Storing, Planting,
and Establishing
Arrival
Your plants have been in the mail for a little while. Ideally, open your package as soon as you can and start tending to your plants. Realistically, if you can’t get to your plants right away, keep them cool and dark. The danger you are trying to avoid is the box heating up and roots or plant material drying out irreversibly.
Everything will be wrapped in plastic with moist media all around roots and plant material. Remove the plastic when you’re ready and for plants, either soak them in a bucket of water for a while (usually not more than 24 hours unless the water is aerated) or put them in a pot with some media and give them some water. Same thing would apply to root pieces for propagation.
I’ve switched to aged leaves as packaging material for shipping, so this is not as critical to get off roots before planting (whereas with my old sawdust packaging material it was very important), but ideally the aged leaves will be washed off prior to planting.
With hardwood stem cuttings, get them in the ground as soon as you can in spring. If you can’t do that right away, wrap them in plastic (to prevent dehydration) and stick them in a fridge to slow them down from breaking buds. If they do break buds, that’s ok.
In spring the plants are more vulnerable as they are certainly starting to wake up, moving water up their stems and starting to break buds. In fall you have a lot more flexibility with timing as the plants are asleep and staying that way for a while.
Holding Onto Plants Until Planting Time
If you cannot plant right away, a great option is to heel your plants in outside. All this means is you dig one big hole and put all the plants in it, and then cover the roots lightly with soil. Here is a link to a quick video showing the process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfN9sVVDlfs
Plants can be stored like this for a long time, even over winter (I store many plants this way), so if they stay like this for a week or two until you can plant that is ok. However, if the plants go through an entire growing season like this, the outcome will probably not be great.
You could also store plants in a suitably sized pot filled with soil, compost, or potting mix. However pots are much more susceptible to wild temperature swings, so they should ideally be stored in a place where the temperature is more stable, like a garage or basement.
Planting
Plant everything out as soon as you can!
For trees, shrubs, and herbaceous perennials, dig holes a little bigger than the plant itself to make sure you can spread the roots out naturally. Trimming a few roots is ok, especially if one is way longer than the others. Ideally you’d remove a bit of the top (in woody trees and shrubs) to compensate if you do trim roots.
Try to plant at the right depth, on woody plants you’ll generally be able to see the change in color from the roots to the stem, on herbaceous perennials plant them under the soil so they won’t pop out, but not too deep so that the stems can’t pop up.
With root cuttings and and stem cuttings, check your orientation!! You don’t want them to be upside down! Stems look for buds pointing up, and on root pieces I’ve either oriented them by having a slanting cut on bottom and a flat cut on top, or just included a tag with an arrow marking the orientation. If you loose the orientation, plant them sideways.
*** Remember to protect your plants from predators too! ***
Establishment
Monitor your new plants for water during spring and summer! Keep them hydrated, but don’t over-water so the plants end up under-water. Watering is all about balance.
Remember that both roots and microbes need a combination of air and water. Roots breath oxygen!
Establishment is kind of a vague term, so I define it as the ability for the plant to survive in some form if you did absolutely no more interventions.