I make my own mix too, the 5-1-1 drains to much for my needs. Probably good for trees, not so good for tomatoes. At least here, I need them to stay moist longer than half a day.
1 Like
Alan,
With 1 and 3 gal rootbuilder II containers like those shown in the photo in my previous post, I like to bottom water them. I have a plastic tub that I fill with rain water. When a container starts getting light, I set it in the tub for a short time and let it absorb water from all directions. They are so well drained, you can’t water them too much, just too often.
Thanks all for the information! I did do my own mix, eyeball everything, using pinebark but it was still to heavy. I am using Foxfarm K9 cube for the first time. Just wanted to see how it fairs. Was told by mfr that it is heavy on peat moss. It does have a very good amount of perlite in it.
Is anyone growing chestnuts in containers? I was told that mixing the dirt with pine needles helps them. So that was what I did. Grower told me that there is a man in CA who grows all his chestnuts in containers!
Last year I grew a few Everbearing chestnuts in 3 gal containers. I got a few chestnuts. Last autumn I bought 4 grafted Chinese and hybrid chestnuts and potted them up in the basement, Eaton,Euro, Prococe Miguele, Scharlbaum. 3 have leafed out and one has a couple of male catkins. Eaton and Euro are in the same pot but will separate when they go dormant this years. I intend to prune them heavily to maintain their size. Whether they would survive like the Everbearing, who knows.
I would like to add that, I intend to grow them permanently in pots
Which fruits does well in containers for you? I find that gooseberries do exceptionally well for me 
Geraldi dwarf mulberry as well, if the groundhog don’t strip them of leaves and kill them and if the chipmunks do not get the fruits before I do and if I don’t kill them by not protecting them for winter
Yes, I’ve been starting Dunstan chestnuts under lights in the winter in rootmaker express trays (18s) for a few years. I’ve had some success planting them directly from the 18s in the field with tubes but much better success transplanting them to 1 gal Rootbuilder 2 contianers for one summer and then planting them when the go dormant in the fall.
I use Promix BX in the 18s and then mix it with mini pine bark nuggets when I use 1 gal RB2s. The most likely reason they told you they like pine needles is because most professional mixes are pH adjusted to neutral but chestnuts like acidic soil. When I tried growing them with city water, they did fine in the 18s but by they time I put them in the 1 gal RB2s, they started getting iron chlorosis. It wasn’t the lack of iron, it was a pH issue. When I started using rain water which is slightly acidic, the problem dissipated.
I’m not growing them permanently in containers, just starting them that way for the root pruning.
Yes I remember now, you are right about the acidity. I have never heard of Promix BX. need to check that out. Do you use this for all your container trees. f you dont mind me asking, are you growing them for sale and are from seed? thanks!
I’ve never been much of a green thumb. Ive killed many of houseplants over the years and this year I’ve dove into trees for the first time.
One test case for me is that I ordered 5 Nanking cherry plants this spring. I planted 2 in ground and potted the other 3. I used the classic 5-1-1 mix. The 2 plants in ground are doing much better than the 3 potted plants. They are leafed out along the entire length of the whip and show lots of vigor. The 3 potted plants have pushed a few leaves out but really only show probably 20% of the vigor the in-ground plants show. I guess it’s a nutrient issue of some kind. I always agonize at when to fertilize, how much to fertilize, and what to fertilize with. I think I have the moisture level spot on in a good range and I monitor it with moisture probes.
I feel like I should find a temporary place to stick them in the ground this summer and then transplant them this winter when I have a final resting place ready.
1 Like
Don’t feel bad speedster1. I have killed many fruit trees! I have an Nanking growing in a container. It leafed out nicely this yr. It was a twig when I got it last yr. One died. this yr I put a Carmine jewel in the same container. Can anyone tell me if they put broken crock in the bottom of their containers in addition to using the 511 mix for additional drainage or is 511 sufficient? thanks
Good to know. Do you think you’ll be able to get a small crop from the Nanking this year? I out a handful of large round river rock in the bottom of my pots before I put my potting mix. I don’t know if it helps but I do it anyway.
I don’t see any blossom so I don’t think I will get anything. If I get a chance I will try to take a picture. I don’t usually put anything but I think I will cos my plout survive and is trying to bud out but it suddenly stopped. Same with a plum I have. I will get some rocks of some sort. pull the trees out and repot. Hopefully it is not too late.
Roundface,
Promix BX is just one of many well drained professional mixes they work well for starting trees from seed. I have also used Fafard 3b with good results. I use it for all my root pruning container grown trees. The container design along with the mix makes them very well drained (chestnuts for example don’t like wet feet). These coarse soilless mixes create a lot of space in the small container. The tap root grows through the bottom of the Express Tray cell and is air pruned. This causes early up stream secondary and tertiary branching. This creates a high number of terminal roots in a small container. These roots fill the space in the mix making them hard to water as they approach 12-16 weeks when they should be transplanted into a larger root pruning container. This starts the process all over again. You can get an amazingly dense and efficient root ball using this method.
I’m not growing any of my trees for sale. I went in with a few other folks and purchased a pine farm. We put it in a forest stewardship program. We are working to manage both for timber and wildlife value. We recently clear-cut some low quality hardwoods because we were losing them to wind storms with our thin soils. This removes a lot of acorn food from our wildlife. We decided that chestnuts were a good fit to replace that mast crop for wildlife fairly quickly. Because of the blight, American chestnuts were not an option. We decided to try a blight resistant American x Chinese called Dunstan. They want $20 - $25 per tree for these. They have been over hyped to the hunting community and as deer attractant. We found that with a little initial investment in lights and root pruning pots, we could have a fun “cabin fever” project in the winter starting them under lights ourselves. We have been planting several hundred of these each year for the last few years.
