We are planning to graft a few varieties onto M111 rootstock very soon. Then the plan is to plant them into 3gallon fabric pots for the summer to be sold at the end of the season or next spring. Is there anyone here with experience doing this? Any tips or advice from learned experience?
I’m still trying to figure out the best irrigation, fertilizing, soil, etc to try this season. But what I’m thinking is to let them get hit with an overhead sprinkler since they are going to be in with our other potted plants, plus hand water as needed if they end up drying out faster than the other plants. For fertilizer I was thinking standard Osmocote slow release into the soil when potted. Plus foliage spray with diluted down chicken manure tea once a week after leaves have developed up until the middle of July. Then when the leaves are dropping add another dose of Osmocote for the winter. For soil, I was thinking just our standard 80% ground up pine bark with 20% peat moss.
We have enough compost around here that I could replace the osmocote with something like adding in 1 part compost for every 4 parts shredded pine bark. Any thoughts on going one way or the other?
You have to focus on root development and general purpose fertalizer is likely the last thing you want.
Your going to need to choose your soil medium to encourage root development. And you going to need to keep everything well watered because trying out will have to be fought multiple times a day
I don’t have the answer for you but this research paper might help. The image of the rootgrowth your want to achieve cought my eye.
I appreciate the input on keeping it well watered. In addition to the overhead water we will plan to also install drip irrigation on each pot as well.
I dont have access to the full research, but judging by the summary it sounds like in their study they were using an organic substrate for soil, and then adding IBA to stimulate root growth. I’m not sure if thats going to help with getting good top growth as well? Or if it would direct more of the plants energy to the development of roots vs top growth?
I think were touching on the issues with Big Box retailers vs good nursery stock. Big boxes want the top growth to look great, even if they have anemic looking root systems.
You are right about that, we are not really wanting to compromise on good root growth, which is why we are going with fabric pots vs regular nursery pots… But, trying to find a good compromise.
For what it’s worth I’ve grown tons of spring-grafted apple trees in cloth pots and had nothing but success the simple way I’ve done it: I graft them, leave in garage until they’ve grown a few inches, then slowly integrate to the outdoors. Once outside I just put Osmocote fertilizer directly on soil in pots, then use woodchip mulch in pots, then crowd the pots all around each other and cover with more woodchips to fill in gaps and keep insulated and retain moisture. I pretty much never water them again once they’re outside in full sun bc the woodchips just retain moisture so well and I guess it rains enough here in VA. Apple trees are tough, especially on m111. Doing this, depending on apple variety, I’ve seen as much as 4-5’ growth in that first season. Also I use 3 gallon cloth pots with potting soil I just buy from lowes
Thanks for the feedback Paul, that’s good news to hear. I didn’t even think about grouping the pots tightly and filling in between with bark mulch to help with retaining moisture. What size rootstock do you usually start with?
If you overhead water, do it in the morning so your tree limbs have the chance to dry during the day. Otherwise they are more prone to fungal and bacterial diseases.
Some fabric pots are designed for inground growing- these can allow the use of real soil which provides more root in less volume (but more weight) than easy draining and quick drying potting soil. The feeder roots also reach outside the bags so the difference in the size trees can obtain and the reduction in irrigation is significant.
I’ve never heard of anyone using 3 gallon pots to propagate fruit trees- I would think at least 5 gallons would be necessary to grow a marketable tree. That said, I produce trees in 18" grow bags that I sometimes transplant into 25 gallon plastic pots… I need to get $300 per tree to stay in business. I sell 2.5" diameter bearing age trees, many of which I install for $550 a pop- with 5 cubic feet of compost and same of mulch included in the installation.
For this kind of business, it’s necessary to live near a lot a wealth. Regular working people tend to buy their fruit trees from the big box suppliers. I wonder what your marketing strategy is.
Thanks for the simple explanation about the soil in these fabric pots, the ones I’ve got(root pouch) are designed for in ground use. I hadnt really thought about the differences in soil in the way you describe. If I understand correct, shredded bark works well in plastic pots because it drains fast. But, for fabric pots you want something that is going to hold water since there is so much more surface area that allows for drying of the soil? You basically treat it as if it were in the ground?
This discussion has been an eye opener for me and is helping with solving what has been one of my challenges with root pruning pots, issue being drying out fast. And now its like, well yea duh! simple solution haha
We arent try to hit the same market as you with trees that are ready to bear fruit. We are going more for tree starts at the maiden, maybe 1st pruning stage. Easy to ship outside of out local area as a bareroot. The potted ones however are intended for local sales. Once we have our mother plants more established we will be able to turn a profit on these at typical wholesale price for bareroot plants.
When it finally died I discovered it was basically on a bed of bark chips and Roots never grew. I guess it was able to live on the bark chips. But with out soil the roots I think evenly starved.
I started mine out in 1 gallon nursery pots. New apple grafts.in potting soil. That way I didnt waste time, space, and labor if something failed. One gallons got to a point that keeping them moist was an issue so I moved them up to 3 gallon root pouches. With native soil and not a potting mix. I could get by from watering every day, to every 3 or 4 days if that. They grew an additional 4"
They are for my own use, so I heeled them in, in the soil to.over winter them.
Heeled in they transpire much less. Above ground the fabric acts as a wick and dries them out a little.
I’ll water as needed next summer. Plant out in the fall. So they will act more like a transplanted ball than a container plant and no significance root loss or transplant shock.
When I got my custom bench grafts from 39th parallel I put them in 10 gallon tall grow bags for the first year so I could ensure they got enough water. it seemed to work well for them. they are in my garage now, and I’ll be planting them out in the late winter.
That is really interesting to hear about how the roots didnt really grow. Did you use bark mulch? Or like shredded bark fines like what is used in the nursery trade for potting plants?
What kind of soil did you use? What kind of growth did you get out of them?
I started mine out in 1 gallon nursery pots. New apple grafts.in potting soil. That way I didnt waste time, space, and labor if something failed. One gallons got to a point that keeping them moist was an issue so I moved them up to 3 gallon root pouches. With native soil and not a potting mix. I could get by from watering every day, to every 3 or 4 days if that. They grew an additional 4"
They are for my own use, so I heeled them in, in the soil to.over winter them.
Heeled in they transpire much less. Above ground the fabric acts as a wick and dries them out a little.
I’ll water as needed next summer. Plant out in the fall. So they will act more like a transplanted ball than a container plant and no significance root loss or transplant shock.
Did you only get about 4" of growth out of the tree over the whole season?
I just never took the tree out of the planter it came in. It did not dawn on me at the time that it was way lighter then it could should have been. Just more Big Box store magic tricks.
Plastic pots create something called a perched water table and don’t allow adequate drainage with real soil. However, the inground pots do create a level of stress when you dig them up because they are losing fine roots outside the bags- plants fully contained in containers don’t suffer stress from transplanting… as long as the potting mixture doesn’t dry out before roots establish in the soil they are planted in. That can happen quickly- especially if surrounding soil is dry and wicks water from the potting mix. Water in soil moves from coarse to fine, but not very well the other way around- it’s about capillary pull. Gravity will leave a drained soil pretty wet, depending on its texture. After that, capillary pull becomes king but only regarding the movement of coarse to fine.
No, my best grafts were about 4’ tall and some were about 3’ It was my first real attempt at bench grafting, and got about a 90% take.
They grew an additional 4" after potting them up. They stalled in August in the 1 gallons and I should have moved them up sooner.
I used potting soil in the gallons and then went to native soil in the bags with just a touch of potting soil mixed in. I wanted less maintenance.
