Gardening Landscaping

The Best Time to Plant Every Tree

Spring vs. Fall Planting Based on Your Region

Flowering dogwood tree with red flowers.

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Knowing the best time to plant a tree isn't as straightforward as you think. The basic idea is to plan the planting so that moderate weather will likely follow, giving the tree time to become established. If you perform the transplant right and the weather cooperates, chances of survival are good. But how perfectly does everything have to go? There's often room for error, but that depends on factors such as the type of tree you're planting and your region's climate.

Why Does Planting Time Matter?

The best time to plant trees is in the spring and fall when the soil temperatures are mild, allowing the plant to develop a healthy root system.

If planted too late in the fall and the ground freezes early, the tree won't be able to establish its roots. If it goes in the ground too late in the spring, when hot temperatures have set in before the roots have established, trees can get scorched by the sun and potentially die if they can't uptake water properly.

Benefits of Spring Planting

Spring planting is best for gardeners in northern climates to prevent an early freeze from shocking the roots before the tree becomes established, which can happen when planting in the fall. Once the ground freezes, water won't be available to the roots. In spring, you're also likely to be more intimately engaged with the garden, conscientious about watering everything that needs it.

Benefits of Fall Planting

If you live in a warmer region, planting in the fall is best to help your tree establish before the hot summer weather. A pro of fall planting is that your tree most likely won't become stressed out by hot temperatures. There's a greater risk of this with spring planting.

Best Time to Plant by Tree Type

While a healthy evergreen tree never loses all of its foliage, it's part of the average yearly cycle for deciduous trees to drop all of their leaves in the fall. But not all deciduous trees lose their leaves simultaneously in fall. For example, oak trees (Quercus spp.) keep their leaves later into autumn than maple trees (Acer spp.).

When leaves of deciduous trees fall in autumn, it indicates that they're entering a state of dormancy. They stay in that state all winter; the sign they're coming out of dormancy is the unfurling of buds in spring. The best time to plant deciduous trees is between these two points in time (except for when the ground is frozen), when they're dormant.

While evergreen trees don't grow as quickly in winter as in other seasons, they don't undergo the dormancy that deciduous trees do. Nor do they offer clear-cut indicators that give you a green light to plant them. But evergreens generally are tougher than deciduous trees. You can plant them earlier in fall and later in spring than you can deciduous trees.

Best Time to Plant by Growing Method

Determining the best time to plant is dependent on what you're planting. When you decide to grow a particular kind of tree, you'll typically either go online and order a bare-root plant or get a container-grown nursery tree (in a plastic pot) or a balled-and-burlapped tree (B&B).

It may be tempting to save money and grow a tree from seed (the least expensive way to start a plant), but most people are too impatient for this: They don't want to wait years for a plant to get big enough to provide an impact. Container-grown and balled-and-burlapped trees are the priciest, and the compromise option is the bare-root plant.

What Are Bare-Root Plants?

Perennials, shrubs, and trees are all commonly sold and delivered as "bare-root" plants, so called because a nursery digs them up while dormant and stores them without any soil around their roots. When customers order them online, the nursery wraps them in plastic, boxes them, and mails them to the recipient.

Bare-root plants are less expensive than container-grown and balled-and-burlapped plants because the nursery uses less material and labor.

When you buy a tree grown in a pot, you get a plant with an undisturbed root ball. When you plant it, you'll place the whole rootball (dirt and all) in the ground. The roots of a container-grown tree have been protected by hard plastic and shielded from injury, no matter how much it has been moved around.

In contrast, you must trust the nursery has handled the bare-root plant carefully. They also need time to establish in soil. Container-grown and balled-and-burlapped specimens have had a headstart; meanwhile, bare-root plants are more vulnerable to root injury and not becoming acclimated to new soil.

Planting Bare-Root Trees

With bare-root trees, there's less margin for error. Just one setback kills them. Since an early winter would almost certainly kill a bare-root tree planted too late in fall in the North, early spring would be a better time to plant. Simply reverse that logic for the South: An early summer heat wave would almost certainly kill a bare-root tree planted too late in spring there, so opt for a fall planting.

Planting Container-Grown and Balled-and-Burlapped Trees

With container-grown or ball-and-burlapped plants, there's more room for error. While the odds still favor spring over fall plantings, or vice versa, there's a good chance the tree will survive transplanting in either season if you follow basic transplanting rules.