How Plant Growth is Limited (container forum version)
tapla (mid-Michigan, USDA z5b-6a)
13 years ago
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meyermike_1micha
13 years agolast modified: 9 years agomeyermike_1micha
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Container A.P.s Cold limit
Comments (27)I'm very late to this conversation, but I'd like to add to it. These are my own comments, copy/pasted from other forums on GW, so if they seem slightly off topic in areas, please allow for that fact. I've posted these comments dozens of times around this forum, and I think the info will hold up under scrutiny: Commonly, each species of plant has a general range of cold-hardiness. Within species and cultivar, cold-hardiness is genetically determined. That is to say that a plant that is propagated from cuttings or tissue culture will have the same ability to resist cold as the parent plant. Plants cannot "develop" a greater degree of cold-hardiness by repeated or prolonged exposure to cold, even after 100 years (trees). If we pick any plant at random, it may or may not be able to withstand freezing temperatures. The determining factor is the plants ability to prevent freezing of bound water. Bound water is the water inside of cells. There are actually three kinds of water to consider when we discuss "freezing". The water held in soil - When this water freezes, and it can freeze the soil mass solid, it doesn't necessarily kill the plant or tissues. Then there is free or unbound water, also called inter-cellular water. This is water that is found in plant tissues, but is outside of living cells cells. This water can also freeze solid and not kill the plant. The final type of water is bound water or intra-cellular water. If temperatures drop low enough to freeze this water, the cell/tissue/plant dies. This is the freeze damage that kills plants. Fortunately, nature has an antifreeze. Even though temperatures drop well below freezing, all plants don't die. In hardy plants, physiological changes occur as temperatures drop. The plant moves solutes (sugars, salts, starches) into cells and moves water out of cells to inter-cellular spaces in tissues. These solutes act as antifreeze, allowing water in cells to remain liquid to sometimes extremely low temperatures. The above is a description of super-cooling in plants. Some plants even take advantage of another process to withstand very low temps called intra-cellular dehydration. The roots of your trees can stay frozen for extended periods or go through multiple freeze/thaw cycles w/o damage, so long as the temperature does not fall below that required to freeze intra-cellular water. If roots remain frozen, but temperatures remain above killing lows, dessication is the primary concern. If the tree is able to take up water, but temperatures are too low for the tree to grow and make food, stored energy becomes the critical issue. Dormant and quiescent trees are still using energy from their reserves (like a drain on a battery). If those reserves are depleted before the tree can produce photosynthesizing mass, the organism dies. There are a number of factors that have some affect on the cold-hardiness of individual plants, some of which are length of exposure to seasonal cold, water availability (drought stressed plants are more cold tolerant), how recently planted/repotted, etc No one can give a definitive answer that even comes close to accurately assessing the temperature at which bound water will freeze that covers the whole species. Unbound water is of little concern & will usually freeze somewhere around 28*. Some material will be able to withstand little cold & roots could freeze/die at (actual) root temperatures as warm as 25-27*. Other plants may tolerate much colder actual root temperatures - as low as 10*. There's just no way of knowing unless you have a feeling for how cold-tolerant the genetic material the plant was derived from might be, and finding out is expensive (from the plant's perspective). ;o) Another example of this genetic variance is that trees found growing and fruiting well closer to the equator need no chill time, while other trees, derived of genetic stock from a more northerly provenance may need a period of chill to grow with optimum vitality in the subsequent growth period/cycle. It's wise to remember that root death isn't instantaneous at one particular temperature. Roots succumb to cold over a range of chill with cultural conditions affecting the process. The finest roots will die first, and the slightly thicker and more lignified roots will follow, with the last of the roots to succumb being the more perennial and thickest roots. Since any root death is a setback from an energy allocation perspective, and root regeneration takes valuable time, it's probably best to keep actual root temperatures in the 25-40* range as long as we can when the tree is resting, even though the organism as a whole could tolerate much lower temperatures. Even well established trees become very much like cuttings if all but the roots essential to keep the tree viable are lost to cold. Regeneration of roots is an expensive energy outlay and causes the trees to leaf out later than they normally would and shortens the natural growth period and reduces the potential increase in biomass for the next growth cycle and perhaps beyond. Al...See MoreHow to limit size of container trees?
