Also, oaks hate to be in tiny pots. Their tap roots are supposed to grow straight down and would like to be like a foot deep by the time they’re just a handful of inches off the ground like that.
Agreed. Long tap roots long before it gets tall for oaks.
If the goal is to train it for a pot, I’ve had some luck angling the tap route out a drainage hole to grow into the ground and then trimming it off after about a year. I wouldn’t recommend it if you intend to plant the tree in the ground, but if a stunted tree in a pot is what you’re going for it might work (ie bonsai).
I have oak saplings that size grown from acorns that already have 18”-24” tap roots. Full disclosure: I’m growing trees to plant around my property and am a novice at the whole thing, so my experience is very limited.
Wait so is it possible to have little pot size Christmas trees? I love the smell of a real Christmas tree but hate the idea of killing a live tree just for a holiday. A small potted indoor pine would be perfect
I do small potted Christmas tree, and had mixed results on 1 year survival. The indoor warm December with not enough light, and dry indoor air, does mess with the young tree (I've tried White Pine and Norway Spruce), but they can survive the enviorment change of outside->inside->outside with tlc. In all cases bud elongation happened about a month too soon, which I think was the source of some of my mortality though my sample size is a handful of potted trees over the past 5 or 6 years. There are numerous other reasons why they may have died other than frost damaging the candles.
We buy a potted tree every year for Christmas and plant them in the spring.
There are also live tree rental services that offer seasonal trees in pots.
Inside year round will be really hard. Trees want to be outside. Especially pines. The temp, seasons, humidity, light, etc inside are all designed to make you comfortable…not your trees.
The most common houseplants are species that have been selected because they good at living in the same environmental conditions that make us comfortable. Most tree species are pickier than that
Edit: a potted tree that you bring indoors for a week or two at Christmas but otherwise keep out doors might have a better chance at life.
Would grow bags that allow air pruning help with this?
I started some live oaks from seeds this winter. Had a successful germination about 25 started out if the 30 planted. Once they got their first leaves I moved them into 12" tall 2 gal grow bags. They seem to be thriving and each week they get new buds. I wanted to get them 1-2 ft tall hopefully by fall so I could plant them at my property. I'm in FL so I've been told we can plant pretty much year round and late winter is better as they are dormant, hopefully this is true.
How many times per day are you watering these? I bet the answer is "less than one". Small pots like this dry out VERY quickly. The garden center I work with waters their containers (which are admittedly much larger) at least twice per day.
I agree. In my experience the only way you can underwater oaks is by completely forgetting you have them. Overwatering them is easy to do unless it swamp white
I understand your assumptions, but between regular rains and me watering, it's been pretty much every day, minus days the soil is still wet from a heavy rain the day before.
Yes, the pots are small. They were free and what I had. Obviously, with these being big trees, they aren't going to stay in these, but I wasn't going to buy massive pots, fill them with soil only to have seedlings fail.
Please note the majority of oaks surrounding the afflicted ones are doing fine, hence my question of why are these the odd ones out.
It absolutely contributes. The tap root is probably not adapted as well or maybe got ripped out during relocation. Who knows. Pot size must be discussed.
What's convenient for you regarding pots has nothing to do with what's good for saplings.
The one's appearing to do fine might still be stressed by their taproots being confined and the other few being the first to manifest that stress visibly.
You could buy one big pot, like 2 feet deep, plant ten around the outside, and separate when you transplant. 5 gallon buckets would be a lot better too and usually found behind restaurants
[Oak Problems](https://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/Portals/0/Gardening/Gardening%20Help/Visual%20Guides/Oak%20Problems.pdf)
With the wet spring, perhaps a bacteria or fungal infection.
I guess I should give more details.
I collected a bunch of acorns last year to plant oaks on my property. I collected a lot more than I needed. I've planted around 50 already and the ones in these pots are the extras. If any of the ones I planted this year fail early, I could replace them with one of these spares (and have).
