Growing trees in pots on a concrete yard

Cumquats self-seeded basil and a mulberry tree

We grow lots of trees in pots as we do not have enough space in our backyard. More importantly, we are renting and it is hard to justify planting fruit trees in the ground when we might move on at some point.

There are over 25 different species of fruit trees on our rented property, most of them in pots. A tree will grow to the size of its root system. If it's in a pot, the tree will dwarf. Our trees grow in pots about 30-50 cm diameter which are placed in a styrofoam box. The box acts as a saucer - holding water. There is a small hole on the side of box about 5 cm above bottom creating a water well. Excess water after heavy rain or during watering will overflow and the tree does not get waterlogged . We use a layer of wood chips at the bottom of the box and around the pot. After a while, woodchips decompose and when the tree roots start to come out of the pot they get extra room and nutrition to grow. Most importantly, styrofoam and woodchips provide shade for the pots from sunshine and high ambient  temperature and keep the root system cool. Otherwise roots would be “cooked” with direct sunshine falling on black pots which makes them very hot.
In this way trees are not water or heat stressed and grow tremendously.

We harvest a lot of figs, mulberries, cumquats, lemons and curry tree berries. Trees change our concrete yard into a green oasis.