Tammy Sons from TN Nursery explains why bare-root plants arrive looking dead and how to tell if they're actually alive. She shows examples like purple coneflower and Virginia bluebells, demonstrates the scratch test to check for green tissue under the bark, and explains when dormant plants will emerge.
Chapters
This is Tammy Sons with TN Nursery. I know a lot of our customers don't understand that we sell bare root dormant plants, so today I'm going to show you exactly what we are going to ship, how you can tell if they're dead or alive, and how to do the scratch test. This is a purple coneflower plant. This plant comes from our fields. You can see it's a very nice plant with the tops. If we ship the tops of this plant, they will be dry, dead, and brown when you receive them in transit, especially in hot weather. What we do is we remove the tops from the plants and ship the bare root only. When you receive this in the warm months, some may come up, some may not come up till the following spring, but we just want to show you what you will receive. These will come up the following spring. They're very hardy. We do all of our perennials like that. You can see they have really good fiber roots. Let's go on to some Sensitive Fern. Just like the coneflower, we remove all the tops from our ferns, and our ferns are bare root and mature in age and size. This is what a Sensitive Fern looks like that we ship. And if you look closely, it's trying to produce new fronds while it's in the bag getting ready for transit. This will be a lush green beautiful fern come spring. They're not dead when you receive them. Let's go on to the Virginia bluebells. The Virginia bluebells are just like the ferns. We remove the tops like we do the coneflowers. Here is an example of one of the Virginia bluebells. You can tell while it's been in the bag, it's already sprouting. If you plant these plants in the warm season, they may or may not come up. It just depends on the shock factor that they received in transit, but they will come up the following spring. This is a Geranium maculatum, wild geranium. I went and pulled an order that was ready to go out to a customer off the table. And you can see this is a large wild geranium bulb. There's where we remove the tops on it. This is exactly what you'll get, and again, it will come up in the spring season. Our grasses is a little different. This is our grasses. We try to leave some of the tops. They may die back, but they will come back out. Most things that we sell come out of the cooler. The grasses do not come out of the cooler. We dig those fresh and ship year round, so your grasses may have some foliage on them. It may die back, but that doesn't mean the plants are dead. It will come back out next spring. Last but not least, let's look at how to identify if your trees are dead. I took a knife— you can take a dime or anything sharp— and scratch the bark on the tree. I would not do it close to the root system because the plant dies from the top down. Let's do midways up the root collar. That is green, white. You can see it's alive. If it's got any, any form or sign of green or white color on the bark, you can tell that the plant is alive. This one is alive, it's just dormant. This bare root tree, however, You can see that the bark on it, the first layer of the bark, is brown. It's not white and pliable or green. This tree is dead. So that's how you perform a scratch test to tell if your tree is dead or alive. And to show you that they are alive, you can do an immediate scratch test on a tree once you receive it, or anytime during the year, to see if it's dead or if it's alive. This one is alive. This one is dead. You can see the brown and you can see the greenish white. But plants planted below the surface of the soil with no tops, like the geraniums, the Virginia bluebell, and most perennials, you cannot dig them up and do a scratch test. Test. You have to wait till next spring, and when everything else in your yard starts greening out, you should see these peeping up from the ground with new growth. If not, give us a call.
