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Reproducing Healthy Silver Maples
Hello Group,
If anyone knows how to reproduce silver maple or maple trees period, could you lend some of your expertise? Here's my story guys.......... Last spring, I decided to grow sliver maple trees from the seeds that are produced from it's mother tree in my backyard. The seeds germinated quickly and within a week or two I had new saplings (I think that's what you call baby trees). However, after a few months they started dying off. Out of a total of 20 saplings, 5 survived long enough to be planted in the ground before winter. It is spring again and the planted trees are dead. I am assuming I did not water enough and/or the soil was not deep enough in their individual containers. If I get a good system going, I plan to reproduce as many as 50-100 trees. I am a beginner so any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Priscilla Deverell Covington, Tennessee |
#2
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You might want to look at this web page:
http://forestry.about.com/library/si...silacesacc.htm Priscilla Deverell wrote: Hello Group, If anyone knows how to reproduce silver maple or maple trees period, could you lend some of your expertise? Here's my story guys.......... Last spring, I decided to grow sliver maple trees from the seeds that are produced from it's mother tree in my backyard. The seeds germinated quickly and within a week or two I had new saplings (I think that's what you call baby trees). However, after a few months they started dying off. Out of a total of 20 saplings, 5 survived long enough to be planted in the ground before winter. It is spring again and the planted trees are dead. I am assuming I did not water enough and/or the soil was not deep enough in their individual containers. If I get a good system going, I plan to reproduce as many as 50-100 trees. I am a beginner so any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Priscilla Deverell Covington, Tennessee |
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In article .net,
Priscilla Deverell wrote: If anyone knows how to reproduce silver maple or maple trees period, could you lend some of your expertise? Here's my story guys.......... Last spring, I decided to grow sliver maple trees from the seeds that are produced from it's mother tree in my backyard. The seeds germinated quickly and within a week or two I had new saplings (I think that's what you call baby trees). However, after a few months they started dying off. Out of a total of 20 saplings, 5 survived long enough to be planted in the ground before winter. It is spring again and the planted trees are dead. I am assuming I did not water enough and/or the soil was not deep enough in their individual containers. If I get a good system going, I plan to reproduce as many as 50-100 trees. I am a beginner so any help would be appreciated. I'd call these baby trees seedlings rather than saplings. As you've noticed, silver maple seeds germinate readily when fresh. The tree across the street from me tries to turn my garden into forest every year! I'd recommend that rather using pots, you plant directly in the ground. Plant lots more than you need, so you can select the best of the survivors in a year or two. The one catch is that you have to dig them up and replant them annually to keep the roots compact. You may need to prune off a tap root. Left to themselves, trees will spread their roots widely, which means that they are hard to transplant successfully if they haven't been root pruned annually. IIRC, root pruning and replanting is best done in very early spring but this varies with climate. You can root prune with a sharp spade -- you don't need to work over each root system in detail. Just cut out the seedling in a block of soil and let it drop back into the hole, but transplant them further apart when necessary. The basic idea is to keep growing fine feeder roots close to the trunk, so the tree can be transplanted with a relatively small ball of soil. When replanting always prune rather than bend roots. Circling roots can strangle a tree years later when they become large. This is one problem with growing in pots, and there are special "root trainer" pots for tree seedlings that divert roots downward and reduce circling. It's easier to take care of the seedlings in a nursery bed than in pots. In nature, the seedlings would grow in soil kept cool and moist, with minimal abrupt temperature and moisture changes, under a heavy mulch of leaf mold and dead leaves. In pots they get just the opposite. Plant in good loose soil with lots of organic matter and mulch heavily, especially in fall. This will keep soil conditions steady and prevent root damage and drying from freeze and thaw cycles in winter. I hope this "backyard scale" advice helps. Growing trees from seed is very gratifying. It's a pleasure to see a substantial tree that wouldn't have existed without you, and which will continue to provide beauty and shelter long after we're all dead. It's also particularly good to grow native trees from seed. Too many trees people plant are non-native species, often clonally propagated, which may not only be more susceptible to new diseases and pests because of lack of genetic diversity, but can become pest species themselves, as Norway maples have become here in southern Ontario. |
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