We then moved on to other trees. Right now, I’m growing Jujube, Pawpaw, Crabapple, and Persimmon in them for later transplant to the farm.
1 Like
Oh that is so interesting forestandfarm! I have a jujube in a pot from last fall. It is not doing well 
Have U tried the Foxfarm K9 cube? If so, how does that compare with the Promix BX? I bought one K9 cube few wks back and wonder if it worth it? I am using it to containerize my fruit trees. Prior to this I was mixing my own but found that it was still to heavy for the trees.
@speedster1 Here are 2 pictures of my Nanking. The twig next to it is Carmine Jewel. I had a Hansen growing in the same container but it died
That’s nice and full. Surprised you didn’t get any blooms.
Me too. May next yr. Are Nanking worth growing. The one I have is Sugar Sweet. I hears that Hansen’s skin is bitter.
I’ve only tried Promix and Fafard so far. Both are well drained and work well for trees. Here is a thread you may want to look at if you are interested in mixes for chestnuts: Professional Mixes for trees
Towards the end a poster goes off on some tangent associating one of the mix names (Metro Mix) with treated human waste products. Other than that, there is a lot of good information about mixes. The testing was done years ago and many of those mixes are no longer on the market. There is enough information that with a little work you can figure out that the winners were heavier weight mixes for trees and the mixes to avoid were on the lighter end of the range. I don’t know anything about Foxfarm.
I have found that the biggest issue with growing trees in normal hard-sided containers is J-hooking and circling. I believe that root pruning is the way to go for containerized trees. The only down side I see to it is that trees don’t have a deep tap root. This could be an issue when planted in the field for arid regions during drought. For most places with reasonable rain fall, they simply need supplemental water for the first growing season in the field.
Dr. Whitcomb who pioneered many of the root pruning techniques (designed the rootmaker line) wrote a short paper on how he grows tree seedlings in containers: Growing Trees in Rootmaker Containers
In that paper, he provides his formula for growing medium. I found it too much effort for the cost savings to mix my own using his formula. I ended up buying a professional mix and supplementing it with mini-pinebark chunks for larger containers. This helps increase acidity as well as making the mix chunkier and more well drained.
Our applications are different since I’m only keeping trees in containers for 1 or 2 growing seasons, but I had an experience that may interest you. I bought some bare root Tigertooth Jujube grown on their own roots and planted them at my farm. The took of with good vegetative growth but as of last season still had not produced any fruit. They are supposed to be self-fertile, but I was beginning to wonder. A couple years ago, I took some root cuttings and tried to propagate them using these root pruning containers and mix. My success rate was low, but I did get some trees to start from the cuttings. They are very slow to start. I took the cuttings in February that first year and did not see any top growth until June. By the end of the September I had 2 or 3 fruit on a couple of those seedlings. They were not even pencil size in diameter at that point. I upsized the container to 3 gal and they produced fruit again the next growing season. By the end of the second year, they were pencil sized so I grafted them this spring with other varieties.
I was very curious about why they produced fruit when the parent trees still have not. I had a discussion with a university professor that specializes in Jujube. He suggested that the root pruning forced them from a vegetative state to a fruiting state early. He said that if I planted those trees back in the field, they would likely revert to a fruiting state.
I have had nanking cherries for many years. I originally bought four from Gurney’s about thirty years ago. One of the original bushes is still alive but it looks pretty sad. They grow from seed around the parrent bush if you dont pick all of the fruit. I planted about twent down my north fence. I really wanted a hedge as the neighbors driveway is just accross the fence and I decided that if I was going to put in a hedge , I wanted to have fruit on it. I grew some from seed and transplanted some seedlings from mom and dads. the seedlings were all less than a foot tall when i dug them. This is their third summer and the biggest is six feet tall. They bloomed heavily this spring but the fruit set was not that great. We had several verry cool rainy days when they were bloomed out and I wounder if it affected the pollinators. The fruit is very small and has a pretty big pit. When they are bright red and soft they are kind of sweet but they dont tast like the flavor of a sweet cherry you buy in the store , more like a pie cherry i think. My mom makes jelly out of them and it is great. Picking them is kind of a pain because they are so small.
@forestandfarm, thanks for the additional info. I ordered 1 bale of Promix BX from local feed store. Going to get 1 K9 cube today cos I needed it yesterday! I was asking the store about both of these since they are the same price. He said the only difference is, Promix BX has anti-fungal (which is prob why I think they are great for seedling) I have grown trees in Smart Pots but didnt think they are that great. 2 of my Bing Cherries died after being grown in them for several yrs. I think it may be due to poor drainage. Since then I have swapped back to plastic pots whenever I can.
@Derby42 thanks for the info. I guess I should have done more research before I bought them. I am aware they have big pit but didn’t think the skin would be so bitter. I have planted 4 sweet cherries in the ground, all in the same hole. It doesnt get much sun but I hope the number of trees will make up for that. I have 2 starkcrimson (they are suffering from canker in the branches) 1 white gold I just put in over the wkend and 1 seedling (cant remember what that I got from an El Cheapo company. they are horrible!!!, everything came dead except the cherry)