How to grow fruit trees in a container

Hey, it's Jake Mace, the vegan athlete, and I'm back here at one of my favorite places in town, Seamus O'Leary's Tropical Fruit Trees Nursery in Glendale, Arizona, and this is Seamus O'Leary. Thank you. And one of the things that I discovered when I met you was that you can grow trees in containers. Correct. And a lot of folks only grow in containers. Right. A lot of folks combine container growing with in-ground growing. Right. And so there are certain pros and cons of growing in containers. Correct. And a lot of folks out there were asking for a video of how to grow in containers. Right. So the soil you're putting in this container, why is this the soil to be used for growing a tree in a pot? Well, this is the soil that we use for everything, and this here is a combination of lava rock and lava sand, which is called basalt, and two different sizes of composted mulch. This is made for drainage, but it is not as porous as a palm cactus mix or just straight mulch. You want to hold a little bit of water, because when we get to summertime here, you don't want to have to water your trees four times a day. So the sand and the lava rock will hold a little bit of water, and then the mulch allows it to drain nicely, so you're not going to have to worry about root rot or those types of things. And why not use a bunch of compost, peat moss, and coconut coir? Well, peat moss is unnecessary, and it's also unsustainable. It is. Coconut coir is extremely porous, which when we get warm, the trees would dry out fairly quickly. Oh. So it's not something you want to use in pots. And compost, I don't like to use in containers, because as it decomposes, it throws off heat. Sometimes it can burn the plant. Right. So I'll add a little bit of compost throughout the year to the top of the tree as a food, but I never mix it into the container. Because the roots have nowhere to go to get away from the compost. Correct. We will be adding in a few other things, such as worm castings, azomite, and mycorrhizae, but not compost. I never add compost to the pots. So we have a tree here. We're going to pot up on video for everybody. Yes. And this is a mango tree. That's about a four-year-old mango. A four-year-old mango. What kind of mango? That's a Tommy Atkins, which is a beautiful mango. Large, green-red. They generally fruit a little earlier in the year than some of the other varieties, and they're heavy producers, and they're fairly reliable as well. This tree itself is a 25-gallon size tree. Right now it's in a 15-gallon size pot. Okay. You can see it's rooted out pretty well. The soil has washed away. It's time, it was time a couple months ago for this tree to come out of this pot and go to a larger pot. And if you can pick the entire thing up like that. Without the pot falling away. Right. Or the dirt. If it's that well-rooted out, it's probably overdue, hey, it needs to be repotted. Now why are you transferring this tree, this mango tree, into this size pot and not a really, really big size pot? What I have been taught is that if you have a small tree in a large pot, when you water, water naturally takes the path of least resistance. Right. Which is the edges of the pot. So the root ball does not get much of that water. Okay. So you want to keep them fairly contained, but a little bit of room for the roots to grow. So this here is a three-gallon loquat. We would not want to put that size tree into this large of a pot. I see. Because the small root ball in the middle of the pot might not ever see water. Because when you water, the water is going to rush to the edges of the pot. I see. Just a theory. Okay. But that's what I've been taught. And it seems to make sense. So you want to up the tree slowly. Correct. Not too fast. When it needs to be repotted is when you repot it. In addition to the shameless soil that we already have in there, the basalt, lava sand, two different kinds of compost and mulch. In addition to this, what else are you going to put inside this pot? I'm going to add a little bit of mycorrhizae. Which is beneficial fungus. Beneficial fungus. So just a splash of that. That's going to improve the microbial life in the soil. I'm going to throw in a little bit of azomite. Which is rock dust powder. And we're also going to throw in some worm castings. Worm castings are the best stuff on earth. Use as much of this as you can afford. It's basically worm poop. But real gardeners know worm castings is where it's at. Worm castings are gold. Okay. And consequently, people always ask me in my YouTube videos in the comments, Jake, where can I get this stuff? Because most nurseries, they don't know what rock dust powder is. Right. They don't sell mycorrhizae. Most of them do sell worm castings. But you can get this from you here in Glendale. Any