Grow bed

[Topdec]

I built a little grow bed to thicken up a couple of trees, thought I'd share a couple of pics.

 

[The Warm Canuck]

I built a little grow bed to thicken up a couple of trees, thought I'd share a couple of pics.

What is the white substrate? Pumice?

Just a heads up, that it's a bad horticultural practice to have two dissimilar substrates, like this. Water migration becomes an issue.

Are your trees in Pond baskets? If they're in just regular nursery can, than I guess it doesn't really matter and there's not much problem.

 

[Maiden69]

That looks cool, but please tell me that is not perlite... because you will have a mess if you get any hard rain with some decent wind.

 

[Maiden69]

Just a heads up, that it's a bad horticultural practice to have two dissimilar substrates, like this. Water migration becomes an issue.

This doesn't apply to grow beds at all. Escape roots out of the pot will grow just fine on a different substrate, its the same principle as when you have escape roots going into the soil. The benefit with keeping them in pots is that you will still have plenty of roots near the trunk, unlike free growing were you will just have thick roots and some feeders left after collection. The one thing I would change is using bags instead of pots, to avoid having mostly circling roots and promote more feeders.

 

[The Warm Canuck]

This doesn't apply to grow beds at all. Escape roots out of the pot will grow just fine on a different substrate, its the same principle as when you have escape roots going into the soil. The benefit with keeping them in pots is that you will still have plenty of roots near the trunk, unlike free growing were you will just have thick roots and some feeders left after collection. The one thing I would change is using bags instead of pots, to avoid having mostly circling roots and promote more feeders.

Hmm, that's news to me, I have had problems with having my bonsai substrates in a pond basket in a garden soil bed and stopped doing it, but that's just my experience and that's not saying much.

However, in the posters situation, I doubt it's going to be very effective as there's not going to be much moisture retention in the white material but It sure won't hurt, and he'll probably get some good feeder root growth from the bottom of the pot. Unless, that's perlite and he'll definitely have moisture retention and a mess.

I personally like pond baskets with the bottom holes covered, with the same substrate inside and outside the pot.

 

[Topdec]

It's just limestone chippings roughly 1/4 inch size gravel on a weed suppressing membrane with standard garden soil underneath. The pots are just cheap 12 inch plastic plant pots with the bottoms cut off so the roots have room to grow but each tree has a roof tile underneath about 4 inch down

 

[Cajunrider]

So you are planning for the roots to grow to the tile then go down into the bed. Let us know how things come out later.

 

[Topdec]

will do

 

[The Warm Canuck]

This doesn't apply to grow beds at all. Escape roots out of the pot will grow just fine on a different substrate, its the same principle as when you have escape roots going into the soil. The benefit with keeping them in pots is that you will still have plenty of roots near the trunk, unlike free growing were you will just have thick roots and some feeders left after collection. The one thing I would change is using bags instead of pots, to avoid having mostly circling roots and promote more feeders.

I think we've had the bag vs basket discussion before and I tried both last season to see the difference. My main purpose for most of my trees is growing trunk diameter. The pond baskets led to much more vigorous growth vs the bag. However, the bags did create better feeder root growth and limited large root growth.

I've come to the conclusion that for early stage development, I will continue to use the baskets. After trunk diameter is achieved, I will switch over to bags to work on root ramification. The caveat with this is that, root work must be performed every season on my vigours growers, to ensure the roots don't get out of control.

 

[The Warm Canuck]

It's just limestone chippings roughly 1/4 inch size gravel on a weed suppressing membrane with standard garden soil underneath. The pots are just cheap 12 inch plastic plant pots with the bottoms cut off so the roots have room to grow but each tree has a roof tile underneath about 4 inch down

Oh cool. Forget everything I said than. haha

It looks really nice!

 

[Maiden69]

in a pond basket in a garden soil bed

This was your problem. Pond baskets or colanders are not suited for this. They will allow all the roots that reach the sides to grow freely into the outside soil. This is why a lot of people use the Andersons flats, because they allow only the bottom roots out, and still contain most of the roots circling around the container. And also why trees in colanders are placed on top of another colander once they fill the previous one. To allow some roots to grow freely into the new one, extending the period before you have to repot.

Interesting idea about the roof tile... hope it works out.

 

[Topdec]

I spread the roots out radially as best I could when I planted them and hopefully most of them will stay quite shallow, any that do grow down will hit the tile and not go any deeper than 4 inch down so when it comes time to dig them out there will hopefully not be any deep roots to cut through!

 

[The Warm Canuck]

This was your problem. Pond baskets or colanders are not suited for this. They will allow all the roots that reach the sides to grow freely into the outside soil. This is why a lot of people use the Andersons flats, because they allow only the bottom roots out, and still contain most of the roots circling around the container. And also why trees in colanders are placed on top of another colander once they fill the previous one. To allow some roots to grow freely into the new one, extending the period before you have to repot.

Interesting idea about the roof tile... hope it works out.

Well it's working great for me now. It has the same advantage of growing in the ground but with a little more control. It makes it really easy to pull them up, because the bottoms are blocked off, I just cut around the pond basket and pull them up, do seasonal root work and put them back. Like I said I'll be switching back to bags after trunk diameter is achieved though.

Of course there's an argument that one should focus on great root formation from the start and that's valid. I'm just impatient...haha

 

[The Warm Canuck]

I spread the roots out radially as best I could when I planted them and hopefully most of them will stay quite shallow, any that do grow down will hit the tile and not go any deeper than 4 inch down so when it comes time to dig them out there will hopefully not be any deep roots to cut through!

I apologize for highjacking your thread. Again, nice work, the bed looks great!

 

[Topdec]

Thanks Canuck, I find it interesting the different directions these threads go in, as a beginner (12 months into the hobby) it helps to go down different rabbit holes

 

[Topdec]

I was recently told my grow bed looked like a mausoleum so I decided to pimp it up a little bit!

 

[Cajunrider]

I was recently told my grow bed looked like a mausoleum so I decided to pimp it up a little bit!

Now it looks like a pimped up mausoleum.

Far more elegant than any of my grow bed.

 

[Topdec]

Thanks cajun your comments are always insightful

 

[Shibui]

I spread the roots out radially as best I could when I planted them and hopefully most of them will stay quite shallow, any that do grow down will hit the tile and not go any deeper than 4 inch down so when it comes time to dig them out there will hopefully not be any deep roots to cut through!

Famous last words. Roots will grow down, hit the tile, grow sideways to the edge of the tile then head down again from there. Sound to me like it just shifts the problem a few inches to the side?
The good thing is they appear to be Japanese maples so roots are not as vigorous as tridents and some other species.
I'll be keen to see the results in a year or 2.

 

[Topdec]

The tiles are big roof tiles so I'll hopefully have roughly 6/7 inch of radial roots in all directions before they start going down again. I'm hoping to just be able to cut them off at that! thats the plan anyway, I'm sure in practice it wont be as easy and straight forward as that!