Hen fruit is not the only food we harvest here at the Hipster Hen Ranch! We’ve also got apples! A couple years after we moved from the city out here to the ranch, we decided that any good homestead needed apple trees and that for this homestead, the time had come. So I picked up my Gurney’s catalogue and ordered four trees which Gurney’s then sent through the mail. They could come through the mail because they were bare root trees. “What are bare root trees?” you ask. Well, when you go to a nursery and buy a tree, it will have a ball of soil around its roots. Bare root trees have absolutely no soil around the roots—which is exactly why they name them “bare root trees”. My name for bare root trees? “Sticks.” When they arrived and I tore open the box I immediately had deep misgivings. I couldn’t imagine that these dead looking sticks would actually grow when I put them in the ground. But that’s exactly what bare root trees do. Nurseries grow baby trees for one to three years, then in the fall they’re dug up and all the soil is removed from the roots. They’re stored over the winter with the roots kept moist in a cold environment, then they’re shipped to customers in the spring. Obviously, bare root trees weigh a fraction of trees with a root ball, so they can be shipped and handled for a fraction of the cost. Because they can be shipped at a reasonable cost, it allows you to shop for trees from a much broader geographic area and allows you access to tree varieties that you might not be able to find locally. If you plant and maintain your trees properly, they’ll grow and prosper just as happily as a tree with a root ball.