product that we use, we keep extra here so that you have some as well. Because you're using it, you believe in it, why not sell it to the public? Exactly. And if you're out of the area and you're not from this area, you can get the mycorrhizae and the azomite from jakemace.com. Next step is we're going to remove the tree from the pot. I'm the pot guy. So if you want to grab the pot. Okay. And so I guess this would be a good visual for the audience. Before the soil is in here, this is an appropriate size pot now for this size root ball. Correct. This is, we're putting this tree into a 25 gallon size pot. So maybe like four inches of space all the way around. Yeah, that's good. And that'll fill this out this year. I like to leave a few inches from the top of the root ball to the top of the pot. That makes it a lot easier when watering. If you have it too high, when you water, it just splashes off. Right. So you want to be able to have about three inches gap. So when you water it, you let it fill and work down slowly. So if you want to hold that. I got it. And you're planning on getting this Tommy Atkins mango to fruit in this pot. Well, this one is already fruited. So you, you find that you can get fruit, growth, health, even in the container. Oh yeah. Now there's pros and cons to container growing. What are some of the pros? The pros are that if we have a really nasty winter, you can move the trees inside or to a garage or somewhere where it's protected. Right. You never have to worry about cold. Okay. Uh, you can also contain the size. Okay. So you don't have to, if you don't have a lot of space. Or maybe to a shadier spot when it's 120 degrees outside. You can, you don't need to worry about microclimate cause you're going to move it around the yard when needed. Uh huh. Um, and if you're keeping your trees contained in size, you can have more varieties in your yard. Right. So instead of having one mango tree, maybe you can have 10 in containers, have 10 different varieties of mangoes. That's an example. Yeah. What are some of the cons? The cons would be, you need to be more diligent about sticking to a feeding schedule. When a tree is in a pot, it's relying on you for food and water. Okay. It cannot access food in the soil. So you gotta be organized. You have to be organized. You have to probably write it down, stick to a schedule. Yeah. They're waiting on you for food. Right. So you really need to be dialed in with, Hey, I'm feeding them once a month with this or what have you. So maybe good for a doctor who's used to a schedule and very dependable. Engineers. You know, OCD, you know, all of that. And then we're going to add a little bit more of the worm castings. On top. Correct. Okay. This here is a two to $300 tree. So I'm not going to worry about adding $10 worth of amendments, you know, appropriate. I'm not going to add $10 worth of worm castings to a $5 flower, but if it's two to $300 fruit tree, throw all the good stuff in there. That's where you want to put your money. Absolutely. And then we'll water this in and then we're going to leave it alone. This time of year we're watering about once a week because it's winter time. It's like January 22nd or something. Yeah. The trees are slowing down. They don't need a lot right now. But then as we get into spring, it might be twice a week, we start to warm up three times a week. The nice thing about my soil, it never dries out completely. So even in the middle of the summer, I can get away with watering once or twice a week depending on the size of the tree and how much soil is around the root ball. And let me ask you one more question. What are some of your favorite trees to grow in containers? Mangoes, guavas, loquats. Some of you have success with starfruit. Starfruit. Ok. Jabba the Cabba. Those types of trees. Inappropriate trees for containers would be mulberry. Ok. Olive. Moringa. Ok. Anything that grows really fast. They're going to struggle. Put it in the ground. Now you could do those trees in the pots. You could. But they're going to thrive in the ground. Yes. Ok. I see. Yeah. This is great. Because I'm really interested in container growing and I never knew you could do that so this is a great video for those who are interested and want to know the skinny on the expert's tips. That's how we do it. That's all there is to it. Make sure to check Seamus out on Instagram at Seamus underscore O'Leary underscore. I'm at JakeMaceTaiChi and your website is what? PhoenixFruitTrees.com. It's still a little bit under construction at the moment. We'll have that done over the next few months. But you have a huge following on Facebook. The Seamus O'Leary Tropical Fruit Trees Facebook. That we update every day with information. Well thank you so much. Great information. And we'll see you guys all next time. Appreciate it.