that. Hey, thanks Kevin. Yeah, Cameron here with The Busy Gardener. And unfortunately there are some things that are a real downside to bare root trees, cons if you will. One of them has to do with you get this thing in the mail or whatever it is and shipped to you or brought to you and you have to put it in the ground quick. Unless you're going to put it directly in the ground right away, you've got to now heal it into some sort of container. And that takes a bunch of expertise and you're, you know, there's a chance of getting it wrong as opposed to something that already comes like this. So that's a downside to having something come in to the mail. Another thing is that bare root trees, when they're dug up out of the ground, they have to be only be dug up when they're dormant. They need all of these systems to be shut down, the leaves off, not, you know, really kind of asleep and hibernating in order for them to survive that process. And so what that means is that dormancy period is just when the leaves come off in the fall to really, they need to be shipped by early January. And so you've got such a short window of time that you're able to even put these things in the ground or to order them. They're not even available the other times of the year. So bare roots aren't really for everybody with respect to that. A final thing and probably even most important is that these things can get damaged in shipping. They take these things out of the ground. They bundle them up, they tie them all together and then they take them to a warehouse. And then when you order one, they take one off and sometimes these little limbs get busted off. And so you get this tree that you need, especially if you're using like a backyard orchard culture style, you need this thing to have low branching. Well, if all of a sudden half of the branches are busted off really low, that's not going to work for your breathing. And there's nothing you can do about it because you didn't even see it when it got shipped. It's not like going to a nursery. You just get what you get. So while there are some clear cons of bare root trees, there are some pros to potted plants. I'm going to have Kevin share that with you. So thanks to Cam for sharing some of the downsides of the bare root trees. Let's take a look at this beautiful peach here, this beautiful avocado. These are container grown trees. They're not bare root, as you can see. They've got a decent amount of soil in here. They've been growing in this pot for at least a year or so. And so why would I go with a tree like this when we just talked about how cheap these ones are? Well, the reason why is, first of all, some things you really can't find bare root, especially if it's not in season. January-ish or so is when all these trees go dormant and they're actually able to be sold as bare root. So if you're trying to start an orchard in the middle of the season, you're probably going to have to get a container tree. So the availability is a lot higher because remember, they're growing in containers. A lot of us just grow our fruit trees in containers forever. And so it stands to reason that the availability is way, way higher. Now, another thing I really like about a potted tree like this is that I can play around with the landscape and actually move it around, see how I like it and see if I want to commit to that place before I put it in the ground. Remember with these bare roots, they pretty much have to go in the ground or get healed up right away or else they're going to really suffer. There's not a lot of structure to them. They're fully dormant and you've got to get them in the ground before they break dormancy. Over here, I can sit for, I mean, I've had these in here for about two or three weeks now. I'm waiting. I'm playing around with different layouts. I'm watching how the sun falls over the landscape, watching how things drain and then I'll commit. Because remember, these trees are going to last in my landscape for years and decades and even multiple decades. So those are some of the real big benefits I like of a containerized tree. But there are some significant downsides, which I'll let Cameron from The Busy Gardener explain. Okay, Kevin, these potted plants are not the panacea that you make them sound like with all those pros. There's some serious cons. And one of the biggest cons, especially if you're buying more than one tree, is the cost. Potted plants, potted fruit trees, especially sometimes 30 to 50% more expensive than bare root trees. Bare root trees don't have all of this stuff that goes into potting them and taking care of them and nurseries having to baby them. And so they're going to charge you for that. So you really aren't for your money able to buy as many potted trees. So that's a real downside. That's a con. The second thing is that the longer a tree is inside the pot, the more risk there is of them getting root bound and pot bound where those roots will start circling around the edges of that pot. And when you go to plant that tree, that can cause some real problems both when you're planting it, because you're having to tease out those roots and, you know, have them going outside to constress the tree. But also if you plant it in the ground and that root boundness persists, that tree is going to have a real problem as it continues to grow. But that's not it. There's one more thing. That is when they take these beautiful bare root trees with their nice rooting structure and try to fit it inside this pot, they've got to cut off and prune off the roots. And so when they prune off the roots to make it fit in this pot to sell you, when you take and put that in the ground, you've got less rooting that is going to slow down the tree in terms of its productivity, in terms of its growth and it adapting to the soil because it's working with less rooting structure. And that's what a young tree needs. So there are some serious cons to buying a fruit tree in a pot. Because now that we've talked about the ups and the downs of bare root versus potted trees, how do you even make a decision of what to order or what to buy? We're going to talk about that next. So you've got a pretty good ping pong of the pros and the cons of the bare roots versus the potted. But what we want to do now is just give you a couple of scenarios to see if that's the type of orchard grower you want to be. And that'll tell you which one you should probably opt to grow. And so I'm going to start off with if you're a budget conscious gardener and you want to save some money, you want to grow some stuff that typically comes in bare root format, your deciduous stuff like your apples, your stone fruits, your jujubes, maybe one of my favorites, and you want to save money, then that's just going to be the way to go. You also have to wait a little bit more time, like Cameron was saying. So if you're willing, let's say it's, I don't know, June right now and you've kind of missed that bare root window. If you're not in a rush, just wait stock up on a ton of bare roots and get them in the ground next season and you'll be in a really good spot. And if you're working with a little bit more of a budget and you're not able to wait or don't want to wait, potted plants are a really wonderful option. That's especially true if you're wanting to start with a more mature tree, like these 15 gallon trees. These aren't able to be torn out of the ground and sent off as a bare root. So if that's where you're wanting to go, more mature tree, you've got a bit more of a budget, you have specific cultivars that you want to get and you need them now, potted plants are really probably the way to go. Yeah. I'll say for me, this is just some of the orchard that is yet to go in the ground. But I've got a mixture of bare roots and containerized plants. I went with my container plants for my avocados and my citrus. It's kind of hard to find those bare root. They're typically in my climate pretty available in container format. And then I went with some shipped out bare roots. Now you could go again, to go to the nursery, you even save money on shipping. So I would say local at a nursery, bare root plant is going to be your absolute bottom barrel price. And the availability is pretty good provided you go at the right time of year. So, you know, I've done a little bit of both here to show you options, but hopefully this was a helpful video on demystifying this. Because it is an important choice when you're starting an orchard out. You don't want to make that wrong choice, put something in the ground and then, voila, it's just not the right decision and you've wasted potentially years of your life. And so hopefully this gave you a good, a good primer on how to choose. It's been Kevin from Epic Gardening, my friend Cameron from The Busy Gardener. Definitely check his channel out. Good luck in the garden and keep on growing.