Well, I didn’t see any budding on any of the trees.  Scrape tests didn’t show green on most of the trees. Digging up the root systems showed that not much had changed since April.  I have 6 Enterprise and 7 Empire trees that aren’t dead yet.  (They aren’t really very alive, either.)

An internet search showed that many people had bad experiences with bare root trees from Summerstone Nursery.  There was a sale at another vendor who is trying to get rid of their last bare root trees, so I went ahead and placed an order.  I’ll re-use my soil and large containers.  I’ll upload pictures soon.  Just imagine a bunch of dry branches standing upright in pots of dirt– that’s basically what I had been watering for the last few weeks.

Bummer.