how deep to bury rootball when transplanting

Question

I am having a disagreement with my husband as to how to transplant seedlings, small trees, and most container plants into my garden. My husband insists that one must use the adage “plant it high if you want it to thrive” when transplanting from containers to the garden. With this idea in mind, he always leaves 1″-2″ of the rootball of the plant above the soil line when he puts it in the garden. The roots are exposed here. To me, this is completely counter intuitive, as roots need to be buried in the ground to function. We are always arguing over this point. Can you please weigh in on this subject for me? Thank you.

Answer 1

Anytime I plant anything I put the whole thing in ground, but I think I see what your husband thinking is, he wants to expose some of the roots to make it look like a bonsai. When I transplant tree’s from pot to pot if I like how the roots are looking I plant them above ground but these roots are usually pretty strong at this point. why don’t you practice with one tree see what happens. if it look like its dying then cover roots with dirt.
and don’t argue planting is supposed to be fun.
Stephen