Properly planting your new purchase will ensure its long-term success.

1. Dig your hole. It should be 2x as wide and the same depth as your root ball.

2. For trees: determine where the root flare is. This should be visible above ground after planting. Trees are not tomatoes, burying them deeper doesn’t help them - it actually kills them.

3. Remove plant from the container and examine the roots. Gently loosen soil and roots with your hands. If roots are circling the root ball, make slices along the sides to alleviate. With trees, it the roots are showing extreme circling aka girdling, more work is needed. You may want to box-cut the root ball (learn more here). If you’d like to try something new, several botanic gardens and plant researchers in our area our switching to exclusively planting their perennial, shrub and tree starts “bare” or without any of the soil it was in when purchased. To do this, simply remove as much nursery growing media as possible by hand and then rinse the roots with water to remove the rest. This gives the roots as much contact as possible with your native or existing soil, allowing them to more quickly adapt to the ground in your yard vs staying isolated in the richer growing media. If you don’t want to try the bare-root method and want to amend the planting hole, add no more than 10% new organic material to the backfill. Instead of fertilizers, consider a root enhancer like a Mycorrhizae or Espoma Bio-tone.

4. Place plant in hold, backfill gently and tamp down soil. If the ground seems particularly dry, you may want to fill the hole with water before planting in addition to watering after planting.

5. Create a berm (water basin) around the plant. You want a donut, not a volcano.

6. Apply mulch 2-4 inches deep around the plant keeping the mulch away from the base or trunk.

7. WATER, WATER, WATER. Adequate watering is the make or break it factor for fresh plantings.