After storm Darragh in early December and the cold start to the New Year, this next month is an ideal time to get planting bareroot trees and shrubs. Deelish Garden Centre in Skibbereen has seen a huge increase in people interested in planting bare root plants year on year and were delighted to be in a position last season to gift the community 4000 free, native, Irish grown trees to celebrate 40 years in business. Noah Chase explains exactly what the term ‘bare root’ means and gives some planting advice.
Put simply, ‘bare root’ means plants that have been grown in soil, then dug up during the dormant growing season and supplied without plastic pots. As well as saving money, you will often find a much wider selection of varieties and sizes available as bare-rooted trees and shrubs. If your land is sheltered, I recommend planting as early in the season as possible to allow roots time to establish over the winter months. Having strong roots will allow the plants to take up more water and nutrients, as well as supporting new growth in the growing season ahead. In exposed or particularly wet sites, it is best to wait until February or, at the latest, March to plant. In doing so, this will avoid most storms, which can cause plants to become loose in the soil, and water logging around the roots, which can cause root rot or soil compaction during planting.
For many gardeners, deciding what to grow is the most difficult part of the process. Here, at Deelish Garden Centre, during the bare root season, we have thousands of bare root plants to choose from. As many of the plants are dormant and do not have any leaves to distinguish them from each other, it can be a bit overwhelming having to choose between them. To help our customers to find the right plant for the right spot, we have divided them into a few groups; Trees, hedging, conifers, fruit trees and fruit bushes.
How do you picture the planting site in five, 10 and 50 years time? Do you plan to grow wood for burning, fruit trees and bushes for eating, a hedge for shelter and privacy or just want to provide habitat for wild life? Choosing a mix of fast growing trees to be gradually thinned over the years, with slower growing hardwoods planted between them, is a great option if you are unsure exactly what to choose but just want to start planting. Many gardeners are very keen to plant native trees and shrubs in hedgerows or mass plantings to encourage various wildlife and pollinators and the bare root season offers the best time to do this type of planting. This year we have a fantastic range of native plants, grown in Ireland, from Irish seed. Hedging plants are one of our most popular choices during the bare root season. It is the most cost-effective time to plant a hedge, as we can supply some plants for as little as 80 cent each! There are many options to choose from including edible wildlife hedges, native hedges, costal hedges, formal hedges, shady hedges and windy hedges to name just a few. We can also offer farmers and landowners Irish grown native plants and all the paperwork that qualify for government planting grants such as the ACRES or NTA schemes.
The next step is to examine the site and soil where you plan to plant. Is it windy, and if so, which direction does the wind usually come from? Have a look at any other trees in the area to see if they have been blown in any particular direction. Is the ground wet? Dig a few testing holes before planting, if these fill with water and do not drain away, there may be drainage issues. Is the soil deep and fertile, heavy clay or perhaps only a thin layer of good topsoil. Digging a few test holes before choosing your plants will show you a lot about your own soil conditions.
Listed below are a few of my favourite choices for various situations. Visit us at Deelish Garden Centre to hear about other options and the best choices for your own situation.
Many of our customers including some from Cape Clear Island pick the Italian alder for windy conditions. It grows quickly into an attractive upright tree suitable along driveways. Like the native common alder, it also grows well in heavy wet soil while fixing nitrogen in the soil, improving the soil quality and drainage over the years. If drainage is an issue, there are many types of willow that do not mind wet conditions and can quickly supply useful material for basket weaving or be planted to make living structures such as domes and tunnels. Hawthorn will also take windy conditions and as well as being our most popular native hedging choice, will grow into a beautiful small tree producing masses of small white flowers in late spring. Rugosa roses (pink, white and red) and blackthorn are good choices for a windy site, producing flowers and fruit. In my opinion, green beech makes one of the nicest formal hedges but is also one of my favourite hardwood trees. We also supply copper beech, which is slower growing, but in time also makes one of the nicest formal hedges. If you are worried your soil may be too wet for a Beech hedge then hornbeam makes a great alternative choice for heavy soils.
Mountain ash (not related to common ash) has to be one of the best choices for windy sites and shallow soil. It produces large, flat heads of numerous creamy-white five-petalled flowers in May and June and these heads become the familiar clusters of red berries in autumn, which are a fantastic source of food for our wildlife. What woodland planting would be complete without some plantings of oak? There are two native oak species in Ireland, Quercus petraea or sessile oak will grow in thin acidic soil, often found in mountains and sometimes right to the edge of the sea in sheltered spots. Pedunculate oak (Quercus robur) is the less common of the two native species. These beautiful trees can become huge and live for hundreds of years. You can tell them from sessile oak by looking at the acorns or leaves – pedunculate oak produces acorns on stalk, with very small stalks on the leaves and the sessile oak is the reverse. We also supply red oak (Quercus rubra), noted for its brilliant autumn colour, which would make an excellent addition to any garden or forest.
For flowering trees and hedging, we recommend various options including flowering currants, bird cherry, June berry, elder and wild roses to name a small selection. The bare root season is also the best time to plant some of the more common conifers, which can provide foliage and shelter in the winter when most other trees have lost their leaves. Yew and Scots pine are two of the three Irish native conifers (the third is Juniper) and well worth considering while planning any native plantings. Yew can also be used for formal evergreen hedging as well as planted as specimen trees; in fact, the oldest living tree in Ireland is believed to be a Yew. Although Sitka spruce has gotten a lot of bad press over recent years due to its overuse in forestry plantations (nearly half of all forestry in Ireland and over 300,000 hectares), it is able to grow in exposed sites with heavy acidic soils where other trees will not be able to grow and gives very fast returns of timber from the time of planting. Larch is also a wise choice for its fast return of quality timber.
Another huge group of plants available during the bare root season are fruit trees and soft fruit, of which there is a huge amount to choose from including popular Apple varieties that grow well here in West Cork, as well as a range of heritage Apple varieties. Plums, damsons, cherries, pears and cob nuts are all great choices if you want to grow a mixed orchard. If you have a growing area under glass or plastic, peaches and nectarines will produce reliable mouth-watering fruit! In my opinion, soft fruit such as raspberries, currants and gooseberries give amazing returns with very little investment in terms of cost and time and are a fantastic addition to any garden no matter the size.
The list above is only a small selection of what is currently available during the bare root season here at Deelish, and we are currently getting fresh deliveries every few weeks to keep up to demand. Feel free to visit us at Deelish Garden Centre and we will help you choose the best options for your land. In the meantime, Happy New Year to al readers and gardeners and remember, gardening doesn’t have to cost the earth, especially in the bare root season.
