I've had a little experience with trees recently. A local retired nursery guy gave me some pointers on establishing trees here in Minnesota. I'm mostly interested in evergreens of various kinds since my property is heavily wooded with deciduous trees. Lance mentioned that he likes to grow the trees for a while before planting. That's what we've done as well. I buy from a Minnesota nursery to make sure I've got climatized stock. I don't buy any bare root. Tried that and they take too much care. So I buy from a place where they grow them in bedding containers kind of the way you get flowers and vegetables for your garden. I get trees that are 6 to 12 inches tall for 50 to 60 cents each. They have a root ball in soil that is an inch diameter and 6 inches long. They ship them UPS. I plant them in 2 gallon containers for 2 years before putting in the ground. Depending on the species and start size they can be 2 to 3 feet tall when planted. I've found this to provide excellent survival rates and fast growth even the first year in the ground. I also use a special symbiotic bacteria applied to the soil to help them grow. This would be a lot of work if your planting 1000's of trees at once but a few hundred at a time is not too hard. It's worked so well that my kids started a business selling the containerized trees and it's catching on around here.

Gotta get back to fishin!