I don't know if this is the best thing to do but this is what I did. I have some newly planted pluots, a nectarine, apricot and some others that seemed to be off to a slow start. My peaches had already bloomed and were loosing petals so I started fertilizing my new fruit trees with one tsp of Miracle Gro per gallon of water and all but one persimmon tree has leafed and the other persimmon has visible green tips. I fertilized them every three weeks and watered with plain water in between. I stop fertilizing them once they get off to a good start. The trees now have full leaf coverage. PS- It is my practice and recommendation to not fertilize thirsty plants/trees. Hope this helps.

I have them all in pots. Thanks Ken for that link. Lakeside Cupcake had one new growing eye. The rest are dormant. This situation was actually a blessing in disguise. Seven of those hostas were planted at the base of a maple tree (commence the "I-told-you-so's") I figured since this bed was only created in August that I could just "pop" the hosta ball out and pot it up. Yeah, right. The flippin maple tree had already entwined all its new roots around those hostas. I may have lost a couple cuz I dont know if I pulled out the hosta or a ball of maple roots. Lesson learned and Im not in love with that tree any longer.

It is pretty easy. You only use is for certain types of trees that tend to get very hard, unyielding buds while in cold storage. Some of the varieties you use it for are oaks, redbuds, hackberries, weeping willows, birch, hawthorne, some types of dogwoods, barberries, and ornamental pears. When these trees are held in cold storage they sort of get "stuck" in dormancy and don't want to wake up. Often, if you plant these types of bare-root trees without sweating them, they stay in dormancy for months and, if they don't break dormancy at the right time after spring planting, they can die before the following spring rolls around. What you want to do by "sweating" them is to create a super-humid, moist environment that gives the buds extra "encouragement" to swell and break. You can sweat them in several ways. For example, if the trees came in a large cardboard box, you can take them out of it, line it with heavy plastic, and then put the trees back into it. If they have any packing material around their roots, remove any plastic and wet down that packing material throughoughly. Then use duct tape to seal up the large sheet of plastic and make it as air-tight as possible. Store the whole thing in moderate temperatures between 45 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit out of direct sun. Within a few hours, you should see condensation inside the plastic and that is what you want. It can take 1 to 2 weeks of sweating for the buds to swell and break. If your condensation gradually disappears, you may have to briefly open the plastic and wet down the packing material around the roots and then reseal it. Check the buds for signs of swelling every couple of days. Or, if you have a polyhouse or tightly constructed hoophouse or high tunnel that holds in the humidity well, you can wet down the roots and sweat them in that structure following the same principle of shielding them from direct sunlight and maintaining the right temperatures and high humidity. Or, you can lay the plants down on a garage or barn floor, remove any plastic from the trees root area and wet down the packing material around the roots, and cover up the whole thing with a sheet of heavy duty plastic or a tarp. It is a little harder to maintain humidity under the tarp though unless you lay it underneath the plants on the floor and sort of wrap it around the plants and seal it shut with duct tape.. Once you have swelling buds, the sweating has achieved its goal of breaking dormancy. The key to success with sweating is what you do after the sweating because the plants need to go into the ground when the weather is warm and humid--very similar conditions to their sweating period only the humidity is natural and not artificially mainatained under plastic. If you plant the trees and a late cold snap occurs, you can loose the dormancy-breaking effect unleashed by the sweating. So, you don't want to sweat trees until the weather is conducive to planting. And, as soon as the buds swell and you remove the plants from their sweating "area", you want to plant them ASAP. That's all you have to do to "sweat" a dormant tree.

The answer to the question in your title is yes, but with a lot of complexities (at least if you ask how much roots grow when the tree is dormant). I don't think you are looking for a lot of complexities, but here are a few generalized approximations: 1. All tree roots grow to some degree when the ground in which they are growing (at root level) is not frozen. 1a. In your area, roots are able to grow throughout the dormant season, if planted in-ground. 2. Growth rate, during dormancy is both species and environmental dependent. 3. Most species' roots grow significantly during dormancy. 3a. Ginkgo biloba general has significant dormant-season root growth. 4. Root growth is often greatly increased when the root-to-shoot ration is lowered (B&B trees, root-pruned trees, etc). So what does this mean for your tree? It means that you should definitely plant them as soon as they are fully dormant. In your area, there are few woody plants that won't benefit from being planted in fall (Some species with fleshy roots, like pawpaws and some magnolias, are the exceptions). Planting in fall (or even winter, in your area) will allow the root system to begin to become established before the tree has to face the stressful time of the hot summer months. Below is a link to a guide that you may find useful. Here is a link that might be useful: Planting a Tree or Shrub