The No.1 Post for Loburn Trees’ tall tree nursery

I’d have really liked to have had the website functional before making a first post but there’s a need to get a profile out there and start promoting Loburn Trees: Tall Tree Nursery and Tree Services.  As I build the website I’ll be posting about the different nursery stock, hints for growing and managing trees, what we’re up to and, when there are firewood logs (or split wood) available, there’ll be  posts for those as well.

North Canterbury is a challenging area to grow trees, with the extreme winds, unpredictable snowfalls, out of season frosts, difficult soils and, at times, some of the driest conditions in the country.  Loburn Trees is here to help with advice, reliable trees and work on the ground.  What follows is a bit of an introduction and why we’re doing what we’re doing.  All photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

sweet cherries, laden with flower buds, they’re for sale.

Loburn Trees is about growing ornamental, shelter and hardy fruit trees with a bit more size to them than your regular garden

centre plants.  Loburn Trees is also about having smaller root systems supporting trees that are already toughened up.  That makes planting them easier and it improves survival in the long run.  That’s because our soils are difficult.  Around here it is either free-draining gravel or a heavy silt loam (Mairaki silt loam) locally known as clay, but fortunately it isn’t really clay.  All the same, when  winter is upon us Mairaki silt loam can have more in common with a quaking bog than the productive farmland, garden or landscaped section that most of us would like it to be.

Mairaki silt loam – 1 spades worth of topsoil

Mairaki silt loam is a heavy soil up to 5m thick with only a single spade spit worth of topsoil.  Mairaki silt loam doesn’t drain downward very well and that’s not helped by the iron-pan at two spade spits deep, you can tell there are drainage problems because the soil above and below the iron pan, but especially above it, is mottled with red iron and blue-grey gley.  That zone is pretty much dead and while deep ripping helps, the sub-soil still won’t let water away, excess water pools at the lowest parts of the rip lines and in any holes dug deeper than the topsoil.  It takes a long time for this water to then escape and any plant roots in the waterlogged zone rot, this is where Loburn Trees’ tall trees in root-control bags come in.

Mairaki silt loam – mottled subsoil from poor drainage with red iron nodules.

In the beginning: a group of 2m tall larch in root control bags

Loburn Trees uses geotextile planter bags that let fine roots through to feed outside the bag. As the roots grow, the roots are strangled by the fabric and new roots form to replace the strangled roots, this prevents the trees becoming root-bound with spiralling roots so common in conventional planter bags of all sizes. It also means there are no large injuries to the roots at planting time.  At Loburn Trees the geotextile bags are filled to between 20 and 30cm keeping the root system in the topsoil.  Finally most bags are filled with locally sourced topsoil rather than the conventional bark based potting mix.  We recommend that large plants in bark and peat potting mixes are either only planted on well-drained sites or have the potting mix shaken off to plant the trees as bare-rooted stock.

Plants in regular potting mix go into bins with bark – Deodar cedar in foreground.

However we do have some trees in bags made of knitted shadecloth using bark based potting mix, as this will be better for clients on free-draining soil (gravel, sand and recent river silt).

roots on a quince and a birch grown in a root control bag with potting mix.

During the growing season our trees do it hard for water, except when nature provides in excess.  Plants are hand watered just enough to keep them alive during dry spells, this keeps them tough and ensures a good root system.  Our ornamental trees are grown for height rather than bushy width and with that height comes a slenderness that allows the trees to flex in Canterbury’s nor-west gales.  Of course they are still tall trees so they do need to be staked for a few years.

If you’re on a new section out here, then chances are you don’t have much shelter.  Tall but thin trees are easier to stabilise against the wind and most of the trees we have tolerate the howling norwesters, the snow laden southerlies and soil that’s  a bit damp in winter and rock hard in summer.  Loburn Trees’ tall trees provide a quick established look.  But let me be clear, Loburn Trees’ tall trees are not suited to being used for boundary shelter, they are specimen, fruit and landscape trees.  Shelter is best grown with patience although we can help you in choosing the right shelter tree for your site, and arrange purchase and planting if that is your preference.

Trees are grown in open ground beds for a start, and then moved to the root-control bags for one or more seasons to toughen up.  This winter I’ll be going through groups of scarlet oak, fastigate oak, sugar maple, silver maple, pin oak, European beech, apples and plums suited to spray free production.  They will all be offered for sale on the website as bare-rooted plants while we work through getting them bagged and secure (some are approaching 6m in height).

open ground trees: L – R scarlet oak, fastigate oak, silver maple and pin oak.

Finally, if you have any queries or are interested in species that aren’t listed, please make contact I may well have what you want or can get it in wholesale.

Happy planting,

Graeme