Pot Growing Christmas Trees With Easiroot Pots

Have come across a pot that you place in the ground for growing trees in, i shall be trying some Christmas trees in them, primarily Nordmann fir, Noble fir, Blue Spruce and Fraser Fir

Developed for the production of any trees or shrubs, the Easiroot pot has 163 holes of 3mm diameter uniformly spaced around the circumference and base of the pot.

Trees are planted in the Easiroot pot in open ground and left, typically, for three to five years. The tree roots grow through the holes, but the small size of the holes restricts the diameter of the roots.

Advantages are seen in a reduction of irrigation because the tree is able to take water and nutrients from the outside. The pot is easy to lift, at which point the roots are sheared off and the tree transferred to a sale pot. Roots that formed callous against the inside of the Easiroot pot are quick to produce uniform growth.

Video of the Easiroot pots in use

www.limerickchristmastrees.com 

Pot Growing Christmas Trees

An experiment to grow smaller Christmas trees, 

These are Fraser fir, my thoughts are to try in the ground then dig up and put in pots when ready for sale at ideally year 3, these are planted through the mypex to protect from weeds, growing like this they wont be lacking in water, i can still feed them, there is enough room between them for shearing etc



or grow in 5L pots from day one, ideally they should be ready for sale at year 3, with pot growing they need lots of water, still need to feed them every year, in pots they are easier to handle when ready for sale as they are already in the pots



These are some Noble fir in 5L pots planted this year





















www.limerickchristmastrees.com

Drainage and Saving a Flooded Field

We have had a lot of problems with run off water from the road flooding part of the field out this year as the field is lower than the road and the plants are standing in water, my plan is to put a trench alongside the road, in the actual field



Another problem i have is drainage in part of the field it gets the run off water from the road and there are a couple of springs popped up in it now, i weed licked last autumn, my plan is to get a digger and make a shallow trench and long mound are the shallow trenches will drain the water and the trees get planted on the long mounds in rows, this i hope will keep the roots out of standing water

The boggy wet area

  

Standing water everywhere

  

Hopefully a solution as i dont think underground drainage will work, long mound the length of the area to plant, i am thinking 4ft apart mounds 2ft wide 1ft high, more to follow later on in the year as i cant do any of this work until its drier



www.limerickchristmastree.com

2 Year Noble Fir Transplants

We have some 2 year old transplants, decided to plant some in trays and some some in 1.5 litre pots for growing on, the pot ones will eventually be in larger pots, the tray one will be planted in the field autumn 2016

2 year old plug cell grown Noble fir



Trays of 2 year Noble fir growing on until autumn 2016



1.5L pots Noble fir these will eventually be re-potted into 5L pots to make pot grown trees



www.limerickchristmastrees.com

Noble Fir From 2011

In 2011 when i started growing Christmas trees I planted 300 bare root Noble fir, I have about 30 of these left, why did they die?, there could be a number of reasons,
I planted them in the Winter/Spring as normal for bare root, the ground was not frozen or too wet,
We had a very wet late spring early summer though and my field flooded, I suspect the field just got to wet for them as Noble don't like to much wet,
Or maybe bare root just don't do as well as plug cell grown, but saying that I planted 180 bare root Nordmann in 2013, for a trial, and i have only lost  couple of those ones,
In 2012 I planted 400 Nordmann and 150 Noble and for some reason we got them mixed up and i now have a block of Nordmann and Noble mixed up and the Noble are doing surprisingly well i don't think i have lost any of these ones yet

In the autumn of the same year 2011, I planted 300 Nordmann plug cell grown to date my losses on those is about 25 plants, we have now manged to get losses down to about 5% for previous years planting, still not brilliant but it is better, Roughly 50 plants per 1000,  

Maybe the field drainage was not good enough the first year, and the roots just got water logged, we have since put drainage ditches in and it is a lot better

Picture of one of the Noble firs i have left, they are about waist height and the right size to start shearing

September News Letter

Small Weed Licker

Recently i made a small weed licker that fits behind a machine and is narrow enough to fit in between the rows of trees, it is only 3' wide with a gravity fed water tank,, the roller is a 6" diameter plastic pipe which rolls on top of the grass and rotates freely, the covering is just an old piece of carpeting, the wheels on the sides are what keeps it up of the ground.

I may change it to a pump system yet and also change the white PVC pipe for copper, the pipe has a row of small holes in it, water just drips out constantly onto the roller i can regulate the flow by the stop lever on it.

My thinking is to try to suppress the grass/weed growth in between the rows of trees, even if i just do it once a year in the rows i can easily get down i am hoping this will go further to help control weeds, 

www.limerickchristmastrees.com

Transplants Planting August 2015

That time of year again, planting of transplants, I weed killed the area to be planted last month, and it is relatively weed free, I don't dig the ground prior to planting anymore as this only brings up new weed seeds from lower down, and it seems to cause more weed growth come the spring than if I don't dig it

Using the planting tool I made, I simply put a hole in the ground to drop the plant into and firmed in, the plants are plug cell grown which makes them easy to plant, there is a section on my website on planting How to Plant Transplants this year I have planted 5' between the rows and 4' between the plants the plants are still planted alternately,

P     P      P       P       P       P

P      P      P      P       P

P      P      P      P       P       P

My aim is to plant 500 Nordmann fir this autumn then another 500 in the spring, I wont weed kill around these one again until next autumn, I like to give them a good year to establish themselves first, I will pull any large weeds up if need be, they will be fed with agroblen in the spring, and the usual cutting of grass between the rows.

We have also started on seedling planting into plug trays these are 1½ years old and will be grown on till they are 3 years old and will be big enough for planting out

www.limerickchristmastrees.com