I started repotting this year’s crop of seedlings by stepping up a number of 1 year-old red pine seedlings.
Red pine seedlings
Instead of making seedling-cuttings, I’m letting my seedlings grow this year as I’m aiming to produce larger specimens. Letting the seedlings grow saved me some time in summer and it yielded some great roots.
3″ seedling – roots over 2′ long
Most of the seedlings went into fairly small containers (see “Repotting 1 year-old black pines” for details).
Freshly repotted red pine seedlings
The largest specimens went straight into baskets.
1 year-old red pine seedling
Giving the roots extra room to grow will speed development and ease future repottings at the cost of bench space for the next year. It’s a fine trade-off for a small number of trees and I appreciate that the larger containers dry out less frequently. In the next few weeks I’ll repot 2 year-old specimens into these same baskets – a process that’s a bit more involved as the trees are a lot bigger at 2 years than they are at one.
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Christopher van Hooser says
It doesn’t say if you removed any roots before repoting ? If you did hope much and is there a picture?
Jonas Dupuich says
Hi Christopher – good question. When stepping up these seedlings I removed no roots at all. A few broke as I separated the seedlings, but that was it.
Zack Clayton says
So – what did you do with 2′ of roots in a small pot? I could figure out flat and shallow, but those in the third picture do not look big enough for a healthy 2′ of root structure.
Jonas Dupuich says
For the most part, I coiled or zig-zagged the roots in the pot. In the past I’ve reduced the roots when I repotted but I’m experimenting with keeping everything this year and seeing if it makes much of a difference in terms of foliage growth and root growth.
The biggest predictor of root length turned out to have more to do with the pot than the foliage. Most seedlings were planted in the wooden box pictured above, but some were grown in a plastic flat for bedding plants. When the roots hit the bottom of the plastic flat they ran all the way to the end of the flat.
Zack Clayton says
Thanks, this should be an interesting experiment. Please keep us posted as to the results.