Bald Cypress - Best path forward?

[Cajunrider]

Tractor Supply feed pans have become my favorite for large BC. I usually drill 3 holes around the bottom edge and make wooden plugs to hold water in for a month at a time. I then let them drain for a week and fill them back up.

Here is one that's already pretty good size ...... almost 10" across the base. This is 90% through only it's second season from a stump. The apex is just about finished. Oh, and almost pure organic soil is what we've found to work best in the growing stage.

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I bought three yesterday and moved two 7 month old seedlings from nursery pot into them. I found terrible roots and wound up ground-layering both BCs.

 

[AcerAddict]

I wouldn't consider a pot at this stage. BC grow stupidly fast when pushed, and a pot that size will not last for long unless you start refining and slowing the growth. I recently moved mine into grow bags to see how that impacts root development, it will be interesting to see the difference between the super thick roots circling the pot vs. a bag that is design to prune the root and force it to ramify. Maybe it would be counter-productive as I think that the reason why they get so wide at the base may be due to the thickening and elongation of the roots.

Oh, I wasn't going to buy a mica pot. Just providing an "apples-to-apples" comparison, that's all. Starting next spring, this BC will live in cheap containers for the majority of its development life. Plastic pans and wooden trays are the way forward! I'll splurge on a nice large pot years from now when the time is right.

 

[Maiden69]

Definitely, I am thinking about making a very large semi shallow box (that I can still fit inside a water tub) to move one of the seedlings in spring to see if there is any difference from the grow bag to the box.

 

[GeoCajun]

May be a dumb question but I am in a similar situation and was wondering if you can try to root the chopped off portion into its own tree?

 

[Backwardsvg]

I just got a BC and am reading through this, lots of good info.

Has anyone ever tired growing one in a colander / mesh sided pot? I have a few large ones I made with cement bottoms and mesh around the sides. I am wondering if it will help the roots slip out the sides without circling? Then you could do an easy root prune and keep the center roots strong? IT could potentially be in a "smaller" pot but with a larger water tub so it could be allowed to run?

I have no experience with BC so if this was blatantly wrong let me know, I figured it could be a good experiment.

 

[Cajunrider]

I just got a BC and am reading through this, lots of good info.

Has anyone ever tired growing one in a colander / mesh sided pot? I have a few large ones I made with cement bottoms and mesh around the sides. I am wondering if it will help the roots slip out the sides without circling? Then you could do an easy root prune and keep the center roots strong? IT could potentially be in a "smaller" pot but with a larger water tub so it could be allowed to run?

I have no experience with BC so if this was blatantly wrong let me know, I figured it could be a good experiment.

I have grown BC in colanders. The trouble was that I couldn't find colanders big and strong enough for a larger BC. I now grow them in flat with mesh bottom. The roots will grow out of the mesh really quick and grow big on both sides of the mesh hole. The flat is laid inside a cement tub on top of a layer of cheap topsoil/compost just high enough to keep 1/3rd of the root ball out of the water when the tub is filled. At the end of a growing season, I lift the flat and snip off all the escaping roots. This way I don't have to repot my BC every year. I can skip one year.

 

[Backwardsvg]

I have grown BC in colanders. The trouble was that I couldn't find colanders big and strong enough for a larger BC. I now grow them in flat with mesh bottom. The roots will grow out of the mesh really quick and grow big on both sides of the mesh hole. The flat is laid inside a cement tub on top of a layer of cheap topsoil/compost just high enough to keep 1/3rd of the root ball out of the water when the tub is filled. At the end of a growing season, I lift the flat and snip off all the escaping roots. This way I don't have to repot my BC every year. I can skip one year.

Makes sense that is kind of what I was thinking as well. Maybe an anderson flat or something? I just figure I am reading the more the roots can escape it seems to add girth so a mesh or open style pot would only help it move freely and increase without the deathly circling roots thanks @Cajunrider

 

[19Mateo83]

How did the root work and chop on this one go?

 

[penumbra]

I have a few in pond baskets where they have been 2-3 years. If left too long they will completely destroy the pot. I have one in at the edge of my koi pond that is about 40 feet tall. It started out in a 1 gallon nursery pot and it eventually ate the pot. I have posted pictures of it twice in the past.

 

[AcerAddict]

How did the root work and chop on this one go?

Truth be told, I ended up not doing anything major to the tree. Since my original post, I've done nothing other than water and a little fertilizer. It's still in the original pot from when I first bought it. With all the other material in various stages I have to work on, I'm now very close to sticking this BC in the ground and letting it grow for a few more years. I decided that the base isn't as large as I would like, and keeping it in the nursery pot long-term seriously hampers growth, so ground planting makes the most sense for it.