Tree Planting Season: What is it?
Last month saw the end of our latest tree planting season. As with all work done in Nature, we must keep up with the seasons. Since the arrival of Spring there has been a flourish of life on our sites and in our nursery, from seeds germinating, saplings budding, and flowers emerging. We are truly in the rush of Spring and it has taken some time to get the chance to reflect on the planting season just gone.
This winter was Hometree’s first planting season since establishing our Organic Native Tree Nursery. Tens of thousands of our very own native trees were planted on our sites or supplied to others who are working to increase native tree cover. But a tree nursery can’t be built in a day! Most seeds need 2 winters before they are ready to grow, whereas an acorn needs 3-5 from when it was collected to when the oak sapling can be planted. Help from our community - volunteers, restoration members, business partners and supporters - has been critical as Hometree grows.
Trees are typically planted during the Winter season, as this is the time of year when the trees are dormant. In Winter, a tree’s interaction with the soil is at a minimum. Therefore, it can tolerate being dug up and transplanted. Come Spring, as the new leaves are emerging, the tree begins to photosynthesise again. From now until the autumn, its roots need good contact with the soil to transport the water and nutrients needed for growth.
Most young trees (or saplings) are planted as ‘bareroots’. This just means that there is little or no soil left surrounding the tree's roots. The exact timing of the bareroot tree planting season varies depending on the weather but it usually begins in December and ends by March. Trees can be planted later in the spring but success rates can decrease. Saplings that are grown in pots already have their little area of soil to keep growing so these can be planted at any time.
Some species of tree, such as holly, are less tolerant of being transplanted. As an evergreen tree, holly doesn’t lose its leaves in winter and therefore doesn't have the same dormancy period. Holly trees are not suited to bareroot planting. To successfully establish a holly tree, it needs to be planted from a pot, keeping its roots in soil at all times.
The dormant Winter season is also the time that tree cuttings can be collected and planted. Some of our native trees will regrow very successfully from a branch. Amazing isn’t it?
This relatively simple approach involves cutting branches from a donor tree and planting them in the soil. As long as there are areas within the cutting called ‘nodes’, the planted branch has the ability to regrow (nodes are the part of a tree’s branch that leaves, flowers or other branches grow from). At Hometree’s Nursery, we are using cuttings to grow willow and elder trees this season.
As one tree planting season ends, we are already prepping for the next one - organising tree beds and pollytunnels, weeding, and come Autumn we will begin seed collection.