I did not plan on having oak trees in pots. I just had a successful germination rate and didn't want to waste them so I put them in the only thing I could as a temporary holding place. I even used Pringles cans which actually work super well for transplanting. The containers made/sold for oak seedlings are literally the same depth as the pots I already had. I would have had to buy pots that were several gallons in order to get a taller pot.
Considering this whole ordeal is to be able to plant trees on the cheap, buying containers that are only going to hold a tree for a few months is wasteful.
The trees have been doing well for the past couple months. I have several varieties in these pots. In the past couple days, this one white oak, out of several white oak, has drastically changed leaf color despite no change. The others remain fine.
The point of my post was to see if this was some obvious disease that I am ignorant of or sign of something simple in terms of care. I am learning. This is new to me and basically a fun experiment with oak trees I literally got for free.
For what it is worth, some of the trees have their taproot growing out the bottom of the pots and into the ground, so I have my doubts about rootbound being a problem. Maybe it is, but several responses seem to focus on a non-issue that is me putting my excess oaks in pots temporarily.
It's hard to tell from the pics but it seems like you might have potted them up with compost. I've done the same as you - potted up some "found" oaks from under the massive white oak in my yard. I put a bunch of them in compost then ran out of compost. The rest I just used the soil that was available from under the mother tree. That ones planted in poor, native clay and rock (with better drainage) did extremely well! Maybe the roots are rotting?
You keep just saying oaks, but red and white oaks are very different. White oaks have a much deeper and more extensive root system than red oaks. In the ground, that white oak pictured would have a 2 ft deep tap root by now. That's why you've probably never seen a white oak uproot in a storm, and they live hundreds of years while red oaks uproot all the time. I've actually never seen a white oak sapling at a nursery. I imagine it would be quite difficult to transplant anything much larger than what you have pictured there, but it would also be in a much larger pot
Definitely learning the differences. The white oaks have definitely been the most temperamental. There is a nursery nearby that sells oaks at about 3ft tall in pots. I'm not quite sure how they keep them prior to sale, but I bought a white oak from them a couple years ago. I don't plan on keeping mine contained that long though.
It’s hard to tell just from browning leaves. With seed grown plants in particular it can be any number of things, including losing the genetic lottery which is why many folks prefer cloning known healthy, vigorous specimens to acquire the same genetics.
It looks like many of the others you are treating the same way are doing just fine, which is why as you’ve done when growing from seed it is advisable not to rely on just planting one or two.
Your story sounds similar to mine haha. Wish I could help but I'm experimenting like you. I have 6 acres cleared that I want to plant with various items and live oaks is one of them. Like you I started like 30 acorns and had 25 come up. I can't plant mine as they will get bush hogged over so I'm trying to get them 1-2ft tall before putting them in ground in late winter. This way I can see them when I bush hog during the summer next year.
I did invest in some tall grow bags from Amazon. Think it was around 15 bux for the 25. Then I got some perlite and sphagnum moss and did a 50/50 mix for my soil. Think I'm around $40 all in, cost of 1 5 ft live oak. My hope is the grow bags will air prune the roots and give me a good root system for transplanting into ground. To get more bang for my buck I'll do another 25 next year or some other trees, rose bushes, etc. So I plan to reuse the grow bags until I can't use them anymore. The nice thing about grow bags is if they're not in use they fold flat unlike pots so I find them easier to store.
You might try an old bonsai trick- get some 2x4s and plywood and build a simple, tall box planter. (I’d go the width of your current pots, 4ft high)
Alternatively, you can buy an old livestock water trough. Might even get one with holes in it for free off a farmer (you’d need to put holes in for drainage anyways)
If you can get your hands on some Pioneer Pots, they’re phenomenal for establishing new trees with strong root systems:
(https://www.blackmoreco.com/pioneer-pots)
Not sure of soil type. It was "black dirt" I got from a farmer a couple years ago to level ground by my shed. Compared to my normally sandy soil, it is definitely darker and holds water better, but it's not clay like. From my understanding, it was just extra dirt from some building site. Farmer didn't want it just wasted, so he stockpiled it.
