Potted fruit trees with heavily pruned roots?

Hi
I got a some tall fruit trees (between 5' 9 and 5' 11) from B&M. Of course I didn't wonder how they managed to squeeze a massive root ball in the pot....
So when I removed the trees from their pots I realised that the root ball has been pruned/chopped off leaving a weird stump resembling a knee joint?
Did you ever have one of those stumpies? Will mine recover and develop new roots shortly?

 

they should be fine but will need a bit more TLC , start with a good tree stake and tree tie so they are firmly anchored in you dont want any wind rock or the new roots will be damaged .... keep well watered for the rest of the year .... I woudnt feed just let the roots grow away .... I would also remove any fruit if it sets ...

Spruce

 

I've done a mix of potted and bare root fruit trees. The bare root ones I got were similar to what you described. I had no problems they got themselves established quickly last year.

Yours sounds like you got a bare root tree in a pot rather than a tree that was grown in a pot.

 

I think it is common practise to dig up and replant trees in order to get a fibrous root system, a tree usually puts out large anchor roots, that do that particular job.
But you can actually reduce these quite a lot if replanting, success lies in how much fibrous root there is.

If its a biggish tree you will need to stake it until it grows more anchor roots.

 

Better safe than sorry, so thought it best to check that by "weird stump resembling a knee joint" that you don't actually mean the joint where the tree has been grafted onto the rootstock, because if so, it's very important that joint is above ground after planting (otherwise you wont have an apple tree grow!).