Presuming your soil drains as it should and holds sufficient moisture, I would suggest mounding your bare roots with planting mix. Cover the bud union and canes so only the top inch or two protrude from the mulch. It may be easier if you take corrugated cardboard and cut it into strips which will permit you to create a cylinder large enough to slide over the canes of the plant. You want it tall enough to be sunk into the ground an inch or two and cover the tops of the canes. Fill this will a loose mulch or planting mix and keep it moist. Your bare roots may be struggling to retain enough moisture to remain alive, so they possibly aren't getting enough to actually grow.

By keeping them dark, cool and damp, they have a better chance of absorbing the moisture they need to grow. Those conditions encourage root growth. Warm, dry, sunny conditions favor cane and foliage grow, which is an intense stress on plants which haven't already developed feeder roots. Soaking them for several days in a bucket of water prior to planting also helps.

You want to water the cylinders to keep the planting mix damp. If it settles and exposes more of the plants, add more mix and water more. You only want the top inch or two of the canes exposed until new growth begins from the cane ends. As they begin developing, you can begin gradually removing the planting mix from the cylinders so you acclimate the plant to the hotter, drier, more extreme conditions. Kim

Roseseek, as usual, is right on target. :-)

Jeri

Thank you Kim, I will give it a go.

Something in the description bothers me... Are all of the canes on all of the plants green? They should be. If they are all brown or black, the plants are dead. If they are green, but not yet leafing out, that's pretty normal for bareroots, especially climbers, 10 days isn't a long time, and Kim's recommendations are spot on. Keep us posted.

If there is doubt as to whether a cane is dead, cut off a bit and examine the cross section. With live wood, you will see a thin ring of green inner bark.

If all the canes are dead, the plant is probably dead. If there is some live wood, the plant will probably grow out in time.

Mid March is optimal for zone 6 bare-roots, but late April is not so late that you should expect widespread failure.

I'm in zone 6 and I can never plant in March. The ground is still frozen. I usually can't plant until mid-April. And this year it's only just gotten warm enough the last week or so TO plant. I don't know where you are and there are a lot of different conditions that are all zone 6 but it's been very cold and very wet here this spring and everything is behind in growth. So I'd say it's no where near too late for planting.

Kate and Michael have good points about checking the canes. If they're green do what Kim suggests and they should be fine. And relax and be patient. 10 days is way too soon to be worrying. They need time to settle in and get some root growth going before you can expect to see much or any top growth.