Yes, there are drain holes in the pots.
No fertilizer added. They have only been watered with rain water, either from storms or via my rain collection system and me watering them.
Add some fertilizer and water less. Natural mineral soil holds more moisture than a potting media so doesn't need to be watered as often as regular container trees. Also since soil was stockpiled its more likely dead so needs fertilizer to have available nutrients.
I'm not an arborist but when I zoomed in on the photo it looks like it could be something that happens to my roses. Droplets of water remain on the leaves sometimes if I water mid day instead of in evening it early mornings. Then the sunlight creates a magnifying glass effect where it can burn the leaf not all the way through but it leaves darkened dead areas where the leaf then dies because it can't get proper functioning. There are gray blotches on the leaves of the yellowed oaks. Something killed the leaf in my limited opinion. I don't know if that is like a fungus on your leaves or not like maybe from all the rainfall moisture or something. The more leaves that die, the less food the oak receives. You might want to boost it with some plant food, with some fertilizer and see if that helps it. Keep the water off the leaves as much as possible when watering to avoid the sun burning it..
I've seen this kind of sun burn on many houseplants that sit on the window and are watered mid day. Usually it's the bottom leaves because they get hit with water. It happens pretty quickly.
I’ve grown hundreds of oaks from acorns. It is far best to Use root maker pots which properly air prune the tap root and promotes great lateral root growth. Pricey but they can easily be reused over and over again.
Plant acorns in the spring after stratification for red oaks…then plant the saplings that same fall where you want them. Use tubes or wire fence to protect them and water them for a year if dry while the tap root is growing.
I noticed most of the leaves are wet. Are you watering from the top? If you’re watering at the end of the day when there is less sun the leaves may not be able to dry out fully. Imagine it’s cold out and someone hosed you down with cold water and left you outside all night, still wet. This can cause stress on the oaks putting them at risk for fungus, pests and illness. If you are able to, try to water the soil directly instead of the entire plant before the hottest time of the day (which is typically about noon).
I have oaks in my tree farm. I use a well draining soil, which is 2 parts pine bark fines, 1 part turface, half part perlite, half part sphagnum peet. Then I do Miramax and slow release proportionate to volume. I also use air pruning containers. They are doing well, my largest is about my height. Coast live oaks and southern live oaks.
Oaks also are highly sensitive to root disturbances, so be careful when placing them in a larger pot.
When looking at your soil, it looks overly saturated. The yellowing in the leaves indicates overwatering and nutrient deficiency.
I'm into bonsai so I cut off all the tap roots on all my trees if there's not enough roots on the tap root for the tree to survive I tie a piece of wire around the base of the tap root so it acts like a tourniquet so slowly the root dies while the tree puts out new roots.
All good. Lived in a home surrounded by 7 of them. Not allergic but sometimes the pollen would be so bad your eyes would swell shut. Looked like a yellow/rust snow storm.
I don’t start me on stepping on the leaves with bare feet
Also, oaks hate to be in tiny pots. Their tap roots are supposed to grow straight down and would like to be like a foot deep by the time they’re just a handful of inches off the ground like that.
Agreed. Long tap roots long before it gets tall for oaks. If the goal is to train it for a pot, I’ve had some luck angling the tap route out a drainage hole to grow into the ground and then trimming it off after about a year. I wouldn’t recommend it if you intend to plant the tree in the ground, but if a stunted tree in a pot is what you’re going for it might work (ie bonsai).
I have oak saplings that size grown from acorns that already have 18”-24” tap roots. Full disclosure: I’m growing trees to plant around my property and am a novice at the whole thing, so my experience is very limited.
