Tree planting 2015 YTD

We are way behind on planting this year. Our focus has been on infrastructure, adding to the berries and cleaning up

It seems like the weather has been 3-4 weeks behind average: a late frost, dry April and now a wet May. So long as we don't have a dry, hot summer, we should be fine to plant seedlings into June (if we time it between the rains.)

I learned a lot from last year, and we can apply it going forward. Here's a red oak I planted by acorn last year:

Taken in early May, this was planted in the south section in April, 2014, in some "empty" space among the walnuts.

So far this year, we planted 30 bur oak acorns and a couple of apple, apricot and hazelnuts trees.

2014 acorn harvest has started

For the past couple of weekends I've picked about 100 swamp white oak acorns and planted 60. Of the three oaks only one is producing a moderate number of acorns. Not much from the other two.

Below: swamp white oak, black oak, red oak and four bur oak acorns on top.

The white and red oaks have plenty more acorns to fall from the tree and I fully expect to gather more. Last year produced very few red oak acorns and this year it seems that the black oaks are the species that aren't yielding much.

A camera shy red squirrel was stuffing his cheeks while I picked up the 150 or so red oak acorns last night after work. Maybe his descendents will be nibbling acorns from one of the seedlings that will sprout up from this harvest (20+ years from now.) Another squirrel would take a few bites from an acorn and drop the remnants on me while I picked from the ground. After the second acorn to wiz by my ear, I decided this was enough for today.

I floated off the bad acorns and bagged the good ones into ziplock baggies with peat moss. I have about a couple hundred feet to finish off the row to plant the white oak this fall and what I don't plant this fall will be left in the spare fridge to plant in the spring with the red, black and bur oaks.

These will fill in nicely where we lose a seedling this winter.