Growing trees in bags! |
All the hype about bags!. Yes, this mode of planting has been used by many in the US, There are a number of companies that make the bags, anywhere from 1/2 gallon to 75 gallons. At the beginning I made only 1/8 ga. bags. Now I am making half a gallon and 1 gallon bags.
I plant cuttings in them, sometimes seeds or plugs. Many of the trees that I grow in them stay in the bags for several years. I have Blue Spruce , Red maples and Green Ash that have been in the bags for 3 years. I start with good medium, so I use Pro-mix, fill up the bags and add the cutting, seed or plug. Some trees and plants will not grow over 6 inches in the small bags. After doing a lot of observing, I came to the realization that the plants that do not grow over 6" are the ones that have a tap root. As soon as the root reaches the bottom of the bag, the plant stops growing. This includes: Privets, paulownia, dapple willow, mimosa tree, stevia and others that I have not identify yet. I am in the process of transplanting all the trees I have from that list to deeper (8") bags. The garden consists of 8 rows of 5 long plastic trays. These trays are 7 ft. by 7 inches. I put 110 bags in each tray (3 deep). Below are 3 photos of those 7 ft. trays and their contents. You can also see the drip irrigation hose running thru them. 
Watering these 40 long trays would be a mess if I did not have drip irrigation setup so all I have to do is to turn the water on for 15 minutes and the entire garden is watered As you can see, my trees never touch the ground! Maybe that is the reason PA inspectors have left me alone for the last 4 years, they just send me my certificate, they know my plants are harmless even if I send them to Canada. Another factor that helps is that I keep Praying Mantis in the greenhouse. The mantis devour everything within sight. The Praying Mantis will be in my greenhouse from the end of March until well into November. I takle some of them and leave them in the garden. Usually I find one solitary mantis in the greenhouse and I release it. I can have up to 4000 trees growing in my garden at any one time. As trees are sold, I have to replace them, so I am growing more stuff every day. All of my business so far has been thru the Internet. All trees are sold in their bags and every tree being shipped goes with a small dose of fertilizer for a good start. This is not a new idea, I have a "pool" where I grow 300 hybrid poplars in one gallon containers. I have had that for over 3 years, As the trees are sold, I replace them with smaller ones. The tallest ones in that pool are 8 feet tall. I also just made another "pool" for 1/2 gallon containers. It has 400 1/2 gallon plastic containers and many more 1/8 gallon bags. I started with some very flat piece of ground 48 inches wide by about 25 ft long. I spent a couple of days making it perfectly level in all directions, and made a frame with 2x4s. On top of that, I put black 6 mil plastic (home depot) and then added the plants. How do you water them? put the hose in a corner, turn it on for 15 minutes. An hour later you can siphon the excess water. Here are a couple of photos I just took, it rained this morning so there is about an inch of water which I am siphoning.
|
.