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…
Shipmast Black Locust
Shipmast Black Locust
Robinia Pseudoacacia ‘Shipmast’
We are excited to offer a very special Black Locust that has a tendency to grow very straight. The origin of our planting comes from research done in Poland. Our friends at Food Forest Farm shared seed, we grew them out for a year, and then selected roots to propagate from the cleanest, straightest plantings. We find that roots harvested in early spring, kept on bottom heat in nice soil media for a month or so, will sprout vigorously and can reach up to 5’ tall in year one. This is a plant that can be ramped up very very quickly. Even though this variety tends towards very upright and clean, straight growth, we find some encouragement pruning in year one and year two of lateral branches helps send them on their way towards arrow straight futures.
Black Locust is fundamentally one of the most useful trees in our landscape. Incredibly vigorous and fast growing, they also fix massive amounts of Nitrogen in the soil, fueling the growth of plants around them and healing depleted landscapes. They produce beautiful flowers that support nectar enjoying insects and are delicious for people as well! The firewood is immensely dense and hot, and their wood is some of the strongest wood we can grow in a cold climate AND is wonderfully rot resistant. Posts that have their bark peeled and are made from healthy heartwood trees (15 years or older) can last 100 years or more in the earth! Having all these attributes and being a variety that trends towards straight, clean growth is just icing on the cake :)
Size:
These will be full sized trees, reaching 50’ or more. If pruned, damaged, etc. they can often start to sucker from below ground root runners, forming a thicket.
Site Preference:
As a Nitrogen fixer they can handle quite poor, rough soils in full sun. They grow fastest in rich, loose, well drained sandy soil but we’ve seen them thrive in every condition.
Hardiness:
Zones 4-9. We should be clear that this particular selection may not be as fully hardy as the more wild trees we see in our area, so colder than 5B please know it is somewhat experimental.
Your order will provide you with a very well rooted and established 1st year shoot. We will prune them back to fit in a 2’ or 3’ box depending on their size. Please be aware new growth is heavily thorny so wear gloves!
We are also offering root fragments that can be propagated for much lower price. They are available in 10 packs and will be about 2” long and roughly pencil to sharpie thickness (with variation of course). These roots can be planted vertically with a light covering communally in a pot of lightweight potting mix and stored in a warm space for a few weeks to month (we’ve had nice success from 70-85F, so in a warm room or in a high tunnel, or even on a seedling heat mat), infrequent watering to be sure the media doesn’t dry out, but not overwatering seems to be the right balance. Once they start to push green growth out of the soil they can be transplanted into a nursery bed to grow for a season. This can generate anywhere from 2’ to even 8’ or more top growth in one season and is the source of the trees we offer through the nursery!
