I plucked a few seeds off a tree. GREEN SEEDS. Should I remove the hull before planting, or not?

Our local landscaping place had 4 evergreen trees (1 white pine, 2 blue spruce, 1 Serbian spruce) leftover from last year, so we bought them for a discounted $75 (original price was $189). Right after we had them delivered, the winter struck and the ground was frozen for over a month here in Central PA. I did some online research and for spruce it said the best time to plant them was February. So I was holding out until then hoping the trees didn't die. Well, they didn't. I also could not break through the frozen ground even if I wanted to. Eventually Feb came and the ground was still frozen. I borrowed our neighbor's backhoe as a last ditch effort to get these trees in the ground. It took hours of work to break through the ice, but I eventually had 4 holes dug. I returned the backhoe and found my trees were frozen to the ground. I have never planted trees before, so this was all new. I eventually broke the trees free gently, but realized they were too heavy to move, even with my family out there all pitching in to help. I've read where they grow about a foot a year, so these have to be 4-6 years old by their size. They must weight hundreds of pounds. I was eventually able to maneuver the white pine onto a thick sheet of plywood, then rope the wood to my riding lawn mower and drag it over to its hole. It was a ton of work to just get that simple task done, and I am sure it probably did some subtle damage to my lawn mower. I didn't want to have to do this 3 more times. I noticed our Serbian spruce is now half brown/dead and half green. I knew I was losing one of these 4 trees. I borrowed my neighbors backhoe again and he brought it over last night. Someone else had been borrowing it for weeks. So here's my first question: can my Serbian spruce be saved by putting it into the ground finally? Or will it just continue to die? I don't want to waste the effort and time if it has no chance. But if there is a way to bring it back to life and turn all those brown needles green, I will do it today. My second question is I've seen mixed reviews over how to plant these trees. Many youtube tutorial vids just show them putting the tree in the ground and covering it with dirt. Others add all sorts of compost and other nutritious soils from the store. And yet others go into cutting the root ball at various angles before dropping it into the ground. Our trees are all wrapped in the canvas sack material with metal wiring holding it all together. Can I just clip through the metal wiring, remove the canvas sack, and drop the trees into the ground, then pile the dirt back around them? The guy who owns the landscape store told me you don't need to add anything special. Just add the dirt that was removed from the ground to make the hole. Is it really that easy?