Bags of twig

My neighbor knows that I have a hard time turning down a free plant, especially if it's a native, or something I don't yet grow. Last year I got some redbud seedlings from him, some big bluestem grass, and an amorpha fruticosa -- possibly more that I can't recall right now. So when he texted me this weekend asking if I wanted some River Birch saplings, I said "sure".

A few minutes later I had a bag of twigs, or should I say "bags of twig", as each plastic bag contained a single sapling. I wondered for a minute why they weren't all in a single bag, but then remembered that these were from a school-related activity of some kind and there were probably many small hands involved in bagging these small trees.

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He let me know that these had been in the bags for about 48 hours, and he wasn't sure if the roots had dried out or not. The trunks all looked fine:

But the first thing I did was take a look at the roots:

They seemed fine to me, but a little dry, so into a bucket of water they went. A good soak will rehydrate them fully:

Did I mention that there were a lot of them? I don't really need this many River Birches, but I'm not sure if all of them will survive, so I'll pot them all up and see what happens.

Since I'm unsure as to their viability, I'll put three in each pot to conserve potting mix and save myself some work:

So I've got a little forest of River Birch now.

Do I have any idea what I'll do with these? Do I know how many will survive? Do I have a place to plant even one of these in the ground right now? The answer to all of these questions is "no". But they are young plants that need my help, at least for a little while, so I'll provide it.

This should also convince the wild saplings growing in all of my planting beds that I actually am starting a tree nursery. (Not really. I'm going with some reverse psychology there, pretending that I'm really interested in growing as many tiny trees as possible. The way things go in my garden, that will immediately kill off at least half of all saplings in my yard. I'll let you know how it works.)

In the meantime, I'm now eager to see how many of these little trees will be waking up in the next few weeks. Am I hoping that they all will? I'm really not sure.

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