How do you keep your trees in their pots ?

akhater

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it is a very basic, and probably silly, question but how do you manage to keep your trees in a growing box ?

I use polystyrene as growing boxes or deep pot for the statsuki and I lost 4 trees because the wind or the cat took them out of the box!

Specially when dealing with deep pots or something fragile as polystyrene how do you tie them ?

Maybe some pics ?

thanks
 

Bill S

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Wrap your tie wires around the staple that holds down the screen at the bottom of the pot/container, bring them up and tie off tree. It should be done with all material IMHO.
 

Brian Van Fleet

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After attaching the screen over the holes, flip the otherwise empty pot upside down, make a U shape out of a length of wire about 18" long of so, and push each end of the wire through a different drain-hole. Flip the pot upright and pull the wires tight. See the photo with the green pot. Then, with the tree situated on top of a drainage layer of soil, tighten the wires together on top of the root pad. See photo with the blue pot. Use pliers, pull, then twist...pull, then twist. Use something to cushion the roots if necessary...aquarium tubing, pieces of rubber, etc.

If you have a styro box, or small root system, still use wires as described above, but tie them off to bamboo skewers or chopsticks like in the photo of the trident maple in the brown plastic pot

Alternately, if you only have 1 drain-hole or a deep pot, twist that U shape piece of wire around a heavy gauge piece of wire that is wider than the drain hole and push both ends through the drain hole from the bottom, until the heavy gauge wire is tight against the bottom of the drain hole. Then you can use chopsticks in the bottom of the pot to widen the "stance" of the wires. See the photo with the tan pot.
 

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akhater

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And sudenly i wished i had asked the question a long time ago !

Thanks folks I wish I ll turn out to be a good student
 

rockm

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Many people don't think tying trees into pots is worth the effort -- until a good wind comes up, a cat jumps on the bench, a raccoon bumps into your tree or your toddler uses it as a walking stick....:D
 

akhater

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looks like I learned the hard way it is not :)
 

mgallex

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A follow up question. Can the wire be carefully removed or loosened somehow when the tree is established? I ask this because I recently aquired a tree that was potbound and one of the the roots had grown around a wire (just like wire left on a branch too long) and has damaged an otherwise nice nebari from one angle.

Thanks, Mike
 

Brian Van Fleet

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A follow up question. Can the wire be carefully removed or loosened somehow when the tree is established? I ask this because I recently aquired a tree that was potbound and one of the the roots had grown around a wire (just like wire left on a branch too long) and has damaged an otherwise nice nebari from one angle.

Thanks, Mike

Yes, just brush the soil back and carefully cut the wires from above so the cuts are made just below the soil level. If you can see the full run of wire across the top, you could cut both sides and pull the ends through the bottom. Just be careful, often times, several wires are twisted together out of view and may cause damage if you try to pull them through underneath.
 

milehigh_7

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Many people don't think tying trees into pots is worth the effort -- until a good wind comes up, a cat jumps on the bench, a raccoon bumps into your tree or your toddler uses it as a walking stick....:D

Very true... I have had a gust come up and use one of my Ficus as a kite. I found it clear across the yard with the pot still on the bench. Good thing it was a Wal-Mart Ficus... likely the best thing that could have happened to it. ;-)
 

mrchips1952

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High Winds

I am in Colorado Springs and last night we had winds in excess of 60MPH. I woke up to find three trees had been blown off their stands. Needless to say I had to repack them in the pots and add soil today. winds have continued this afternoon so all trees are now against the house and not in the open wind. Dave :(
 

mgallex

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Thanks Brian.
I live on the 17th floor facing east so during storms it can get scary windy. I've had trees in large nursery pots topple, pots and all. I'm now using bungie cords to keep pot and tree secure to their tables. They're easy to remove and attach, so whenever there is a small chance of high winds I tie everything down. I keep my smaller pots tied down all the time so my plant loving cats wont knock them over.
 

treebeard55

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I often put a length of plastic tubing (aquarium tubing works fine) over the wire where it actually contacts the roots or trunk. Reduces wire marks.
 
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I use horticultural link for small to medium sized trees. Its a kind of tube that comes in several diameters and in a 100 m ball. It is rather strong but when you go beyond its elastic limit it breaks easily.
Pro : inexpensive, doesn't mark, no need to use cutters
Against : not well suited to big trees.
 

IdahoDR

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I lost a few trees early on to wind, and also had a few pots break. I wired trees into pots from the start since my first Bonsai book instructed to do so, but i still had winds knock them off the benches.

Now everything is wired down to the benches as well.
 

akhater

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I am back for more questions :D
This thread has proven to be very informative for me so far but now I am faced with another challenge.

I have a tree that I am hoping to style as cascade and I can't find a way first to tie the tree to the pot (since the pot is deep and not shallow) and second to keep balance, the tree with all its weight will be on one side so the pot will fall or the roots will break.

Thanks for any tips/hit
 

bonsai barry

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I lost a few trees early on to wind, and also had a few pots break. I wired trees into pots from the start since my first Bonsai book instructed to do so, but i still had winds knock them off the benches.

Now everything is wired down to the benches as well.

If I wired to the bench I'm afraid I'd be less inclined to rotate them to give all sides equal exposure to the sun.
 

Brian Van Fleet

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I am back for more questions :D
This thread has proven to be very informative for me so far but now I am faced with another challenge.

I have a tree that I am hoping to style as cascade and I can't find a way first to tie the tree to the pot (since the pot is deep and not shallow) and second to keep balance, the tree with all its weight will be on one side so the pot will fall or the roots will break.

Thanks for any tips/hit

Several ways; one way being to wire a brick into the bottom of the pot, (this way you also have less soil to stay soggy). Then you can wire the tree to the top of the brick much like you would wire it into the pot. You can also use some epoxy putty, and work a loop of copper wire into the putty and stick a few of these to the side/corners of the pot, just under the soil level. Then, you can tie the tree in to those loops with more wire. You probably don't want to do this if it's a valuable pot, but it will work. At any rate, you should probably secure a cascade tree to your benches to keep it still in winds.
 
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