Dawn Redwood Growth - Strategy??

[Chunky Trunks]

Dawn Redwood - This is becoming my favorite tree to experiment with. I have some year old trees. Most have been recently moved to three gallon nursery pots. The question is how do you personally grow yours and what is your method? I am curious if anyone field grows and what kind of girth is put on opposed to maxing out a 3 gallon nursery pot. Disclosure, the goal is to have several 5-6 foot larger size/style individual trees. Not so concerned with smaller forest size trees. I want to grow some monstas. Thank you

 

[Deep Sea Diver]

Started ours out in gallon nursery pots, then up potted to larger nursery pots every year. Now they are in really big nursery pots!

All will be cut back in the next year or two.

cheers
DSD sends

 

[andrewiles]

I've been using Anderson flats for mine. I like to work on the roots every year or every other year, growing on a board. This will yield slower trunk thickening than ground growing, but you'll end up with a much better nebari. And since they grow fast, it's a good tradeoff. If you leave them in the ground until the desired trunk thickness you're likely to have several very large roots instead of a more even radial distribution.

 

[RoadManDenDron]

I decided to keep mine in a pot so I can keep the pot in a tray of water throughout the growing season like people do with BC

 

[Srt8madness]

I've been using Anderson flats for mine. I like to work on the roots every year or every other year, growing on a board. This will yield slower trunk thickening than ground growing, but you'll end up with a much better nebari. And since they grow fast, it's a good tradeoff. If you leave them in the ground until the desired trunk thickness you're likely to have several very large roots instead of a more even radial distribution.

Not to nitpick, but you can lift field ground trees to root prune while still taking advantage of rapid growth in the ground.

I'm genuinely not sure how long it will take to pot grow a DR to the sizes the OP desired, but I'd imagine two decades to set the trunk size.

 

[penumbra]

I'd imagine two decades to set the trunk size.

Nowhere near two decades. Less than half that.

I decided to keep mine in a pot so I can keep the pot in a tray of water throughout the growing season like people do with BC

I was thinking about that this morning. I just bought some large mortar pans to set my cypress in and wondered if anyone was doing that with dawn redwood.

 

[Srt8madness]

Nowhere near two decades. Less than half that.

I was thinking about that this morning. I just bought some large mortar pans to set my cypress in and wondered if anyone was doing that with dawn redwood.

Of a 5 to 6 foot specimen? That would be a what, 8" diameter base above the nebari, at least? More like 10-12". That's near and inch of girth per year in a pot. Not a big deal in year 1 or 2, but the volume of trunk per inch of thickness increases dramatically as diameter increases.

@Cajunrider how old would you say the average BC you pull from the swamp is, 8-12 years old?

 

[Cajunrider]

Of a 5 to 6 foot specimen? That would be a what, 8" diameter base above the nebari, at least? More like 10-12". That's near and inch of girth per year in a pot. Not a big deal in year 1 or 2, but the volume of trunk per inch of thickness increases dramatically as diameter increases.

@Cajunrider how old would you say the average BC you pull from the swamp is, 8-12 years old?

All the big BCs I pulled from the swamp is 22+ years old according to the record kept by my friend. The medium ones I pulled were the first bunch of offsprings. Those are 12-15 years. My small ones are around 6-8 years. In water they grow a bit slower than those on land. The same batch of 24+ years on land are 35 ft tall with big trunks but very gradual taper.

An inch of girth per year is very aggressive. I am not sure it is achievable in a pot with shallow depth for bonsai.

 

[dbonsaiw]

I have a few, with one growing out for size. I worked the roots and then have been up potting it. Two years from stick in a pot to 6 gallon pot where it grew to over 10 feet with a 2.5” base. Last summer I cut off the nursery pot and built a 30”x30”x12” box around it that is open at the bottom (roots have escaped). I’ll probably chop when it’s about 4”.

 

[dbonsaiw]

Some pics

 

[horibonsai]

I use escape roots in grow bags in the ground for at least two years. Then, into pot, flat, or wooden pot with root work and style up the tree. Repeat if I want a larger tree.

 

[andrewiles]

Not to nitpick, but you can lift field ground trees to root prune while still taking advantage of rapid growth in the ground.

I'm genuinely not sure how long it will take to pot grow a DR to the sizes the OP desired, but I'd imagine two decades to set the trunk size.

Doesn't that defeat the point of ground growing though? If you lift and manage roots frequently I would think you lose the root spread benefits that ground growing provides.

 

[Chunky Trunks]

I use escape roots in grow bags in the ground for at least two years. Then, into pot, flat, or wooden pot with root work and style up the tree. Repeat if I want a larger tree.

Interesting. What size grow bag and can you walk me through your process? What soil? Do you mound of just grow on flat ground? I want larger trees!!

 

[Cajunrider]

Doesn't that defeat the point of ground growing though? If you lift and manage roots frequently I would think you lose the root spread benefits that ground growing provides.

It does slow down the growth a little bit but if you don't prune the roots of ground growing tree, soon you will have very large roots. All the feeder roots will then be far away from the trunk. Depending on the species, you may have problems when you try to collect the tree and put it in bonsai pots.

 

[Srt8madness]

Doesn't that defeat the point of ground growing though? If you lift and manage roots frequently I would think you lose the root spread benefits that ground growing provides.

You'd think so but it doesn't (defeat the point). I just lifted a BC that was in the ground for a year(after root pruning) it had a few roots at least 4' long and 1/2 to 3/4" in diameter, running just under the surface away from the tree. It may be slightly slower than uninhibited ground growing, but still considerably faster than a pot.

 

[19Mateo83]

Nowhere near two decades. Less than half that.

I was thinking about that this morning. I just bought some large mortar pans to set my cypress in and wondered if anyone was doing that with dawn redwood.

I keep mine in about 2” of water during the summer. They love the extra moisture. You just have to make sure that once they are wet they stay wet. They don’t like it when the water pan goes dry.

 

[dbonsaiw]

Doesn't that defeat the point of ground growing though?

I would have thought the same. Isn’t it said about ground growing that it takes until the third year for the tree to actually achieve the benefits of ground growing? (I personally use grow boxes so I’m clueless).

 

[Chunky Trunks]

Started ours out in gallon nursery pots, then up potted to larger nursery pots every year. Now they are in really big nursery pots!

All will be cut back in the next year or two.

cheers
DSD sends

Do you have any photos of the progress? Or some of your larger Dawn Redwood in large containers and how long it took them to reach that size? Really trying to dial in a few strategies and see what works best. Thanks

 

[Chunky Trunks]

Not to nitpick, but you can lift field ground trees to root prune while still taking advantage of rapid growth in the ground.

I'm genuinely not sure how long it will take to pot grow a DR to the sizes the OP desired, but I'd imagine two decades to set the trunk size.

Interesting. You dig up the Dawn Redwood every 2 years or so to root prune and back to the field with it? Very interesting. No tile, mound, or anything? This makes sense to me.

 

[Chunky Trunks]

I have a few, with one growing out for size. I worked the roots and then have been up potting it. Two years from stick in a pot to 6 gallon pot where it grew to over 10 feet with a 2.5” base. Last summer I cut off the nursery pot and built a 30”x30”x12” box around it that is open at the bottom (roots have escaped). I’ll probably chop when it’s about 4”.

Very cool. The open bottom wooden box seems easy enough to do once a few of these fill out the 3 gallon. I’ll try this out. Thanks