Bare rooted trees

Koiworks starts with ...
I potted up some bare rooted peaches and a plumcott late in spring. They started to show some leaf growth but then it appears the recent high temperatures in Sydney burnt the leaves. The trees are still alive, as they are green under the bark, but there is no more leaf growth. Another factor which may have contributed to this could be that I added blood and bone and some cow manure to the potting mix when planting. I also have an Anzaac peach which was planted in the ground mid spring and has yet to grow leaves but is still alive. Another twenty or so fruit trees that I planted around the same time are growinf fine.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I can do about these problem trees?

Any help would be appreciated.

Pauline says...
We are in late spring, so how long ago did you Plant them? I am guessing you mean late winter, as spring is really too late for bare rooted trees.
Did you put the blood and bone and manure around the actual roots, or underneath with soil in-between? If the first then I would guess that either jimmy is right, and you have burnt the roots, or you have not watered them enough.

How did the leaves look when they fell off? Yellow? Crusty of soft?

I am not for the chucking them out school of thought. Personally I would prune them pretty hard, keep watering maybe a little too well to dilute the fertiliser, and use seasol. And then just hope.

Koiworks says...
Hi Pauline. I bought the trees at the end of the season and the nursery had them on the back of a truck in direct sun at the time. Maybe they weren't in the best of conditions in terms of maintaining moisture for the roots. These were potted up mainly for this reason, so I could give them extra attention in terms of water etc. This was around mid October. A couple of these never really got to the stage where the leaves grew all over.

I put blood and bone into the potting mix (about a cup full into a large pot) and added some composted cow manure and mixed it well. So to answer your question it is possible the roots were affected by the fertiliser, but I did water twice daily for the first week and daily after that. It didn't seem to affect the trees I planted earlier with a similar soil mix (although I used the native soil rather than potting mix for those).

The leaves that did grow were small and green but then suddenly went dark-black and shriveled up and looked burnt. They never got to the stage where the leaves grew to a full size. They crumbled off when I ran my hand along the branches.

I pruned them back hard on the weekend and gave them a bit of extra water. I'm reluctant to throw them out but I might follow Jimmy's advice and replace the soil with a basic mix for now and keep watering them as you suggested and see what happens.. I might even try trimming the roots, if they aren't burnt off, although if this was the case the tree wouldn't be green still but would have died as well, I'd imagine.

Thanks again for your feedback.