What is a ‘Bare Root’ Plant?
September 14, 2009 by Becky
Filed under Customer FAQ's
Ordering and/or receiving BARE ROOT plants may be new to many of you. Let us explain how a bare root plant is different from a potted plant. Shipping dormant, bare root plants is a fairly ‘old school’ way of sending plants. It is quite labor intensive, but we find that customers prefer this method for the following reasons:
We grow our plants outdoors here in Southeast Minnesota in garden beds, not greenhouses. They are are grown without chemicals or artificial light/heat; they weather the same conditions and all 4 Minnesota seasons that any outdoor plant would! You will be receiving a very hearty root!
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| Karen in the bare root garden beds in May. |
When plants are AT LEAST a year old, they are dug from their garden bed during the dormant season (typically April for Spring shipping season and October for the Fall shipping season). A greenhouse-grown plant is usually 6 months or younger and has not yet been exposed to outdoor weather.
Manual digging by our hard working Garden Crew allows for more quality control than mechanized digging. They wash and trim the roots and then pack them in peat moss.
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| Tony trims and bags roots in peat moss. |
Species are bagged together with a permanent garden tag that you can use later in your garden or planting.
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| Bare roots are bagged together by species with a metal garden tag. |
Your roots should arrive dormant or just breaking dormancy. The following 2-sided phamphlet on "Installing your Bare Root Plants" is included with each order:
Attached to your invoice (tucked in the packing slip on the outside of the box) is also a root photo for each species to act as a planting depth guide:
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Great info! I have had a lot of luck with bare root plants, sometimes they are cheaper too.
right! often times they are cheaper because they are lighter and we don’t have to use sophisticated packing boxes normally needed to keep a potted plant in place!