White Oak: Cornfed Edition

cornfed

Mame
Messages
228
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272
Location
Nebraska
USDA Zone
5b
Here's my White Oak, or Quercus Alba, potted on 4/24/2021. It was from a nursery where it was grown from seed in a 80% pine-bark mixture.

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My goal for this tree is to thicken the trunk and develop the roots by repotting it in a larger, 5-gallon Rootmaker container with a more air-retentive soil.

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I guess I forgot to do a before shot, but these are the roots that I potted.

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Potting Day!

I'm using a kitchen-sink blend as a substrate. I ultimately need 50+gallons of substrate to up-pot my newly acquired trees, so using up as much of the material I have recently purchased for my soil tests was beneficial. I tweaked my soil from the previous trees I planted, removing the fine particles (fine sphagnum peat moss and #1 Grit) to increase the saturated porosity. The mix was 3:3:2:2, sifted pine bark, Turface, DE and #2 Grit.

I tested the soil's mechanical properties at 38% Saturated Porosity (air-filled space), and 25% Field Capacity (water-filled space) after draining. Hopefully it will work, because conventional substrates are difficult to find.

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Photo Shoot Day - 5/1/2021
 
Cool tree seedling. Oaks from the White Oak group seem to be slower growing and less robust compared to the Red Oaks group imo.
 
Holy Moly!! Did you see those soil Statistics?? Geess I thought I was nerdy heheheh man with stats like that I'm sure whatever your trying to grow will be just fine. See your the kinda person that needs a hobby like bonsai. There is sooooo much to learn at times it makes my head hurt.. kinda like reading your soil stats 😁..
 
Thank you, @MMJNICE, you're going to love this thread then...

Here is the second resource developed from the thread "Introductory Soil Physics". It is a document explaining how the important physical properties in soil and substrates combine to control the amount of air and water in the pore space of soils... https://www.bonsainut.com/resources/introductory-soil-physics.29

Sadly this white oak didn't make it through the winter... Rodents...
 
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