Easy Potting Techniques for Growing Conifers in Pots | Dwarf Conifer Container Gardening

Planting Conifers in Pots | Dwarf Conifer Container Gardening

A question we hear often at the nursery is, “can I plant my dwarf conifer in a pot?” And the answer is yes! By following these steps that Gil McNeal shares in this video, you can plant tree in a container and enjoy it for years to come. With a bit of attention to root ball as well as your soil and watering, your dwarf conifer can thrive as part of a container garden.

We hope you enjoy this video, and be sure to comment if you have questions or feel free to send us an email at info@burklandgardens.com

Burkland Gardens is a family-owned and operated nursery in the Skagit Valley of Washington state specializing in dwarf conifers, unusual conifers, and Japanese maples.

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Hi it’s Gil this is Berkland Gardens today we’re going to update a video that we did a couple years ago on container gardening especially putting your conifers in containers so it works for a lot of different plants shrubs and trees and but um there’s different aspects of

It and we’re going to go through through those today so let’s get started so I’m working today with this uh tub and it comes they come in several different sizes they’re used for mixing mortar but you can use them like this to keep your area cleaner um if you’re

Working on your patio or different things like that any you know place you want to keep it as clean as possible you can put down a tarp as well but this contains all your media you can you know you get it back up again and um and and

Put it back into the pot so doesn’t get mixed with a lot of other other materials other soils and that so so just something else I wanted to put out there that makes it easier when you’re doing this type of work an important thing about container gardening is you

Have good drainage in your in your pot so that the water isn’t just sitting at the bottom and that then your roots sit in that water and they’re just going to drown and rot so um you can put screen down screen material down there today we’re going to use some free draining

Rock some lava rock which um The Roots really like because they’ll attach themselves as The Rock and it’s um this is a little bit bigger I’ll get this out of the the bag here and um show you what I’ve got so this is lava rock that’s

About that size there about 1 in/ in to 1 in and and that so that’ll we’ll put that through the bottom and there’s three holes in the bottom of this you can put again screening there but we’re going to uh uh um just fill up the

Bottom of that and let the free let it drain freely and it’s good to always elevate your pots a little bit too so um that way the water can flow out and it’s not just trapped down there so so so we’ve got a little bit of

That also a lot of times we put pmus or perlite in the bottom and so I’ve got both pmus and purite here and I do mix it in with my mix straight bark works as a potting mix but um this adds pmus has some little bit of mineral content but

They also Aid drainage so um I’m just going to put a little bit of the the pmus in here in the bottom this has some fines in so I’m not going to use too much we don’t want the fines if it’s not graded out properly

The fines will clog your holes up too so um this comes as a bult material so so that’s the first step this is a tree we’re going to use for the PT right here it’s a uh slow growing Canadian Hemlock First Step we’ll get this out of the

Container and evaluate its roots and see what we have and then we’ll get some uh media in into the uh container here so first we’ll just brush the top off has a has a nice little root to it so we might dig down there just a

Little bit let me get my uh my hook take some of this Edge down a little bit too we’re also going to so when the trees grow in a circular pot The Roots want to do the same thing so we’ll just um rough up these roots just a little bit so

So so I’m trimming these top Roots off there’s some little fine Roots up here that aren’t necessary and they kind of they’re not aesthetically they’re not you know they’re not pleasing and they’re not necessary we have developed a nice root system so um this one I’m going to I

Would consider for a bon ey right yeah so next step is to get some um bark media into this here so I’m going to grab a pot of that right over here so this has a little bit of perlite already in it mixed in as I mentioned

It’s not absolutely necessary and I know actually professional Growers that grow you know trees for a living that um just use straight bark so U my friend Jason down at Western Evergreen does that so and he’s very successful at what he does so so we’re going to get a little bit of

Media in there now why do some people use well it it just works it’s um you know you can add other materials like the pmus and the perlite um and they have benefits but it’s not it’s another cost Factor too so especially when you’re running Nursery you look at every

Cost Factor as well and if you have your results are uh really good just using the bark and we usually let it sit for um a number of months to let it cool down a little bit cuz it’ll take nitrogen away from your your tree as

Well so um so it it’s not like if you use straight bark I you know I’m perfectly I I I do it um at different times but I’m going to check the level on that probably a little low on that you think Max yeah yep you want to see

