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Can I plant these trees in winter? Cornus alternifolia 'W. Stockm

15 years ago

Is it possible to plant trees in winter? I ordered 2 trees, one Cornus alternifolia 'W. Stackman (golden shadow pagoda dogwood) and the other an Acer palmatum 'Atro-purpureum (red Japanese maple). The nursery messed up and sent the trees now instead of in May when they should be planted.

I contacted them and they will resend the trees in the spring, but they told me to keep these. I would like to try and keep them alive too, but I'm not sure what to do with them. They are dormant, so I've put them in the garage for now. I've read that trees can be planted year round. Is this true? How would I go about this? What about water? It is cold and snowy right now, and the forcast is for more snow and a very cold freeze (below 10 degrees) in the next week.

I've only been gardening for a couple of years, and have never had any experience with keeping a plant alive and dormant for the winter. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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Comments (4)

gardengal48 (PNW Z8/9)
15 years ago
Keeping them dormant (below 40F) and with the roots protected both from drying out and from excessive cold is your best bet for now. While there is not a decisive reason they can't be planted at this time of year and while fully dormant, I'd assume your soil is frozen like a block of ice at the moment, not to mention a bunch of snow on the ground......so it's more of an issue of you not being able to plant rather than the plants themselves not tolerating the planting.

The garage may be the best place for storage, if you can keep temperatures in 30-38F range (or not much higher) and the roots moist. Available daylight is not a factor.
diggingthedirt
15 years ago
And be careful, because even an unheated garage can get HOT on sunny late winter days. You might want to invest in a thermometer that shows the min/max so you can see what's going on out there. Warming up too much is probably more of a problem than getting too cold, at least for the cornus, since it's hardy to zone 4. The acer is another story; the zones on these are "all over the map" - literally.
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Sounds like your temperatures are very similar to mine. I will look to see if I can find a photo of the Kousa the first year after the coldest temperatures and how it has recovered in three growing seasons. It was homely enough initially that had it been in front of the house I would have removed it. As it is behind the house, it isn’t visible to most folks so I left it to recover. Edited to add: Here it is leafing out after -23F and in "full bloom" (see the tuft of flowers that were below the snow line just to the left of the trunk). It wasn't helped by an early heavy wet snow fall the previous autumn while it was still fully leafed out. It didn't break any branches, but did a fair amount of damage, causing the overall look to be misshapen since it was bent down to about 4' from something like 12' at the time and didn't fully recover from that either. Here it is in September having thrown out a whole lot of new growth where branches weren't outright killed. I did a lot of pruning that spring and both springs since, and it is finally starting to look like a reasonable tree again. I will most likely need to do a bit of pruning this spring as well, but not nearly as much. If you want, I will add another photo after it has leafed out this spring.
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ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
15 years ago
go get a bag of media ... while at nursery.. ask if they have any pots for recycling ... of appropriate size ...

DAMPEN media... but NOT wet at all ...

plant tree in pot .. and put in garage ... add snowball every now and then ...

dormant is dormant...

dont worry about them ...

ken
pricklypearsatx
15 years ago
I'm agreeing with Ken. In San Antonio, you can plant year round, but our soil temps rarely go below 50 degree. Trees grow roots year round here.

However, I think in Zone 5, there would be no root growth if planted now.

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