"New" trends are interesting to me as my view of the nursery world gets longer. Many of them are revisiting a practice that existed a decade or two ago with new technology, salesmen and growers. One of these may be summed up in the questions about liners I received on the trade show and short course circuit during the past few months. Some is new but most is technology that never left for a lot of growers.

Both retailers and container growers had questions about bare root shrub liners. I guess we've accepted the millions of bare root tree liners being successfully shipped across the country for use by both field and container growers but, somehow, shrub liners seemed different this winter. Maybe it is a reflection of what has been happening in our southeastern nursery trade over the past decade. We have gone to direct sticking many, many shrub cuttings. The resulting container grown liners are then "bumped up" into the ultimate sales container or a size that makes them a larger containergrown liner that is often sold to another nursery to use as a liner in yet a larger pot.

There is nothing wrong with this practice. I like it. I helped a number of nurseries work out how to accomplish this most effectively for them. It works!

Most of the plants we have been growing this way have been evergreens whether they are needle evergreens or broadleaf evergreens. If you bare-root these plants, handle them so that their roots do not dry out. If you let evergreen roots dry you can lose quality and even kill the plant. Therefore, it makes a lot of sense to keep the moist media on the roots. However, all of us see boxes and bags of rooted boxwood and holly and juniper liners filled with both leaves and roots every year but most of the propagation media has been removed for shipping. We are careful with these plants so they grow quickly into salable plants.

In some parts of the U.S. people have never stopped buying bare root liners of deciduous shrubs in winter, potting them into a salable sized container, putting on new root growth and a flush of top growth then selling them. If the purchased liner is two or more years old, that is two or more years that the nursery has saved and space that was not used. In addition, protecting the plants over the winter with expensive facilities is avoided. It works. This is just a practice that had fallen out of favor in some parts of the south. I think part of the reason is that the deciduous shrubs generally have a limited sales period in the garden center and we have gotten in the habit of buying our shrub liners from further south. Many of these bare root liner producers are in the midwest and far west. Another reason is that the current nursery grower generation is a container thinking generation and some may forget that the shrub was not always in a container.

If you are considering using bare root liners, please keep a couple of things in mind. First, order early and talk to the sales rep about when you want to accept delivery as well as when they think might be best for your area. Second talk to the sales rep about how they suggest you handle the liners. If they use words like "sweating" be sure you understand what they are talking about.

When the order comes in, open it immediately and inspect it. Be honest . . . if there is a problem with 1% of the plants and you count 5% more than you ordered, perhaps calling to complain is not the best idea. It is also okay to tell the shipper that the plants arrived looking good. You have to pay anyway. Why not tell them what you like about the plants just as quickly as you might mention what you do not like? And build some rapport as well as credibility? If there is a problem, arrival is the time to tell the seller not months later. Having a digital camera to send photos electronically is a good idea. Do not allow roots to dry out. Follow whatever procedures are appropriate and suggested for the liners you bought. The sooner you can get them planted, often the better off that you will be.

Among the questions I got are: "Do bare root liners require special potting mix?" No. Use whatever you have been using for that plant. "Special fertilizer?" No. If you are used to using incorporated controlled release fertilizer, use it that way. If you use top-dress, use that. There seem to be two schools of thought . . . one is that you pot up the plant, let it put on some root growth then top dress fertilizer. The other is that you incorporate the controlled release fertilizer while the weather is still cool. Fertilizer is then slowly released as the plant is putting on new growth. Both systems work so do what you are comfortable doing. Since bare root liners are often plants that do not require a lot of fertilizer and they do need to develop a root system, rarely are rates higher than a medium label rate used. Also, most folks buying bare root liners plan to sell them or move them to a different pot by mid season so rarely is a season-long fertilizer release pattern used. Your fertilizer rep can help with these decisions. You are not likely to be their only customer using bare root liners for a container crop.

The biggest problems I have seen with bare root liners have to do with getting the liners potted too late, letting the root system dry out while potting (particularly while field potting), not spreading the root system out in the pot, potting too deep, not putting the liner vertical or in the middle of the pot and over fertilizing. Do these seem like the biggest problems I have mentioned elsewhere with container grown liners? Potting too late is the major difference. With container grown liners you have a bigger margin for error. You can try to blame the liner producer for these problems but if you call me out to investigate why the liners died, be ready for me to ask liner handling and storage questions. Sometimes dead or poor quality liners are shipped or damaged in shipment, but that has not been what I have seen in most situations where liners die.

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North Carolina State University