Howdy fellow tree enthusiasts!
I was wondering if anyone had any hints or tips on how to best run a potted tree farm? I'm the Director of Aggie Replant (
http://replant.tamu.edu), an environmental service project at Texas A&M down in College Station. For 13 years, we've grown our own trees from seedlings from the Forest Service and planted them on public grounds.
Just this spring, we moved our tree farm closer to campus, and before it gets too settled in its ways, I would like to make sure that we're doing everything right, and organic, if possible. Most of us students are not forestry majors, neither do we have much experience in the garden.
What we have so far is about 400 trees (Bald Cypress, Live Oak, Shumard Oak, Sawtooth Oak, and I think a few more varieties) in 2 to 15 gallon containers. The contaniers are lined up in rows on top of a weed barrier. We've installed the new drip system, and have the drip lines in each pot, fairly close to the trees. Due to infrequent watering in years past thanks to an unreliable drip system, most of the trees are a bit stunted, but they're getting better. My questions are:
1) what's the best bang-for-the-buck method of fertliizing these trees? We have money to spend, but we can't really do anything more than a hundred bucks a month.
2) I realize now that the weed barrier should not be covering the ground, but shoud instead be inside the pots underneath a layer of much. What should we use to cover the ground with instead? Our old farm had a tarp/canvas type thing. Where would be a good place to get some material like that?
3) Should we use any special type of mulch?
4) How often should we water the trees? For how long?
5) Anything else we should keep in mind?
Thanks so much for any help you can give us!
Thanks and Gig 'em!
Casey