Heeling-in apple trees

[thomasb]

Received a set of apple and pear trees (bare-rooted) on Thursday. I had planned to plant them out tomorrow. However, the weather does not look great here tonight with rain and snow. If conditions are not suitable tomorrow I will heel the trees in a trench.
I was wondering if this is basically digging a trench and putting them all in together? Do you keep them upright or shallow to the ground?
Thomas

[thomasb]

[Merry Tiller]

The aim is to stop the roots drying out, so it doesn't really matter if they're lying down, in fact laying them close to the ground might stop the wind getting hold of them and doing any damage

Cheers, MT

[Palustris]

The normal method of heeling in is to lay the trees at an angle away from the prevailing wind. There are two reasons for this. One is that since you are not planting the trees as firmly as you would in their final positions, the last thing you want is for them to be blown over or rocked about by wind and thus getting root damage. The other is to reduce the impact of any wind on the tree's buds as obviously there are few feeding roots to replace any moisture loss.

[derbex]

I heeled mine in the week before last into a shallow trench at an angle of about 20 degrees to the horizontal.

One thing that I had thought of, but didn't do, eas to prune back the ones that were going to be bushes, in order to reduce windage. I didn't do it in the end, as I was uncertain and time was against me.

Jeremy