How to Plant Your Tree Sale Items.

Every Vashon landowner has at least some space to grow native plants, so consider shopping the Land Trust’s Tree Sale, now in full swing. 

“Tree Sale” is a slight misnomer, a leftover from the days when this annual sale featured trees only.  Now it includes lots of native shrubs as well as trees.

The plants for sale are small seedlings, or “stems.”  They’re also bare-root, not in pots, and will have been lifted from the ground just days before the sale.  These things being so, if you purchase these plants, your approach to protecting and planting them will be different than if you were working with retail-nursery stock.  Here are some helpful tips.

First, you’ll need to be sure your stems stay moist in transit from sale to home.  Sale volunteers will put your plant order in a plastic bag to help retain moisture, but young plants, and especially their roots, can dry out quickly.  So, before you leave the sale, grab one of the spray bottles on the tables and spritz your plants inside their bag.  Then knot the bag or twist its neck closed.  Don’t open it again until you’re ready to do something with the plants.

Ideally, that “something” is planting them that day.  Even if you have many stems, it isn’t as hard as it seems to plant them all right away, provided you use the following techniques.

If your planting areas have relatively loose soil, begin to plant by pushing a shovel into the ground up to its footrest.  But don’t dig.  Instead, just tilt the shovel forward, opening a small crevice in the ground behind the shovel blade.  Insert your first plant’s roots completely in that crevice, then remove your shovel by pulling it up and out of the ground.  The soil pushed forward initially by your shovel-tilt should then fall backwards and close the crevice around the roots.  Gently tamp down the soil with your foot.  Move on to plant your other stems using this same technique.

If your planting areas are hard to dig, consider preparing them before you pick up your plants, to minimize root exposure to the drying air during planting.  To prepare a spot, loosen the ground with a shovel to a width and depth of one foot.  When you get your plants home, use the crevice technique described above to plant them in the loosened areas.

If you can’t plant your stems right away, don’t leave them in their sale bag to dry out or suffocate.  Dig a shallow trench somewhere in your lawn or garden and lay your plants’ roots in the trench.  (Plants can be tight-spaced and touching.)  Then lightly cover the roots with soil—a process called heeling-in.  Lift the stems when you have time to plant them in their permanent locations.