White Oak: Cornfed Edition

cornfed

Mame
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Here's my White Oak, or Quercus Alba, potted on 4/24/2021. It was from a nursery where it was grown from seed in a 80% pine-bark mixture.

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My goal for this tree is to thicken the trunk and develop the roots by repotting it in a larger, 5-gallon Rootmaker container with a more air-retentive soil.

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I guess I forgot to do a before shot, but these are the roots that I potted.

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Potting Day!

I'm using a kitchen-sink blend as a substrate. I ultimately need 50+gallons of substrate to up-pot my newly acquired trees, so using up as much of the material I have recently purchased for my soil tests was beneficial. I tweaked my soil from the previous trees I planted, removing the fine particles (fine sphagnum peat moss and #1 Grit) to increase the saturated porosity. The mix was 3:3:2:2, sifted pine bark, Turface, DE and #2 Grit.

I tested the soil's mechanical properties at 38% Saturated Porosity (air-filled space), and 25% Field Capacity (water-filled space) after draining. Hopefully it will work, because conventional substrates are difficult to find.

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Photo Shoot Day - 5/1/2021
 

Fishy_pow

Seed
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Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
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Cool tree seedling. Oaks from the White Oak group seem to be slower growing and less robust compared to the Red Oaks group imo.
 

MMJNICE

Mame
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Holy Moly!! Did you see those soil Statistics?? Geess I thought I was nerdy heheheh man with stats like that I'm sure whatever your trying to grow will be just fine. See your the kinda person that needs a hobby like bonsai. There is sooooo much to learn at times it makes my head hurt.. kinda like reading your soil stats 😁..
 

cornfed

Mame
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Thank you, @MMJNICE, you're going to love this thread then...

Here is the second resource developed from the thread "Introductory Soil Physics". It is a document explaining how the important physical properties in soil and substrates combine to control the amount of air and water in the pore space of soils... https://www.bonsainut.com/resources/introductory-soil-physics.29

Sadly this white oak didn't make it through the winter... Rodents...
 
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