Itasca Greenhouse, Inc

[Bonsai Nut]

Itasca Greenhouse, Inc
26385 Blackwater Rd.
PO Box 273
Cohasset, MN 55721

Phone 218-328-6261

I've been looking around for a long time for Japanese White Pine seedlings, and these guys came through for me. I just picked up 100 3-year olds from them at a nice price. They were a little yellow, but they were coming from a cold greenhouse in Minnesota so what do you expect I am very pleased. The people are as nice as could be imagined. They have many other conifers available.

 

[Anonymous User]

Did you get a picture of the roots on these for us?



Will

 

[Bonsai Nut]

Did you get a picture of the roots on these for us?

I'll take a photo in the morning. They arrived late afternoon so I didn't have time to pot them up.

 

[Anonymous User]

Thanks, a good nursery can be judged by the roots they produce, at least in my opinion. I was amazed at the last box of pines I seen, the radial roots were next to perfect.

Were these "plugs" and shipped as such?

Just curious about the stock, I'm always looking for more trees for the growing fields, if the price and quality is right. Thanks for posting this.



Will

 

[Bonsai Nut]

Here are shots of the roots. They were grown as plugs in styro blocks, so the roots are very compact bundles. After three years there is very little soil left. I do not believe any were ever root pruned - about 50% had substantial tap roots that had to be trimmed, but I am pretty confident that a good majority will survive the abuse. I am happy with what I received - as an experiment I am only expecting to have 20-30 after about 5 more years.

 

[Graydon]

What would be the advantage of plug grown over field grown material? I would almost think the plug grown material is at a slight disadvantage to the field grown seedlings but this is a guess based on the material I have received shipped bare root from my local grower.

Attached is a couple of shots of JBP pre and post root prune upon arrival. They are 1-0 field grown.

 

[Bonsai Nut]

What would be the advantage of plug grown over field grown material?

I assume field grown is more compact, with denser, shorter roots. In this case, I had to search for over a month to find ANY vendor of seed-grown japanese white pine. 99.9% of Japanese White Pine available is grafted. The tree is a much less forgiving tree than JBP, requires colder winters, does not take hard pruning well, and requires protection from sun and insects. However I think it is more beautiful It is certainly more delicate. JWP seedlings cost 3x (or more) what JBP seedlings cost. The seeds themselves are a ton more expensive as well.

At 3 years, the white pines are about the same size as your 1-0 black pines (though most were showing decent branching already).

 

[Agriff]

@Bonsai Nut What did you end up doing with 100 of those? I'm guessing you ordered that many to satisfy the minimum order requirements? Being from Minnesota I'm interested in how this turned out.

 

[Bonsai Nut]

@Bonsai Nut What did you end up doing with 100 of those? I'm guessing you ordered that many to satisfy the minimum order requirements? Being from Minnesota I'm interested in how this turned out.

I learned the hard way that Japanese white pine won't grow on its own roots in SoCal They are a cold hardy species that need a winter dormancy to survive long term. They made it through the first summer, and became noticeably weaker and started dying off the second summer. I had the same problem with many other pine species that I experimented with.