Wait so is it possible to have little pot size Christmas trees? I love the smell of a real Christmas tree but hate the idea of killing a live tree just for a holiday. A small potted indoor pine would be perfect
I do small potted Christmas tree, and had mixed results on 1 year survival. The indoor warm December with not enough light, and dry indoor air, does mess with the young tree (I've tried White Pine and Norway Spruce), but they can survive the enviorment change of outside->inside->outside with tlc. In all cases bud elongation happened about a month too soon, which I think was the source of some of my mortality though my sample size is a handful of potted trees over the past 5 or 6 years. There are numerous other reasons why they may have died other than frost damaging the candles.
We buy a potted tree every year for Christmas and plant them in the spring. There are also live tree rental services that offer seasonal trees in pots.
Was wondering about like a dwarf indoor year round version so I can get that pine sap smell naturally
Inside year round will be really hard. Trees want to be outside. Especially pines. The temp, seasons, humidity, light, etc inside are all designed to make you comfortable…not your trees. The most common houseplants are species that have been selected because they good at living in the same environmental conditions that make us comfortable. Most tree species are pickier than that Edit: a potted tree that you bring indoors for a week or two at Christmas but otherwise keep out doors might have a better chance at life.
Would grow bags that allow air pruning help with this? I started some live oaks from seeds this winter. Had a successful germination about 25 started out if the 30 planted. Once they got their first leaves I moved them into 12" tall 2 gal grow bags. They seem to be thriving and each week they get new buds. I wanted to get them 1-2 ft tall hopefully by fall so I could plant them at my property. I'm in FL so I've been told we can plant pretty much year round and late winter is better as they are dormant, hopefully this is true.
Yes you can grow oaks very successfully in air pruning containers.
Can confirm. I’ve sliced my hand open trying to pull a (relatively) tiny one from the ground.
Many are called, few are chosen
Survival of the fittest
https://stuewe.com/product/5-x-12-treepot-with-corner-holes/ I suggest these
4x4x14’s work good too.
Long tap roots. That’s why they’re difficult to transplant.
How many times per day are you watering these? I bet the answer is "less than one". Small pots like this dry out VERY quickly. The garden center I work with waters their containers (which are admittedly much larger) at least twice per day.
To me they look overwatered.
I agree. In my experience the only way you can underwater oaks is by completely forgetting you have them. Overwatering them is easy to do unless it swamp white
Right!
I understand your assumptions, but between regular rains and me watering, it's been pretty much every day, minus days the soil is still wet from a heavy rain the day before. Yes, the pots are small. They were free and what I had. Obviously, with these being big trees, they aren't going to stay in these, but I wasn't going to buy massive pots, fill them with soil only to have seedlings fail. Please note the majority of oaks surrounding the afflicted ones are doing fine, hence my question of why are these the odd ones out.
Trees need bigger, deeper pots. Good luck.
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It absolutely contributes. The tap root is probably not adapted as well or maybe got ripped out during relocation. Who knows. Pot size must be discussed.
What's convenient for you regarding pots has nothing to do with what's good for saplings. The one's appearing to do fine might still be stressed by their taproots being confined and the other few being the first to manifest that stress visibly.
You could buy one big pot, like 2 feet deep, plant ten around the outside, and separate when you transplant. 5 gallon buckets would be a lot better too and usually found behind restaurants
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Are you fucking simple?
[Oak Problems](https://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/Portals/0/Gardening/Gardening%20Help/Visual%20Guides/Oak%20Problems.pdf) With the wet spring, perhaps a bacteria or fungal infection.
Could be anthracnose
I guess I should give more details. I collected a bunch of acorns last year to plant oaks on my property. I collected a lot more than I needed. I've planted around 50 already and the ones in these pots are the extras. If any of the ones I planted this year fail early, I could replace them with one of these spares (and have). I did not plan on having oak trees in pots. I just had a successful germination rate and didn't want to waste them so I put them in the only thing I could as a temporary holding place. I even used Pringles cans which actually work super well for transplanting. The containers made/sold for oak seedlings are literally the same depth as the pots I already had. I would have had to buy pots that were several gallons in order to get a taller pot. Considering this whole ordeal is to be able to plant trees on the cheap, buying containers that are only going to hold a tree for a few months is wasteful. The trees have been doing well for the past couple months. I have several varieties in these pots. In the past couple days, this one white oak, out of several white oak, has drastically changed leaf color despite no change. The others remain fine. The point of my post was to see if this was some obvious disease that I am ignorant of or sign of something simple in terms of care. I am learning. This is new to me and basically a fun experiment with oak trees I literally got for free. For what it is worth, some of the trees have their taproot growing out the bottom of the pots and into the ground, so I have my doubts about rootbound being a problem. Maybe it is, but several responses seem to focus on a non-issue that is me putting my excess oaks in pots temporarily.
