Question
Rick,
Boy I hope you can help me, otherwise I think I'm in hot water. Today I and another man planted 30 4-6' Norway Pine on my property. We were able to dig them from a neighboring property using a type of spade. (Not a real good one, either) From where we dug the trees to where we planted them is about 1/4 mile. In transporting these trees with the machine we lost ALOT of the soil around the roots.  By the way we do live in very sandy soil. These trees are absolutely beautiful and now I am very concerned about the fact that we went ahead and planted all of them with little or in some cases no soil attached.
I live in WI. and have transplanted many trees before with great success. But I must admit I have never had this problem before. The trees were free to me but I had to hire the guy with the skidsteer. What I need to know is before I do this again next week what do you think my chances are of these trees surviving? I am real good at babying them once I have them planted but am I doing this for nothing?
Any ideas? I've looked all over the internet for some help and nothing. So I am hoping you have a solution.
Thanks Alot for whatever help you can be.

John

Answer
hopefully it is still quite cold in your part of WI. the best time to transplant norway (Spruce) is during their dormant season. i recently saw a 30' tall, 18" caliper Maple that had been bareroot transplanted (they used a helicopter to move it) in the late fall. this was on an old DuPont Estate in DE. it had leafed out and was doing quite well.
you're 3-4' trees should survive provided you prepared the holes properly, added some peat moss, and mixed the loose soil properly. they should have a nice earthen saucer around them to aid in water retention. give them 5-10 gallons of water after planting. every 2 weeks water the same way unless we you are getting a lot of rain. w/in the next 2 weeks or so you should start to see new light green growth buds on the tips of the branches starting to form. the ones that don't make it will turn brown as soon as the weather gets warm.
buy some granular hollytone by Espoma fertilizer and put 1-2 cups per plant on the ground around each plant.
good luck.