I'm curious if you plant plugged trees. I've planted a lot of trees in my life, but never plugs. I buy a lot of trees annually & seem to notice an increase in the marketing of plugged trees. What's with the hype? They seem like added cost to me. I'm curious why some choose to plant plugs.

Here's an example:

https://chiefrivernursery.com/balsa...EYjK-ecH7PsoFz5FMaAmFqEALw_wcB#186=11236

That's the only way longleaf comes. Mainly due to longleaf having that carrot taproot. I like it as the dibble just punches out a plug and doesn't need to be rocked to open up a hole. Downsides, your dibble plug has to match the root plug for best fit and to avoid air pockets and because of the fit it's tempting to not tighten it up for full contact. If left just loose in the hole frost or flood can pop them up and out. They still need a quick stomp to push the hole tight.

Container seedlings offer a couple of advantages. They can lengthen your planting season both on the front end and back end of bareroot planting season. They also can improve early survival, giving the seedling more favorable conditions for early root growth and development. After roots get established, by about mid summer, there is no advantage in survival of containers over bareroot. You are correct though, there seems to be a significant increase in demand of container seedlings. I think that in a lot of cases, not all but a lot, the increased survival being seen in containers is just covering up sloppy planting practices.

I planted plug spruce trees last two years, I would bet only 10% made it we are in a drought, planted a 100 black spruce last year and no rain for 8 weeks,

I had a large percent frost heave after one year using dribble plug. They where stomped tight also. Now I use a dribble bar. Think my soil might have had something to do with it but any that popped out of ground 1" died.

Yeah I hope I don't need to irrigate as much this year as I did last year

I talked to a govt forester tonight & figured out their dept has switched to plugs instead of planting seedlings. That might be just for conifer, I'm unsure.

I seemed to do fine planting seedlings this year. Unless my efforts fail, I probably won't switch to plugs.