What size? Potted or balled & burlapped? What species?

Technically yes. Just transplant them into a bigger pot when you get them, keep them in light shade until Fall, and water them.

Its usually not not worth it. It's easy to forget to water them, and there are lots of Fall sales if you are a bargain shopper.

Whatever you do, DON'T plant trees in mid August. Worst possible time of year. Wait until at least September.

Potted stock can be planted any time the ground is workable.

Let me repeat...as some here just don't seem to let this into their brain cases...potted stock can be planted any time the ground is workable. To recap...potted stock can be planted any time the ground is workable.

Yes, yes, spring is best, some say fall (and it depends on type of tree) but there is an entire industry built around the fact I just typed out above. Potted stock can be planted any time the ground is workable. Potted stock can be......

what is lovely misery???

if its a REAL NURSERY ... you should be able to tag plants for fall delivery ...

the upside here.. they will take care of them.. and they should know how to do it ...

regardless of when the patio is done .... plant in the next proper planting season ... see link on timing ... and everything else ...

ken

https://sites.google.com/site/tnarboretum/Home/planting-a-tree-or-shrub

i should have opined if they wont hold them....

there are other alternatives .. if you give more info we could get more specific ...

if you plan on getting a load of mulch ... and have space.. you could get it in advance ... pile it. and set the plants in it.. like they do at many nurseries ...

if BB you could ask them to put in pot ... and put pots in full bright shade ... and keep properly watered ... and that does not mean real wet ...

the thing with bringing them home early .. rather than my prior post.. is that you stress them at the move.. then stress them at the planting.. so two stresses inside a month or two ... you dont mention size .. this would be more important the bigger the plant is ... as the bigger it is.. the bigger the shock ...

also ... if the plants are not in perfect shape at the nursery.. and you add all these stresses .. do NOT be surprised with early leaf fall ... to me.. presuming its not immediate.. it would NOT be a big deal ...

please add your location to your name in your profile so we dont have to ask all the time ...

ken

PS: as to tom ... it near 100 this week in MI ... humidity up near the same ... and night temps are balmy and more humid ... yes.. i could be planting this week .. and with my 35 years of experience i could probably have a good success rate ... but i would expect at least 25% losses .. whereas .. if i wait until nights are back into the 50s [mid september] ... a recovery period compared to whatever the day brings ... my success rate would be near 100% ... with little or no worry.. subject to buying quality stock ... [not trees that have been on the bigboxstore blacktop for months ] .. back in the day ... i would buy all summer long.. and have 50 to 100 pots to plant in fall ...

for the newb.. IMHO .. its not whats possible.. its more about how to increase your odds to near impossible to fail ...

which brings me back to location .. if you live.. e.g. in the rainy cool PNW ... what they call summer is my MI spring.. lol ... much more forgiving as to do ing whatever you want.. when you want ...

as often said.. there is little instant gratification in the garden ... and whats the big deal of waiting a month or so.. to make your success rate higher????

................Potted stock can be planted any time the......

So now gentlemen, please explain to me how that potted tree-the one in our minds' eyes-is better off spending the summer in a pot as opposed to being placed into soil. This has nothing to do with level of expertise. It's just a simple fact-but I think I made the point a sufficient number of iterations. My guess will be that approximately two and a half years from now, we will again see words on this board to the effect that trees can only be planted spring and fall. It won't sink in. Just won't.

There are some assumptions being made here that do not necessarily apply uniformly :-)

1) All nurseries have fall sales where they discount their stock significantly. False, depending on location! Nurseries in areas of the country that are open and actively selling stock all year do not necessarily discount stock in fall to "move" it. I know of several excellent local nurseries that just do not have sales or discount their stock ever - they don't need to as regularly priced merchandise moves fast enough that 'sales' are unnecessary.