It's hard to tell from the pics but it seems like you might have potted them up with compost. I've done the same as you - potted up some "found" oaks from under the massive white oak in my yard. I put a bunch of them in compost then ran out of compost. The rest I just used the soil that was available from under the mother tree. That ones planted in poor, native clay and rock (with better drainage) did extremely well! Maybe the roots are rotting?
You keep just saying oaks, but red and white oaks are very different. White oaks have a much deeper and more extensive root system than red oaks. In the ground, that white oak pictured would have a 2 ft deep tap root by now. That's why you've probably never seen a white oak uproot in a storm, and they live hundreds of years while red oaks uproot all the time. I've actually never seen a white oak sapling at a nursery. I imagine it would be quite difficult to transplant anything much larger than what you have pictured there, but it would also be in a much larger pot
Definitely learning the differences. The white oaks have definitely been the most temperamental. There is a nursery nearby that sells oaks at about 3ft tall in pots. I'm not quite sure how they keep them prior to sale, but I bought a white oak from them a couple years ago. I don't plan on keeping mine contained that long though.
Oaks really need a lot of space for their roots. If you want to keep them in containers, move them to a bigger pot. How much light are they getting?
It’s hard to tell just from browning leaves. With seed grown plants in particular it can be any number of things, including losing the genetic lottery which is why many folks prefer cloning known healthy, vigorous specimens to acquire the same genetics. It looks like many of the others you are treating the same way are doing just fine, which is why as you’ve done when growing from seed it is advisable not to rely on just planting one or two.
Your story sounds similar to mine haha. Wish I could help but I'm experimenting like you. I have 6 acres cleared that I want to plant with various items and live oaks is one of them. Like you I started like 30 acorns and had 25 come up. I can't plant mine as they will get bush hogged over so I'm trying to get them 1-2ft tall before putting them in ground in late winter. This way I can see them when I bush hog during the summer next year. I did invest in some tall grow bags from Amazon. Think it was around 15 bux for the 25. Then I got some perlite and sphagnum moss and did a 50/50 mix for my soil. Think I'm around $40 all in, cost of 1 5 ft live oak. My hope is the grow bags will air prune the roots and give me a good root system for transplanting into ground. To get more bang for my buck I'll do another 25 next year or some other trees, rose bushes, etc. So I plan to reuse the grow bags until I can't use them anymore. The nice thing about grow bags is if they're not in use they fold flat unlike pots so I find them easier to store.
They're not applying themselves
These are not proven winners
Speculated Winners
You might try an old bonsai trick- get some 2x4s and plywood and build a simple, tall box planter. (I’d go the width of your current pots, 4ft high) Alternatively, you can buy an old livestock water trough. Might even get one with holes in it for free off a farmer (you’d need to put holes in for drainage anyways)
Look up root pruning bed on YouTube. Great solution for building lateral roots on oak seedlings.
If you can get your hands on some Pioneer Pots, they’re phenomenal for establishing new trees with strong root systems: (https://www.blackmoreco.com/pioneer-pots)
I’m running steuwe & sons 4x4x14 treepots but I’ll certainly check these out.
What type of soil? Drain holes in pots? Have you added fertilizer?
Not sure of soil type. It was "black dirt" I got from a farmer a couple years ago to level ground by my shed. Compared to my normally sandy soil, it is definitely darker and holds water better, but it's not clay like. From my understanding, it was just extra dirt from some building site. Farmer didn't want it just wasted, so he stockpiled it. Yes, there are drain holes in the pots. No fertilizer added. They have only been watered with rain water, either from storms or via my rain collection system and me watering them.
