I do the same prep when hauling fruit trees. If the pots show to have a thoroughly root-filled "ball", don't worry about loosing a little soil when pulling the root ball out of the horizontal pot that has been slit from top to bottom in one area. On the other hand, if the roots are not very developed inside the pot and thus may not be able to hold on to the complete soil "ball", maybe you can again lay the tree/pot on it's side and cut 3 separate slits from top to bottom to make it easier to slide the pot off of the root ball. A handy bag of good potting soil can be used to fill in around the broken-up root ball. I usually stake the trees to give the roots a while to get established rather than chancing a stormy wind gust pushing the tree out of position. Good for you, and good luck.

Hi just wanted to add a few more good varieties for your area and info about the ones suggested. Dorsett golden apple was developed in the Bahamas and is known to produce fruit from southern California to Phoenix Arizona It's chill hours are 100 to 250 Anna's chill hours 100 to 300. For plums I like the weeping Santa rosa it's self fertile and chill hours are 150 to 400. Regular Santa rosa needs 300 to 500 chill hours and satsuma need about 300 chill hours. The last to were developed by the great Luther Burbank of Santa rosa ca around 1900. Good luck happy growing Cory

I would agree there are good and bad trees. IF same variety on same rootstock, they should all be the same genetically and produce the same (in theory anyway). However, when I worked in an orchard commercially, we had 4 rows of Spartan apples all on the same rootstock and planted the same time. A few of those trees produced heavily every year but the apples they produced were so small they fell thru the sizer while grading. Worthless except for cider. We tried fertilizing and found no size increase. The trees were healthy otherwise. Virus? The few trees like this seemed healthy and showed no visual signs of virus. I have the same issue on concord grapes. I bought 3 nice healthy looking vines bare-root. The first produces normal concord fruit in shape and yield every year. The second vine grows rampantly but never produces much as the clusters have 2-3 fruits in them only. The third vine always has gigantic clusters of grapes that are breathtaking to see as they are so big and heavy. All three of these concord vines ripen the same time and taste like Concord. If I ever propagate my own it will be from the vine with the gigantic clusters of fruit. Just pointing out that sports, viruses ect can make a difference in a block of fruit all the same variety. Really important for the propagator to pick the best tree/vine when grafting/budding or rooting a fruit variety.

In the Chicago area, you can find 4-lb paper bags (bold yellow and red) of "Hi Yield Soil Sulphur" (in flake form) at garden centers like Sid's, The Growing Place, Planter's Palette, and others for $3-5/bag. It is difficult to know what process was used to produce the elemental sulfur you buy at garden centers. As +om said, there are naturally-occuring deposits of elemental sulfur. In the U.S., significant, fairly pure deposits exist in Louisiana and a couple other states. However, there's a huge amount of elemental sulfur on the market that's produced by treating the hydrogen sulfide gas (chemically "reducing" sulfide to sulfur) that is (1) found in natural gas and crude oil deposits and (2) produced as a waste stream during desulfurization of crude oil in refineries. Hydrogen sulfide is a very toxic gas, and the large quantities produced in natural gas and petroleum operations must be dealt with--it cannot simply be vented to the atmosphere, and the EPA regulates this. There are enormous piles of yellow sulfur (made from hydrogen sulfide) sitting at some of the big natural gas fields in Canada. (Elemental sulfur is often shipped in bulk in the molten form in rail tankers. You can usually tell which tanker cars carry sulfur by the yellow crust around the hatch.) Much, but not all, of the elemental sulfur produced at refineries goes on to nearby processing plants to be turned into sulfuric acid, and then into (water-soluble) mineral sulfates that can be broadcast on fields as agricultural fertilizers. In reading Espoma literture, I have gathered that when they use the term "all natural" with respect to inorganic ingredients (like elemental sulfur, or calcium sulfate), they mean it has been extracted/mined in that form from some place on the earth. But I've never called them to confirm that. The "Hi Yield Soil Sulphur" is marketed by a reseller that I suspect gets sulfur from the cheapest source (which currently is probably one of the hydrogen sulfide sources). As a chemist, and as a citizen who uses both natural gas and refined petroleum products, I consider soil sulfur produced from the treatment of toxic hydrogen sulfide waste streams (generated by the demand for these fossil fuels) to be worthy of use. +om, some "formulations" of elemental sulfur sold in bulk for agricultural use are coated with a surfactant to make the surface of the sulfur pellet/powder/etc. hydrophilic (wettable). For field use, most of the interest in elemental sulfur is as a cheaper source of soluble sulfate fertilizer, rather than as a soil acidifier. Elemental sulfur has a relatively low solubility in water, and in solid form it is hydrophobic. If the sulfur's surface can be made hydrophilic, then that improves the rate at which soil organisms (fungi and certain bacteria) can convert the sulfur to sulfate over the course of a growing season. Does the pelletized form that you buy have surfactants? Can you find out? If it does, all the better as a somewhat faster-acting, slow-release soil acidifier. (The down-side of some surfactants out in the environment is if significant quantities wash into aquatic habitats, where some can be toxic to aquatic animals. This should not be an issue for home gardeners using relatively small amounts of surfactant-coated sulfur for soil acidification. I'd keep it away from beds around ponds, though, to be safe.)