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  • Thread starter Thread starter cory
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cory said:
I was wondering the survival rate. Is J rooting his wrong doing or the way the seedling is. Lemme guess, if you put it in the ground wrong, the tap root gets bent into a 'J' instead of being straight down?
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You have it correctly, Cory...and not just the taproot, he is also J-ing most of the side roots too.

In the nursery, when seedlings are lifted and packed, they are inspected for malformed roots. J shaped roots can happen in the beds, from several causes, but the trees so affected should have been culled before they ever got to the planter.

He is just jamming the most tender, sensitive part of a conifer seedling into a hole that he has not opened to sufficient depth and width, and without any attention to getting the roots straight. He is not packing soil around the roots from the bottom working up to the soil line. Poor packing and J rooting allow the roots to dry more easily before they begin to grow, plus to gain proper orientation the roots have to make a U turn, and seedling survival goes in the toilet from planting like that. Those that do survive are more prone to windthrow as they gain size over the decades because the roots are all whackadoodle.
 
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Good info.

He was planting rather fast it seemed. Is it possible to plant that fast and do it correctly?
 
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