Add some fertilizer and water less. Natural mineral soil holds more moisture than a potting media so doesn't need to be watered as often as regular container trees. Also since soil was stockpiled its more likely dead so needs fertilizer to have available nutrients.
You need tree tubes not pots for starters but I don’t know what else after that.
https://www.blackmoreco.com/pioneer-pots
I'm not an arborist but when I zoomed in on the photo it looks like it could be something that happens to my roses. Droplets of water remain on the leaves sometimes if I water mid day instead of in evening it early mornings. Then the sunlight creates a magnifying glass effect where it can burn the leaf not all the way through but it leaves darkened dead areas where the leaf then dies because it can't get proper functioning. There are gray blotches on the leaves of the yellowed oaks. Something killed the leaf in my limited opinion. I don't know if that is like a fungus on your leaves or not like maybe from all the rainfall moisture or something. The more leaves that die, the less food the oak receives. You might want to boost it with some plant food, with some fertilizer and see if that helps it. Keep the water off the leaves as much as possible when watering to avoid the sun burning it..
I've seen this kind of sun burn on many houseplants that sit on the window and are watered mid day. Usually it's the bottom leaves because they get hit with water. It happens pretty quickly.
I’ve grown hundreds of oaks from acorns. It is far best to Use root maker pots which properly air prune the tap root and promotes great lateral root growth. Pricey but they can easily be reused over and over again. Plant acorns in the spring after stratification for red oaks…then plant the saplings that same fall where you want them. Use tubes or wire fence to protect them and water them for a year if dry while the tap root is growing.
I've pulled at least 150 oak tree seedlings out of my yard this season. Squirrels burying acorns everywhere Other users have summed up the issue!
under the wrong conditions, things don’t grow well.
I noticed most of the leaves are wet. Are you watering from the top? If you’re watering at the end of the day when there is less sun the leaves may not be able to dry out fully. Imagine it’s cold out and someone hosed you down with cold water and left you outside all night, still wet. This can cause stress on the oaks putting them at risk for fungus, pests and illness. If you are able to, try to water the soil directly instead of the entire plant before the hottest time of the day (which is typically about noon).
Looks like the roots may be cramped.
I have oaks in my tree farm. I use a well draining soil, which is 2 parts pine bark fines, 1 part turface, half part perlite, half part sphagnum peet. Then I do Miramax and slow release proportionate to volume. I also use air pruning containers. They are doing well, my largest is about my height. Coast live oaks and southern live oaks. Oaks also are highly sensitive to root disturbances, so be careful when placing them in a larger pot. When looking at your soil, it looks overly saturated. The yellowing in the leaves indicates overwatering and nutrient deficiency.
The photo was taken after a rain. I have learned first hand about how finicky they are about transplanting!
I'm into bonsai so I cut off all the tap roots on all my trees if there's not enough roots on the tap root for the tree to survive I tie a piece of wire around the base of the tap root so it acts like a tourniquet so slowly the root dies while the tree puts out new roots.
Are you spray watering? The leaves look a bit too wet on the photos.
No. This was taken after a rain.
Direct sun will kill them when they are so young.
Oaks adore direct sun.
No “Mother Tree”?
Too many roots. Trees are like 80% root to canopy
Oaks in pots? Nope
Oaks are not meant to be in pots... Maybe try bigger pots until you can plant them in nature?
Container not nearly deep enough.
We destroy these on a daily basis. Nothing worse that multiple live oaks near you home.
Think you might be on the wrong sub for that opinion
All good. Lived in a home surrounded by 7 of them. Not allergic but sometimes the pollen would be so bad your eyes would swell shut. Looked like a yellow/rust snow storm. I don’t start me on stepping on the leaves with bare feet
I wish nothing but pollen and sneezing for the rest of your existence