That trunk and get it up a little bit higher just give a little pressure a little bit of pack it’ll settle some more but it’s not it shouldn’t be too awful noticeable and then this here what do you think about that height it’s perfect okay so the next step um

We’re just going to start putting some media in here and I’m not going to do it all at one time cuz I’m going to pack it now you can use your fingers you can use a tool I’ve got another tool over here that I can use

But I just want to get some of that air make sure you get as much air out of there as we can you you want your roots in contact with the media as much as possible so um so that way it gives full contact just cut a couple Roots off of

Here just to make it it’s kind of where the tree slopes down a little bit like to keep and just a little bit of fine pruning right there that one can come off there’s a couple over here just clean that this going to be done later

Too so but long as we’re right here just a few cuts and it cleans it up a little bit as well so so we’re just about there and then you want your soil media level just about where we’ll kind of show what it does but we don’t want to

Actually want to show that trunk and finish that off and you know as another add a step you could put some something like lava rock or a small granite or decorative type rock on top of this here um that would it would help in for a little

Bit in in suppressing some of the weeds and and that but uh um cuz you’re you know you have to come back but you won’t have as much problem with u with weeds in your pots but they they will grow there so so that’s our first pot next

Tree we’ve got is not a conifer but it’s one of my favorite trees stuarda Pudo chamia with that chamele like flower it’s a fairly young one probably about 5 years old and um it has some native soil here but we’re going to surround it with

A um bark bark media and I’m going to lift it out for a second and show that I’ve got it in a grow bag and the roots are growing out this bag will need to come off at some time some point but um so we’re going to put it down our um I

Use Perl light in this one and the red lava rock or the lava rock down at the bottom for drainage this one’s going going to go in like that so when this tree comes out next time that grow bag should come off it’ll be a repot kind of

A situation the roots are going to grow through the grow bag and they’re going to be pretty tight in here going to take something like just an old I use this um old knife here serrated knife and cut the roots around so that um it it’ll

Lift out easier and this pot here has that it’s coming back a little bit so it’s harder to get out of the pot so you’ll have to trim as you go we’re just going to use pumer perlite um it’ll be perfect so so we’re just going to start working

It down down there the roots will grow into it be nice and fibrous I’m going to use this is going to be my tool right now to get some of this air out of here and just pack that down in there you use your hand

Most of your growing your is going to be inside that grow bag but it will send fibrous Roots out into this um perlite as well clean that up wash it off a little bit sometimes got a root up here just like the first one we did that roote isn’t

Necessary it’s a little fibrous root up high and you’ll find those and usually on the trees these little roots and just trim them off and clean it up and your main roots are down below and then they become more fibrous so so that’s pretty much it for that one and

We’ll move on to the next one and talk about it we’re getting a juniper ready here um and we’re going to put it into a tall slender pot this is a juniper I think it’s horizontalis um but but anyway the cult of our name is pancake really like the color um it’ll

Grow literally just a few inches off the ground makes a great ground cover but we’re going to put in a pot today I just uh um kind of really like this this junifer so I’m taking a little bit of it was growing in in the soil so I’m taking

A little bit of that soil off and um also fit in the pot and just to reduce it a little bit and there we go so okay so there’s there’s our tree think make a nice Cascade uh trim a little bit of that remember when you trim the roots um The

Roots become more fibrous they’ll split and divide and become more healthy so we have a nice root mass right in here um this could be cleaned up a little bit but I’m not going to touch that too much today so let’s uh we’ll get started here in just a

Second okay so we’re we’ve got this pot pretty much ready to go I put some uh lava rock at the bottom I put a little bit of perite on top of that and it has some um this one has po light so our next step is we’ve got the

Tree it’s reduced we’ve got it pretty full right here it’s going to make a nice one so we’re just going to start adding our bark mixture here so again we’re we’re pressing down packing packing it so that the air is out there it’s still a loose media that

The roots have no trouble uh growing in and they’re in contact with it and on some of this had a fairly small root system and it’s not loose but I can pull up just a little bit and if you have a really if you ever notice and if you

Ever seen bonesy people repotting they’ll have trees that are just Roots nothing nothing else they’ve washed all the soil out and they have to fill all those gaps and they’ll use uh things like chop Chopsticks to um poke down in there and they do it very carefully um