2) Fall is a great time to plant in many areas (cooler temps and pending rainfall limit transplant shock and hasten establishment) but supply does not necessarily equal the demand at this time of year. Field grown plants - trees and larger shrubs - are only harvested by the growers at specific times of the year, generally during the dormant months (winter). Many retail nurseries preorder their stock in fall - field-grown and containerized - for the following spring and after that initial order is received, that's it for the season! If you don't purchase or reserve the tree when you see it (like now), it is unlikely to still be there when you come back in fall. Retail nurseries are not like a supermarket - they do not have an endless supply of stock they can draw on or access whenever they want and often by the "ideal fall planting time", that stock is very limited.

3) And while I agree completely with Tom (at least for my area - don't have much knowledge of colder zones) that you can plant any time the ground is workable, in this particular case, planting now may not make sense. Installing a new patio or any other major hardscaping in a landscape is an extremely disruptive process, which is why when sequencing a landscape installation, the planting is one of the last things to be done. After all other landscaping activity - like installing a new patio - is completely finished. The only activity that comes after planting is mulching or the laying of sod or seeding the lawn.

FWIW, I am just finishing up the design work for a new construction landscape. The house is still under construction although just interior finishing and some exterior painting is left to be done. But none of the hardscape has been implemented yet nor the final grading and improvement of the surrounding soil and the installation of the irrigation system. But we have been buying the major plants for the last 6 weeks and stockpiling them onsite for planting in late August. As long as necessary watering is attended to carefully, there is really no good reason NOT to do this.

Gee GG, there you go making sense again! One additional factoid: B&B stock is also plantable at my "any time the ground is workable" timeframe. Indeed, this and the later development of containerized growing were in part a response to the earlier limitations of bare-root only. All this said, I like bare root better than just about any other format....when available and when it makes sense for a given species/site/job. Not all of these always line up perfectly.

So if we include common sense into the discussion, no, I would not plant a tree-whatever the growth format-where I knew major site disturbance was imminent But that's outside this discussion, or is, as I say, simple common sense.

BTW, Ken et all are great gardeners. They've achieved much success in their work. I'm not "attacking" that, or anything else here, except this constant refrain about how a potted plant must be "held" until more suitable planting conditions prevail. If we throw into this mix an additional "common sense" tidbit, yes, I would agree that where ambient temps are hovering in the 90s and higher, it may add additional stress to the new transplant. Just as that same plant-sitting at the garden center on a piece of landscape fabric, would also be getting some major stress factors. This can't be entirely avoided..

I understood from the OP's mention of building a patio that the location for the trees was not yet ready to receive them, so they can't be planted now. At least that was how I interpreted the post.

Exactly!!

Remember Emily Latella or however that was spelled) from the very old Saturday Night Live skits? Well I do; Never mind! Never doubt my ability to miss a key bit of background info in another's post! Such goes along with speed-reading, wholesale skimming of large threads, etc. I do dat.

I have found that the few local nurseries and lawn and garden big box stores tend to not care for the potted trees any better than I could with regular watering.

Correct me if I'm wrong but one consideration for not planting a potted tree in August would be for those that have already been kept in a container for too long and require removal of the outer perimeter of circling roots (major disturbance). The tree would likely tolerate this better in the Fall, but by keeping it in the pot for 3 months the problem has worsened and those species that grow roots quickly tend to be pretty tough as it is.

You are exactly correct, longtee. And I was at least partially remiss in not pointing that out. So I suppose, if one could see though the pot and know ahead of time how the roots were.......but I don't know about you but my eyesight isn't all that!

I've had at least one occasion where the combo of a late fall planting coupled with badly circling roots in the pots caused tree failure. So that can happen too although I think the fact it was late November (in Wisconsin) as much as anything else that caused some really nice Nordmann firs to not look so great by the following spring. These plants are now either dead or a brand new cultivar I'm bringing out-shrub-form Nordmann fir! And yes, I am talking sideways, like I often do.

Yes, I'm sure it's quite tricky to see inside the black pot on most :)

Unfortunately our local nursery which carries a huge selection of trees also has them in containers that are way to small for some of the particular tree species. Here is a link to one I posted a few years back and was told to avoid it.

