LOL. I was coming here to ask the same. Mind if I tag along intead of cluttering up board?

Im starting a mini orchard and just picked up a Ranger and Elberta peach. 5 gallon on sale for $12 each at Home Depot. Should I plant them asap or can i hold them over till spring outside. My layout are beds arent ready to plant but I could make it happen.

Mike

Mike, I'd plant them now. If you leave them in the pots all winter, their roots cannot grow much....other than to maybe start circling round and round in the pot. If you put them in the ground now, the roots have quite a few months to make growth and get established before the heat arrives next summer.

If you were to keep the trees in the pots over the winter, there's always the risk that the roots might freeze on an extra cold night. Remember that containerized plants, when grown out in the elements, have less protection for the roots since they are above ground, and have to be considered to be growing roughly one zone colder.

If you decided to keep them in the pots and put them in your heated greenhouse with your citrus trees, the plants might not get enough chilling hours in order for them to perhaps bloom and set fruit next spring, not that they'll set a lot of fruit their first spring, but you never know. The first Ranger peach tree I ever planted (roughly in February of that year) was from a 5-gallon pot and it gave us 6 or 8 peaches in its very first year. It gave us tons and tons in its second year in the ground.

it's your choice, of course, but I have found that the fall planting of fruit trees is preferable to spring planting because that gives the plants a lot longer to make new root growth in the ground where they will be growing. In a very hot and dry summer, having a more well-establilshed root system can be the difference between a tree that thrives despite the heat and drought and one that barely survives, if it even does survive.

Dawn

Thanks Dawn! Knowing me I cant wait for anything so I am sure they will go in the ground this weekend. i just was hoping to have had the area ready with mulch down and Bermuda gone. I guess since the grass is dormant anyways it wont matter. I am tempted to go back and get an apple and plum but I have a huge cedar that is so lovely 30 feet from the garden on the north side. Great shade tree but the fear of cedar apple rust has me thinking I wont try it.
My plan is to add 2 more peaches- Loring and a later type, Cresthaven or Fairtime maybe
a couple plums and maybe a few cherries.

Mike

Yeah, what Dawn said. We got most of ours planted. Will finish the rest Monday. Sunday we take an apple tree and a couple grapes to our daughter's place in Tulsa to plant in her yard. We also dug some forsythia sprouts and a white crepe myrtle seedling--that should have been dug two years ago, sure hope it lives. Also have a dogwood seedling that I dug out of a flower bed last spring and babied all summer in a half gallon pot.