After poking/lurking for a while, this seems to be the forum that fits me best. I've only been at this for 7 years or so, but recently I've made a choice to go all in. There is so much buried here that I don't think I'll get trough it anytime soon. Cool!
My main interests (at the moment) are collecting from the wild, and building healthy surface roots, so you'll probably find me exploring there.

Off the top, (1) can you suggest best time of year to collect wild specimens? There are quite a few nearby, and if I can identify them as good material and as a suitable species with which to work, then I'd like to collect them. (2) any recommendations for potting while they grow and get used to me helping them to get use to shallower root systems?

Thanks for all you do!

- Playing in Ohio!

This of course varies to an extent with the location, climate, kind of plant and with the skill of the persondoing the digging. In general the best time for mostplants and trees to be transplanted feom a wild habitat is in the spring immediately after the buds have begun to appear and befor the roots are active

Great! We're here in Northwest Ohio, and summer is coming to a close. You can just feel the leaf-droppers getting sleepy. I'll have all of Autumn to identify, and all Winter to prepare.

What do you mean by skills of the person digging? I'd have thought that taking as much of the surrounding native soils was best? Should I be being more selective? Are there trees that will want to be root-pruned upon collection? Everything I'm looking at so far is deciduous. Evergreens scare me a little still. I've murdered too many of them to date. I need more practice.
Thanks for the tips.

See all depends ond the tree you're digging out some of the deciduous trees like zelkova and maple are best done in their dormant phase between fall and spring so best to do is to identify the tree and do some research on it