To get that media in contact with the uh with the roots actually we think it’s nice and clean it’s a nice Juniper going put it right over here and we’ll move on to our next one this tree is called Diggy it is uh an Eastern White Pine very slow growing upright has

A bit of a blue tinge to its needles really a nice tree slow growing and fairly slender um but not columnar and it would be um it’s been pretty popular lately here at the nursery so let’s get started has a lot of nice roots on it

And but a lot of them are going to go away so we’re just going to go ahead and be brutal and cut those roots off put that over there this tree would be comfortable just to grow in circles here and get all root bound if you don’t do the

And the other thing to remember in your container gardening is that you can’t leave them in the pots for really long periods of time and you don’t want to use a exceptionally large pot for a small tree you can get by with it and it actually can work but usually you want

To just go with slightly oversized from the original um root mass so you want to come but you want to give it some room to to grow but you don’t want it to have be just a a huge area but so this is that’s what we ended up

With this is the last tree we’re going to do today and then we’re going to get a shot of all the trees in a row plus a couple others that you can look at so as I had mentioned we’ve left a little bit of room here there’s about an inch at

Least an inch all the way around the roots are um I’ve roughed up and trim them a little bit so I might mention that we use this bark media and why we use it it you know if you’re planting annuals in your pots perfectly fine to

Use what you want to use as a potty mix that’s mostly Peete based but and it would be hold way too much water for um your conifers and shrubs and Maples and anything you want to put that’s more tree like or shrub like so don’t use

Um Peete Moss you could have a small amount mixed with bark but um it’s not something you want to put it’s it’s different than your annuals which require a lot of water and then once once it dries out it’s hard to get it wet again so it’s a different different situation so

Watering is key for containers they need more water in the summertime if they’re outside usually you don’t need to water them in at all unless they’re under and Eve but uh you know keep an eye on the watering um this bark met it does will hold on to enough water to support tree

For long periods of time sometimes cold weather can dry out freezing weather can dry out the trees too so you need to keep it’ll actually suck some of the water out so um so once that freezing weather is passed you want to uh go Ahad and check your trees and see if they

Need any water but I need a little bit more here I’m going to so I’m going to um just go ahead and get this this finished off and then we’re going to come back and just have the trees lined up and we’ll uh do a final shot

So we’ve lined up the pots that we did today plus a few more that I had around so you could get a good look at them we’ve topped them off with some different um toppings like sawdust and the U lava rock the red lava rock um

Perl light on this one I’ve got some decorative gravel right here I’ve run out of that but um it’s a polished small gravel but there’s so many things available so just going down line we’ve got Diggy the eastern white pine uh stuarda pseudo chamia a golden Mugo Carston’s the Canadian Hemlock Kotobuki

The really nice upright D Japanese black pine mini twist the eastern white pine pine strobus the pancake Juniper one of my favorite mugos Jacobson develops that really heavy brunching I love that plant it’s in a a wood wood box too that I just made so very economical uh another Jacobson in a

Regular pot uh motherload Juniper another flat growing one that this nice bright gold in the winter time or sorry summertime and a nice little hinoi and a um I think that’s a training pot yeah and then a Colorado Blue Spruce and when it gets this new growth it’ll be even

More blue than this this one’s pretty outstanding um just a low growing one and pricing on these are mostly in that 80 to 120 range $80 to $120 um there’s things like this even though this pot’s falling apart um they’ll sell for $340 $50 but that’s

Kind of the price range if you get something in a pot that um there’s a cost of a pot but these are things you can do on your own go to your Pottery dealers and um pick up a pot and use the techniques that I’ve shown today to pot

Up your trees thanks for watching today and I hope you enjoy the video and U I hope that you’ve learned a few things about potting techniques and potting soils and um anyway that I’m standing next to a gold mugo pine U Max actually has his eye on this one so bright gold

In the winter time it’ll be green in the summertime but really adds a lot that’s thing about coners are so interesting winter interest that um you just get um a lot of vibrant color color going on in the winter time with h your a lot of

Your conifers and with the golds and the blues so one interesting fact as we close is that did you know that most of the blue trees they’re not really blue it’s a waxy substance on the that’s on the branches or on the needles and that wax um will eventually come off and the

Tree will be green on the inside so it’s not the needle isn’t blue all the way through it just happens to be a waxy substance that’s true with a lot of plants hostas and other plants as well so until next time thanks and we’ll see you Later