Nice settup, raising the base of the tree box and having a bottom of 1/4" hail screen will do a great job of air pruning the tap roots and forcing lateral root branching for greater transplant success. It is amazing what air pruning can do on a root system. Greg.
On Nov 24, 7:56 pm, "George Fieo" <[email protected]> wrote: > Larry & ENTS, > > In March 2009 there was a discussion about growing trees and I was inspired > by Larry's tree box. I work for a municipality and with my supervisors > permission constructed a tree box. The box is 12' long x 4' wide and can > house 200 seedlings. After I leveled and framed the box I removed all the > soil within the box to a depth of two feet. I then filled the box with 3' > of good soil. The soil is 50% rich topsoil, 25% peat moss, and 25% coarse > sand. Most of the trees I planted are hickories or oaks and is why I went > to such extremes with the soil depth. An 8" hickory or oak seedling can > have a 3' taproot and some of them will be remaining in the bed for 2-3 > years. The others will be either transplanted to a permanent location or > planted in Rootmaker pots to make room in the bed for next years seedlings. > Then I leveled off the soil and made two framed 4' x 6' screens to keep the > critters out. After a few rain showers and the soil settled I sowed the > seeds, marking the rows with tags showing which species and their location > where they were collected from. The final step was to cover the seed with > some leaves. Species I planted this fall are pignut and shagbark hickory, > chestnut, white, and swamp white oak, and blackgum. I'll post again in the > spring. > > George > > DSC01011.JPG > 148KViewDownload > > DSC01010.JPG > 168KViewDownload -- Eastern Native Tree Society http://www.nativetreesociety.org Send email to [email protected] Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees?hl=en To unsubscribe send email to [email protected]
