Mesa Seed & StartWhy we grow trees in tall pots
A desert tree spends its first year building a taproot, not a canopy. In a standard squat nursery can that root hits the bottom in about six weeks and starts to circle. A circled taproot never straightens, and the tree that looks fine at the nursery blows over in its fifth monsoon.
We switched to fourteen-inch tree pots three seasons ago. They are awkward to carry and tip over in the wind unless they are racked, so we built racks from scrap cattle panel. Losses at transplant went from roughly one in five to one in twenty.
If you buy a palo verde or mesquite anywhere, slide it out of the pot before paying. If the root is wound around the bottom like a spring, put it back.