Trees in the Nursery – Field Production May 1995 Nursery Management & Production (NM PRO) If the final destination of your material will be a poorly irrigated area, you may want to sell your landscape customers root-pruned or hardened-off, pre-dug material. Edward F.Gilman, associate professor of landscape horticulture at the University of Florida, has conducted studies on drought tolerance of 1 to 4 inch caliper trees separated into three categories.

1. Container-grown trees
2. Field-grown, freshly dug trees.
3. Field-grown, root-pruned trees and field-grown trees that were pre-dug and hardened-off, including balled and burlapped trees.

“If a tree were to be planted in a place with less than optimum irrigation – let’s say they were watered once a week after planting — root-pruned and hardened-off field-grown material, would have the highest survival,” he said.

“Container-grown material lies somewhere in the middle and fresh-dug material would be in real trouble.”