what is the native soil ..

in my high draining sand.. i got away with burying the pot and all ... so that none of the pot shows ... put some soil in the bottom to raise the level to the top of the pot ...

you should probably up pot next spring.. so there would be no reason you could not bare root them.. and heal them into mother earth ... without the plastic interference ... then repot in spring ...

osta pots ...

they are trees .. do not overthink it all.. and love them to death ...

since you have multiples... do it a number of different ways .. not only to cut your odds of total failure ... but also to learn ...

you could also put them on the north side of the house .. and just lay the pots on their sides ... so no water accumulates during winter ... no sun on the pots.. and even better.. if they get covered with snow ... thats what i do with hundreds of hosta pots ...

the trick is.. get them dormant.. insure they stay dormant ... and dont let the media get to swampy in winter ...

ken

What smivies said.

My soil varies. Close to my home it's decent dirt. I suppose they dug out a big area around the home to lay the foundation and then put black dirt back around it. If I go to some of the parts of the yard away from the home it's black dirt for a foot or so and then it's clay and clay/dirt. It seems the east side of the yard has more clay than the west.

So, it's the sun I need to watch out for? I had been thinking of burying them where they are now, which is on the south side of the house. In front of my porch there is alot of small gravel below the dirt so the drainage would be good, but it's sunny. My north side is pretty shady so burying them here is probably a bad idea.

You mentioned laying them down on the side. If I lay them down on the ground on the side, will they freeze and if so, will the frozen dirt in the pot ruin the roots and the tree?

I guess if I lose a few it's not a big deal. I got these from a lake home my wife and i have in Wisconsin and it was a BUMPER acorn crop last year. It was like projectiles coming down on you when you walked around. My car has dents in the hood from the acrons smacking it. I have 5 oak trees, 4 red (between about 80 and 120 years old) and one white one that is 240 or so years old (According to the tree guy). There are still about 3 or 4 of these tiny trees growing in the flowerbed alongside the house and garage in WI that I did not transplant as I plan on using them on my land in WI.

I am burying lots of potted trees this week.

Don't over think this :-) Just heel the pots into the ground in an upright position. If your soil is mostly clay and drainage not great, you can accomplish nearly the same thing by grouping the pots close together and covering them with straw, leaves or other mulch.

And to Logan, in a zone 7b/8, burying trees in pots or heeling them in should not be necessary. Unless you are trying to overwinter a very tender species. I'm in a climate not much milder than yours and grow all my trees in containers and have yet to have any issues about them being outside all winter long. Even small Japanese maples with their cold sensitive root system.

Mulching around them with fall leaves works, too. That's what I do. Although in zone 7 I have less to worry about.

I put the pots as close as possible (touching, even) and put leaves all around and in between the pots, and an inch or two deep over them as well, once dormant. Although it's not recommended to mulch against a trunk, I find that if only done during dormancy, it won't hurt much (remove before bud break in spring).

I'm more zone 6b/7a, colder than gardengal, but could probably get away without mulching/protecting my pots. I just don't want to risk it.

Plus, I have to do SOMETHING with all those leaves, so I use them to mulch my tree seedlings in pots, which happen to now be located 15 feet from the compost pile I'll be moving the leaves to in spring.

Unless I can find a way to heat a small little contained area, which is unlikely, I'll be putting my Live oak tree, and Live oak acorn sown in a pot, and Southern Mag seeds in pots in the basement. A steady 62 F all winter.

"A steady 62 F all winter."

I doubt this is something you really want to do. 62F is too high a temperature for these to enter and maintain a proper dormancy. Woody plants native to temperate climates need to enter a routine period of dormancy each year. This is typically triggered by day length and falling temperatures. Depriving a plant of its dormancy interrupts natural growth patterns and can prevent proper flowering and fruiting. Eventually, if deprived of this necessary 'chill and rest' period for long enough, it can and usually does cause death. This is why most temperate woody plants do not make good houseplants :-)

The temps you should be shooting for and maintaining over winter should be 40-50F, max.

youa re on the verge of killing these things with too much love ... treating them like babies ..

in my MI.. the ground freezes a foot or two deep ... i have both buried pots in MY SAND ... and i have just tipped them over on their sides.. and insured the black pot was never hit with sun ... and as i said.. some ended up under 2 feet of snow ...

note that opinions vary by location ...

ken

Gardengal, Okay, I'll put mulch around my pots with seeds around them for this year outdoors, next year I'll possibly have a hoophouse. I'll never have anything too extravagant and heated other than some christmas lights on the plants though, not likely anyway. The S Mags are fine in zone 6, the Live oak is a Virginiana so will not be fine outdoors all winter here, so I have to find a way to protect it. I thought that Live oak grows in Key West and that Key West usually doesn't get below 60F, maybe the Virginiana can live in my situation as a Bonsai? The acorn hasn't even sprouted yet, it may not anyway. It sunk in a bucket, but, may not sprout.

This winter my greenhouse almost collapsed, so I have now torn it down. Making for a nice japanese style garden.

Good use for the space Logan, where my greenhouse was there is still the wooden base for it, so I may still be able to use the base for a new hoophouse or something.

Yes. In mine, there wasn't a proper heating system so I just put a space heater on one of those electrical timers. I plugged it into the plug-in, not an extension cord (never use extension cords on heaters, you will learn your lesson if you try).

it's best to not try and cater to houseplants in winter.