Bare Root Plants for Sale
Thank you for your interest and happy growing!
PLEASE READ: If you are local or regional to the Finger Lakes area (able to pick up in person), feel free to reach out to hello@edibleacres.org with a clear wish list of plants and we will work to arrange a pickup.
We update our inventory on March 1st for Spring bare root sales and September 1st for Fall bare root sales. If you are visiting this page and see everything as sold out, please make a note in your calendar to revisit at our next ‘opening’ and pick up some lovely plants!
Our Fall offerings tend to have higher numbers of trees, shrubs, cuttings and a medley of our abundant and fall appropriate herbaceous perennials. Spring offerings will generally have more herbaceous perennials, grasses, etc and a smaller number of trees and shrubs. We weight our inventory in large part based on seasonal appropriateness for establishment. We hope you understand and visit again if you don’t find what you are looking for this time.
If you are super eager to get plants now, we now have a Permaculture Nursery page that lists friends of ours with ethical and thoughtful growing practices. We strongly encourage you to check them out and get some awesome plants from them too!
TIP: Use the tags above to help filter our offerings by characteristic (ie. click on ‘fruit’ to find any fruit bearing plants we offer, etc.) As we add more and more it is a helpful way to find a plant to fit your goals…
Shagbark Hickory
Shagbark Hickory
Carya Ovata
Shagbark Hickory is an incredible tree in so many ways! Some of the most unique bark in the world, with massive, thick, strong ‘flakes’ of grey bark pulling away from the main trunk, insanely dense and powerful wood, deep deep tap root going further down in the earth than most plants can, and nuts that arguably may have the most enjoyable flavor of any nut you could imagine eating!
These majestic beings are native to a wide range of eastern United States and are adaptable to many site conditions. Most often found along moist contexts with deep, rich soils, but we’ve seen them growing all over the place and they seem to be able to make it work wherever with a little TLC at first.
We first learned about the nuts from Shagbark from our dear friend Akiva Silver at Twisted Tree Farm back in 2013. It happened to be one of the most abundant crop years in memory and we ended up collecting nuts in a wheelbarrow walking up and down our busy road!! The nuts require minimal processing, just a gentle drying with protection from rodents, and can be stored shelf stable for nearly a decade! They can be cracked with a heavy duty nut cracker and the nut meat carefully picked out or better yet, you can make 'Hickory Tea’ or ‘Hickory Brew’ which is made by roughly crushing nuts with a special tool or even just a hammer on a hard surface and then simmering the nuts in water (or maple sap!) for a number of hours or even day(s)…. The nutmeat and fat and oil float to the top, the shells settle at the bottom and the tea is thicker than milk with a flavor like roasted pecans with melted butter. One of the most enjoyable and nourishing fluids we’ve ever experienced. A miracle!
We were introduced to a stand of Hickory that yielded particularly large and easy to crack nuts from our area and grew them out last year in air prune boxes. They do not get huge in year one, but these seedlings have a healthy, thick initial root with good lateral feeder hairs and a nice 6” or taller top. They’ll want some TLC in year one but can take off slowly and may live for 10 or more generations! We have smaller ‘grade b’ that can be grown in a nursery bed for one more year to size up as well. Great northern hardy parentage here!
Size:
These wonders can reach 100’ tall or even taller!
Site Preference:
Enjoys full sun and can adapt to many soil conditions. We’ve seen them growing in muck soils, farm edges, woodland edges, etc. They can handle a lot of challenges and manage to grow.
Hardiness:
Zones 4-8
Old video we shared of how we make Hickory Nut Brew…
