If I only live to be one-hundred-and-three

[tomc]

A gardening elf just brought me four seedling red-leaf Japan maples.

As long as I live to the ripe old age of 103, they might get styled and in a tray...

[kdodds]

LOL, yeah, hear ya, but there's a particular satisfaction to be had when growing your own from seed. Why not pot them up in mesh pots and put them in the ground for a few years?

[tomc]

Oh I expect to put these puppies back in beds next spring. First I gotta make the beds...

[Auballagh]

Will those maples grow well in the ground - over a slab?
I've got a Live Oak down in a bed, over a slab. The slab definitely facilitates a radial-shaped root spread. And, the thing is putting on wood a LOT faster than if I had kept it in a grow-out pot.

[tomc]

*If* I ever win the lotto, I'm gonna build a specific use raised masonry bed with most of its hight filled in with crushed stone, a layer of slate and space for 6-8 inches of soil for freshly coppiced trees.

As Auballagh notes there is an interim space bigger than any pot is going to provide, but shallower than bed planting that could well move an outdoors tree along better-faster than either pot or bed does now.

Do I know this? No. But I'm willing to side with his premis.