This bed is between my house and a 7ft. block wall so winds won't get to it. I put it in the ground in the middle of Feb. We can't get bare roots here til after Xmas so I think I'm fine. I guess I was worried that the other bare roots were up and running (the others did have a few new leaves when I bought it and this one didn't)and this one has done nothing. Maybe I'll back off the water for a day since I've watered it daily and do the mulch around it and the paper bag thing. Hadn't heard of that, Thanks. How long do you do the paper bag thing? Only at night or 24 hrs a day?

I have 2 years limited experience in planting bareroots. I planted 300 bareroots in 5 gallon pots last year in early June since I wanted to control sunlight. June is a bad time of year for planting bareroots but that is when you can get great deals, 99cent deals. I soaked them for 48 hrs in a bathtub. Dont let them sit in the shipping box. I kept 40 in the box for a week in a cool spot but they had a white fungus all over the roots and canes and I lost all of them. The bareroots that I trimmed the roots and canes before potting had a higher mortality rate. Just trim off the broken roots or canes or canker canes. I placed the pots in shade/semishade with a white sheet covering them to prevent them from drying out. I occassionally sprayed the sheet for morer moisture. BIG MISTAKE. I created a great environment for powdery mildwew which I had to fight all summer. This year I will use the sheets but I will not wet the sheets. I also will spray bareroots with an organic antifungal and water without spraying the canes. Water pots daily when it is hot and dry. Roses will bud out within the week. I take them out of the sheet cover when new sprouts grow a couple inches. Keep in shzade/semishade for adjustment then gradually move to more Sun. Eventually place pot in LOCATION of future hole. I would plant in hole during early fall. Cut the pot away in order to keep roots in tact and plant. I am considering cutting all buds off the roses to allow them to use enery for roots and cane development. Dont fertilize in late fall! I hope my experience helps.

I wanted to see how much heavier gritty is compared to 5-1-1, so I weighed a one pint pot of each: 5-1-1 is 0.64 Lb and gritty is 1.22 Lb. A five gallon (12 inch) pot of 5-1-1 would weigh 24 Lb compared to gritty which would weigh 46 Lb, or almost twice as much. Not including the weight of the tree. I have trees in 7 and 10 gallon pots, which would weigh 63 and 93 Lb if they were in gritty. I have another one in 20 gallon pot, which would weigh 186 Lb! All of them have to go indoors for the winter some up a flight of stairs. So, the big guys go in 5-1-1 and the little guys go in gritty.What do you think of that idea?

Three possible issues, that I can comment on. 1. A container mix like the 5-1-1 that drains well in a pot will drain WAY too quickly in the ground. What you will end up with, unless you take steps to prevent it, is a bone-dry root ball surrounded by wet soil. I have read accounts from people who have planted this way, and dug up the plants later after they failed, and who reported being shocked that the bark from their container mix was completely dried out despite the surrounding soil still being moist. You can mitigate this by checking, as often as possible, how moist the root ball is after you plant. Stick a finger into it and feel - check the bark mix, not the nearby soil. If not moist, water. Because of the drainage issue you are creating, you may need to water quite often until the roots of your gardenia grow out of that bark mix and into the surrounding soil. After that happens, your plant should be OK. 2. Depending on what type of soil you are planting in, you could actually face the opposite problem: drowning your plant. This is most likely if you are planting into a heavy clay soil that also drains poorly at a time of year that you get a decent amount of rain. Basically what happens in this case is that you are digging a hole in the ground where water can collect easily, but not drain out of easily. And your plant's roots will be sitting in that.. and drowning. Not likely to be an issue unless you are planting in a heavy soil like clay and also getting a fair amount of rain. 3. If the soil you are planting in is significantly different from the soil around the roots of your plant (which is almost guaranteed, since your plant is in the 5-1-1 mix), your plant may be slow to extend roots into the surrounding soil, or it may simply fail to do so. Plants sometimes seem to be unwilling to cross boundaries of significantly different soil types like you will be creating by planting this way. In an extreme case, your plant could end up becoming "root bound" in its plug of 5-1-1 mix, and eventually declining or dying because of that. This can be mitigated by gently shaking off some of the outer layer of 5-1-1 mix from the root ball to expose the growing tips of the roots (keep those exposed roots moist while planting!! Do not let them dry out!!). Then when you plant, the tips will be in your native soil and should have an easier time crossing that barrier. Since gardenias are not hardy in my area, I'm afraid I don't know anything about how they respond to having their roots disturbed. But if the plant will tolerate it, you will avoid all of the issues listed above by (mostly) bare rooting it before you plant. If you do go this route, it is critically important to keep those roots moist during the entire planting process. They can dry out very quickly, and the damage that results can really set your plant back - or kill it outright. I like to keep a 5 gallon bucket of water nearby when I am planting. I can dip the entire root ball in there to keep the roots moist, if I need to.