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July 07, 2006
Potted up my baby giants
I broke down today and moved three giant sequoia seedlings to larger pots.
These guys were born last year and are pictured in my TreeDazzled gallery. They've done fine, despite the endless fog and cold in San Francisco, but recently started to turn brown, particularly near the bottom of the tree at the trunk. I decided that this might be (I hope it is) due to the trees having reached the limits allowed by their rather small, shallow pots.
When I transplanted them, I found that each tree had a large coil of rather large roots at the bottom of the pot. Seems to me that this root mass could be prone to drying out easily in terra cotta. So I'm optimistic that the change will help.
July 7, 2006 in Conifers | Permalink
Comments
How tall are you planning to grow them?
It would be interesting to see them in a huge pot.Imagine youself moving them in a forklift.
I have a "Ceiba" and I plan to grow it in a big pot.
Posted by: pabonster | Oct 2, 2006 12:17:46 PM
Hi,
I'm from Belgium and I bought a Giant Sequoia in 1988 (it was a couple of inches tall back then and packed in a small tube).
Actually, I bought 2 of them (one Coast Redwood and one Giant Sequoia, but the first one died the next winter...)
The Giant Sequoia stayed in a terracotta pot from 1988 till 1995 and in that time it grew only 2 feet and a couple of inches.
In 1995 I planted the tree in the garden and over the past years it has started to grow exponentially.
In 12 years it has grown from a few feet to (as far as I can 'guess' - I measured it year after year until it was too tall for me to measure -) about 22 feet tall. The bottom of the trunk is almost one foot thick. Unfortunately I had to cut the bottom branches because the tree was covering a considerable amount of space and it is positioned quite close to the neighbours (originally exactly 10 feet).
I just wonder how far the roots have gone already since people say that the roots grow as wide as the tree grows tall... I guess in a couple of years those roots will meet my neighbours on both sides of the house.
By the way, since last year the tree has grown what seem to be two seed cones near the top, so who knows I'll be able to grow seedlings in the future.
Eric
Posted by: Eric H | Mar 12, 2007 7:04:56 AM
I wonder if any of your wonderful seeds will grow here in my state of Michigan?
Posted by: Diana | Sep 21, 2007 10:59:05 AM