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/1714916/opinions-on-the-condition-of-this-tree

I recall reading somewhere that if you can see conditions 's such as this and often you can even see evidence of them circling through the drainage holes it's best to avoid.

Sadly with containers, it's often what you can't see (circling roots that formed from the prior container) that are most problematic!

I would take a container tree over B&B any day though, just don't be afraid to rough thints up a bit before planting! It's astonishing how little they are disrupted and how quickly they grow vs. Large B&B's that take several years before showing any signs of prohress. I've never had a chance to work with bareroot, but those sound ideal, if available and at the right time of the season!

For our street tree program, we've gone almost entirely bare-root. It was always one of the main formats. Only when due to non-horticulture-related reasons, politics, grant program, etc. where we may find ourselves planting stuff other than spring or fall (this for street trees only) do we end up with B&B and I agree-largely what you are purchasing with that format is somebody else's soil. True-for some conifers, its' still the main way, but for most everything else it's either bare root or containerized, and very little of the latter. Of course, as you allude to, with bare-root, you really are restricted to spring and/or fall, depending on species.

The person who is now City Forester and I used to tussle an awful lot. He would not accept that a bare-root tree was a better value-root-wise-than a big B&B. So I grabbed one of our bare rooters, held it up above a B&B's rootball and said, OK, which one of these has more roots? Personal pride being what it is, I was still "wrong", lol! Of course, like I just said, we're now nearly all bare-root. That's life in the big city I guess.....or even the medium-sized one.

Planting in the summer requires a lot of attention to the plants watering needs. Way more so than if planted at other times.

A number of years ago I completed an expensive landscape in the middle of July here. The customer blurted out, "Oh good, you finished it up just before we're going on vacation!" I asked her who was going to do the watering. "Oh, I didn't think of that. I'll get a lawn service company to do the watering for me."

Gardeners would think of that, but a lot of my customers were clueless, so in addition to designing and installing the landscape, I educated my clients as well.

LoL I hired a dependable friend who lived in the area to do the mowing and watering and I just added his services to the bill. It's a good thing she told me they were going away for three weeks or they would have come home to a pretty sorry looking landscape and I might have been on the hook for it.

I just planted and watered in three 6 to 8 foot Japanese maples this morning in my garden that were in pots. Easy peasy! Temps in the mid 60s with burst of rain just when I finished. I love our climate here in PacNW. More rain tonight. That's when rain should fall....so I can work in the garden during the day. :-)

At least a bit out of the ordinary-your region experiencing significant precip in July, eh Mike?

"significant" may be stretching it a bit :-) Rainfall totals for my area over the last 24 hours was only .06 of an inch.....hardly earth shaking!!

As with other parts of the country, this area has experienced a not very typical spring and early summer, with record breaking high temps experienced in April and May and unusually dry - those months are normally included as the tail end of our rainy season. There is also a standing observation that our rainy season doesn't fully end until after the 4th of July!! The rainfall right now - as slight as it is - is quite welcome :-)

But it could warm up some.......we are below average temps by about 10 degrees.

Yeah, that doesn't amount to much! Some weather guys had me believing something greater was happening. And perhaps somewhere, it was.

Yeah, the fourth of July is the dividing line. Any rain after that is welcomed by all gardeners here. I've been out planting all morning and just came in for a Hebrew coffee break. When my wife makes it we call it Shebrew coffee.

I'm just planting trees and shrubs now. I'll save the groundcovers for Fall when I don't have to monitor their water needs as much. The trees and shrubs will only need a few good soakings from now until Fall.

Mike

This is a great garden discussion. What I've learned from it is there is no single answer or course of action that would apply to all situations.

We have a short growing season in this part of the country and I generally plant throughout summer. It definitely slows down in July, but I don't completely stop. To add more nuance, I try to save my mid summer planting to areas where there is some shade provided and/or where watering is relatively easy.

I think you have to know your strengths and weaknesses as a gardener. If watering is not your thing and you tend to forget it, then it's probably best to avoid planting during the hottest/driest time of year. I happen to be anal about such things, so it doesn't bother me to plant in the middle of summer.