Comments (2)I'd suggest you carefully read this attached Trees in Containers link (and even the two that came before). Al (Tapla) is both a master at container culture as well as a master in the art of bonsai and his advice and instructions in the thread should provide all the details you need....See MoreCucumber problem
Comments (13)I'm not an expert but just a few thoughts since I grow in containers as well. How old is your potting mix and what is it? If the potting mix is new and something like Miracle Gro then you really shouldn't need to fertilize it right away I would think because the stuff already comes with fertilizer which lasts 3 months. If it's something else, what are you using? If it's older then it will need fertilizer but it also may be compacted which causes nutrient absorption problems for plants . Since you are growing indoors , that maybe yet another special challenge you have vs. people who grow outside. Being so light green I also wonder if it's getting enough light. Again not an expert but I have seen plants grown in lower light and they are not dark green in color when they could / should be. Silly comparison but white Garlic Chives or white asparagus are both just garlic chives or asparagus grown from the absence of light. In these two cases they are only white because chlorophyll isn't being produced and chlorophyll isn't being produced because they are not receiving light. What type of grow lights are you using? You may want to browse the indoor growing forum for information. http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/lights Here are some really informative container growing links you can browse through to see if anything is helpful. http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/1379073/container-soils-water-movement-and-retention-xv http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/1386241/fertilizer-program-for-containerized-plants-ii http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/1416115/how-plant-growth-is-limited-container-forum-version...See MoreWill removing new growth limit root development?
Comments (9)Things I've learned after repotting somewhere between 3,500 - 4,000 containerized trees: Trees are self-balancing and shedding organisms. Before top growth is pushed (growth is measured as a function of the increase in dynamic mass) there must be enough roots functioning well enough to support the additional top mass. If you remove a significant amount of top growth, the tree will actually wall off and shed roots you've rendered unnecessary via the pruning. In turn, if you remove a lot of roots, which you should plan on doing every 3-5 years for containerized pines, you might get some dieback in the top. The idea that you should never prune the canopy to balance the root to shoot relationship is more often than not parroted as though it's one of the 10 commandments. The advice is based on sound reasoning, but it doesn't serve every application equally. Examples: A) If you have a containerized tree with a canopy out of control, you might remove as much as 75% or more of its top mass just to bring it around to a structure you can build on. If you do, it's a near certainty that you'll get a lot of rank growth unless you prune the roots. B) If in the summer you're forced to lift a tree that's been in the landscape for several years or more, by hand (as opposed to a tree spade), odds are extremely high that the tree will simply collapse unless a very large % of the foliage mass is removed. By very large, I mean up to 100%. C) Since trees are balancing/shedding organisms, and you have no idea what branches the tree might "choose" to shed after root pruning, so it's best to prune the top when you root prune, lest you lose branches you consider important to the composition. This doesn't necessarily apply to temperate deciduous trees root-pruned while quiescent, because their buds tend to open when root mass is sufficient to support their activity. And unless the root work is severe, it might not apply to your pines, but it definitely applies to the tropical trees we're fond of growing indoors. Root congestion takes a mighty toll on containerized trees once the root mass has been allowed to reach the stage where the root/soil mass can be lifted from the pot intact. Even in trees suffering root congestion that appear healthy, the lost potential is very significant. I can say with a great deal of certainty that trees regularly root pruned and top pruned have much more potential for growth and vitality than trees allowed to languish several years beyond the point in time where a full repot with root pruning would have been appropriate. Proof of lost potential due to root congestion comes in the form of what most would misidentify as a "growth spurt" that follows potting up and repotting. Since plants cannot exhibit a level of growth that exceeds their genetic potential, we can be sure the plant's uptick in growth and vitality is no more than the plant performing at a level closer to its genetic potential than it was previously. From there, we can logically say that the plant had the potential to perform at that level all along, had we not allowed root congestion to levy limitations on growth/vitality. Further, since a plant's ability to defend itself is strongly correlated with its metabolic rate, it also had the potential to remain in good health ...... which in most also means more eye appeal. Al...See Moretapla (mid-Michigan, USDA z5b-6a)
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tapla (mid-Michigan, USDA z5b-6a)Original Author