In my experience, plants take a lot longer to acclimate and settle down when they arrive bare root because they are put into an 'alien' environment where the soil chemistry is not familiar. By including home soil they seem to settle down and acclimate a lot quicker. Roots incorporate chemicals into the soil around them that tells them they are 'home'.
I've mentioned this Nature Documentary before, "What Plants Talk About". It totally changed the way I handle plants and confirmed a lot of my suspicions. For example, for many years, I had noticed that I got my best results in rooting cuttings of some plants that are particularly difficult if I stuck them next to the donor plant. After seeing that program, it confirmed what I was thinking. The cuttings rooted faster and with better success because the chemistry of the soil told the cutting it was home and not in some alien possibly hostile place.
If you haven't seen it I urge you to watch it:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature...
Lynn I'll be doing an Ideas post in the near future about how I pack and send plants.
