Just curious-has anyone ever taken advantage of the free offer for ten free trees appropriate for your area? It's from the American Arbor Society, or something like that. I've seen the ad in magazines.
Anyone know what I mean?

i haven't, but everything i have seen is that the trees you get aren't even 1 gal size, and would take years to get recognizable. i've never heard a good report.

It is for a good cause, but the "trees" are nothing but tiny twigs with minimal roots.

I did it once and LOVED the result! I sent in my $10 donation and they sent me 2 bradford pears, 2 washington hawthorns, 2 dogwoods, 2 redbuds, and 2 flowering crabapples. They come as "bare root" trees.

What I did was soaked the roots over night and then planted them in pots. After they went through 2 growing seasons in the pots, I placed them out in the yard. The Redbuds did the quickest growing and were blooming the following year. The best thing about them was that my husband accidently cut one down (before I put cages around them) with the riding mower, but it came right back more vigorous than ever!

I guess to answer your question, you just have to decide how much you want to "baby" them at the begining! Good Luck!

Annette

I have bought too.
mine are now starting to give off shade, I had the same trees as IxiAnn.
I planted in the fall, but not in pots, water well.. and I still water & feed them

with food and water, they grow much faster then you think.

When planting trees, i've had much better results planting tubestock from very small seedling tubes than i have planting bigger, more established trees in say a 6 inch pot or bigger. The tubes recover from transplanting really quickly and as long as they are cared for while young they will generally overtake larger plantings of the same species. Tubestock is really cheap too. I've planted hundreds of trees on my place from tubes. Shrubs too. If the plantings don't do well, it's often because of the soil preparation or lack thereof and post planting watering and mulching.
It also depends on selecting the right plants for the conditions you have too.

What are tubestocks?

Tubestock are tree and shrub seedlings in very small pots. Like 6" deep and only 1 1/2"-2" wide at the top. So, very young tree seedlings.

I definitely agree with both points of view. I am like most people and have a limited budget after building a new home on three acres and I wanted to start putting in a lot of trees for shading, as screens and for color as well. To do so with larger ball and burlap trees would be very expensive. I went with the cheaper small bare root stock and so far everything is coming in nicely.

Thanks for the explanation, Longy.
Thanks all for your opinions.
Was curious about the offer, and your experiences with it.