Great input guys, thank you all so very much for the advice!
I will transplant to a bigger container, I doubt it will be Rootmakers due to cost unfortunately. I will trim any circling roots and move them to bigger containers then permanently plant them in the fall.
You guys rock!
Daron
The walmart bags are a cheaper solution and will not cause circling roots like smooth sided containers. Here are some thought in general. Trees grown in smooth sided containers can look really good when young. Circling roots are not really a problem until they tree becomes older and larger and the roots constrict themselves. Direct seeding or growing trees in a root pruning container system avoids this.
Bare root trees are generally grown in the ground and dug up. The roots are cut during extraction and the soil is washed off the roots for transport. Bare root trees need to be purchased, and planted when dormant. The saying with these trees is: "Year 1 - sleep, Year 2 - creep, and Year 3 - leap." They have significant transplant shock. They spend that first year trying to reestablish their root system in the new environment. The second growing season you see a little more top growth. By year three, they are ready to grow pretty much normally again.
B&B trees (burlap ball) are a little better but still suffer a lot of transplant shock. They are grown in the ground and the roots cut when extracted. Instead of washing off the soils, the extracted root ball is wrapped in burlap including the soil. These are generally more expensive because of the transport cost, but they will start growing a bit sooner.
When you plant a containerized tree, you avoid much of the transplant shock since the root ball stays intact. However with a smooth sided container, the tap root hits the bottom of the container and begins circling. They are slow to put out secondary lateral roots. While they look great in the containers, and do well when planted directly from the container, when they get large, those circling roots will begin to constrict themselves. So, the best thing to do is to remove the media from the container and cut any circling roots. However, you essentially now have a bare root tree and have lost the advantage of a containerized tree.
Trees grown in a root pruning container system have the tap root pruned at about 4". Air pruning a root causes the tip to desecrate and seal off so you don't have an entry point for disease like when you manually prune a root. This pruning causes increased production of lateral roots most of which occurs in the 4" above the prune. So, properly transplanted trees from root pruning systems will have a dense fibrous root system and most of the container will contain roots. Since the amount of nutrition a tree can uptake is limited by the number of terminal root tips, these trees are very efficient at transporting nutrients and water and they grow fast. In addition, nothing the tree produced is wasted. When roots are air pruned at the tip, nothing is removed. When you dig up a tree or manually prune roots, the part you cut off is lost energy and it takes time for the tree to re-balance between top and rootball. When you plant from a large root pruning container, the root system is completely undisturbed and the tree begins to grow almost immediately. So, if you provide supplemental water when needed, they can be planted in the field in the summer while actively growing because there is so little transplant shock. I still prefer to plant them when dormant because there is always some transplant shock due to the new environment you are putting them in. I don't need to provide supplemental water this way.
This is the last time of year I would be buying trees. They are really an illusion. You think you are getting a head-start, but not really. I grew all my Dunstans from nuts, starting them in the winter under lights using a root pruning container system. While this was a great cabin fever project for me in the winter, unless you are planting trees in high volume, it has a high cost for setup. Folks in some locations with a long growing season, can do this for a low cost doing everything outdoors. This approach is not for everyone and there is a tradeoff made when choosing the root pruning approach.
I would suggest that direct seeding might be a much better alternative for most. Buying these containerized trees seems like a head start but it really isn't much of one, especially when you consider the trees will die over time. Chestnut ridge of pike county sells Dunstan chestnuts in the fall. You can plant those directly in the fall and let nature cold stratify them. You just need to protect the nuts from squirrels and such. There are other threads with details on that.
I don't mean to discourage you and I hope your trees work out.
Thanks,
Jack
