As usual, craziness is ensuing at the Renegade household but I thought I would take a moment to do an update on the trees I started earlier this year.

First of all, how did you like the clickbait thumbnail? There's nothing like incompetently killing trees to make you want to look. Am I right?

Ok, now on to more serious matters. 😀

After planting the Ohio buckeye and oak acorns, that I stratified over the winter and then sprouted, I still had to wait for awhile for them to come up. It took between 1-2 weeks for the buckeyes to poke up though the soil and the acorns were even longer at around 2-3 weeks. This made me worried that they might not be germinating properly but in the end almost all of the acorns and buckeyes that I planted survived.

One thing I learned during this waiting period is that you don't really need to plant these extremely large seeds all that deep in the soil. While they have the ability to push their stem way up through an inch or more of soil they also are really good at sending their tap root straight down to find water. It seemed that the seeds I planted deeper just took longer to finally push their stem up to the surface but there was no added benefit. I think, in the future I will only cover them with 1/4" of soil or so rather than the 1" that was often recommended.

I have the trees sheltered under the deck so that they get partial sun rather than full sun. Small trees generally can tolerate shade better than large trees because in nature they tend to be growing under other trees.

Most of the Ohio buckeyes are doing well.

I wonder if I collected two different types of acorns. Note how the lighter colored oaks in the clear container also have leaves with a more jagged appearance.

This buckeye is almost a foot tall already.

So while the germination rate was probably about 50%, the ones that did germinate did quite well. I ended up with 16 buckeyes and 20 oaks. There were a few problem trees though. Some of the buckeyes started to grow and then lost all the pigment in their leaves but not in the stems. I have seen this sort of thing once before in some bean plants and I have no idea what it is from. If anyone can identify this disease or nutrient deficiency I would definitely appreciate the information.

Left: A walnut seedling with damaged leaves. Right: Buckeye that lacked leaf pigment.

I also had some heartnut and walnut seeds that I tried to sprout but I didn't stratify them properly and out of 10 seeds only one walnut sprouted and then it was damaged. I am not sure how or why but it caused the ends and sides of the leaves to curl. I am still hoping that it will make it.

The heartnuts I find fascinating. They are in the same family as walnuts except that they produce a heart shaped nut and are extremely cold hardy. They are definitely something that I want to try again as there are not a lot of options for trees in our cold climate.

The last thing I want to talk about are the elm trees. I decided to start a few more elms this year and even stopped by the Amazing Furry Elm to collect some seeds. I am going to see how they sprout on some wet paper towel and then plant some in the remaining pots at the first sign of sprouting.

Incredibly though, I might not have had to bother as a nearby elm tree seems to have seeded itself in some of the pots that I had acorns or buckeyes in. Especially in the pots where the oaks of buckeyes didn't make it.

The Amazing Elm last fall and this spring. We had a very dry spring this year and I don't think that it leafed out as well as it had the previous year.

Collecting and sprouting elm seeds and a few maple seeds on paper towel

Free loading elm seedlings that planted themselves in my pots!

You might be wondering what I plan to do with these trees. I plan to pot them up and then at some point plant most of them on my property or give them away. More importantly though, it allows me to experiment with these different trees and learn to stratify, plant and care for them properly before we are ready to do this on a mass scale at our property. We plan to direct seed hundreds, if not thousands, of trees on our land and having some experience and confidence starting and caring for these trees will mean having to invest less time later on.

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