Growing Oaks from Acorns

[Boone44]

I planted some white oak acorns in a chicken pen one year, minus the chickens. They grew 6ft in the first year. Bases were about width of your finger. The naturally fertilized soil really made them grow fast. I left 1 in the pen and it was about 15 foot in 4 years and full of acorns. All others planted around my property were still only about 3-4 foot tall.

[Cstat_hunter]

Lot of very helpful info on this thread. To those who know at what size/age/time of year do yall plant the trees, you grew from seedlings? Also any suggestions about what kind of oaks do best in sandy loam soil?

[timoub007]

awesome post.
what are all you guys doing after planting in the "wild"?
do you water, use tubes , what kind of cages, or do you just let nature decide?

thanks for all the info. learning a lot!

I have gone to what I consider 'great lengths' to keep any trees I have planted alive at my place in Kimble County. I do not have the exact survival ratio but I think that it is around 30%. I do not think that any of the trees I have bought from Mossy Oak Nativ Nurseries have survived and I have tried several years.

What I have done to give my trees a fighting chance is:

First select a planting sight that is not in the wide open. I try to put afternoon shade on the saplings.

I also have used several different types of tree tubes. The jury is still out on how much these have helped. I will say that it is a waste of time and money to use ones that ship flat and you have to roll into a tubular shape. I tried these mainly because they were a light blue color which the marketing said is good for the trees. Well when they won't maintain their shape, what good are they no matter what color they are?

I stake the tubes. I have tried several different types of stakes from bamboo to fiberglass rods to tee posts and finally I cut pieces of rebar to the length I wanted which turned out to be the most economical.

Then you have to put a cage around the tree and tube. Cattle panel is best but expensive. When in ran out of the ones I had on hand I shopped for something more economical. I settled on some welded wire that comes in long rolls from Tractor Supply but I do not recall the name or gauge. I cut A LOT of 10 foot sections and wrapped them around the saplings. These had to be staked too. I thought that they were great until that next September rolled around. I found a great buck had pulled one off with his antlers and tied himself to a cedar sapling, stinking and dead. So I spent the next several hours pulling all of those cages off my trees to save the deer and lost a year's planting. It worked though and we did not lose anymore deer to that cause. Had a game camera pic of our best up and comer with a twisted cage on his head though. Freaked my hunting partner out until we found a pic a few days later without the cage.
So use a sturdy cage because in my experience the deer are going to mess with them. May be due to the fact that I am planting pecans too.

Now, once I had the trees protected I was worried about them dying from lack of moisture out in the west central Texas hill country. I only make the trip every three to four weeks so I cannot rely on hand watering to keep them alive. I am fortunate that I have access to an almost endless supply of the 300+ gallon poly tote bins in my line of work. So I started putting watering systems on my trees. I use a hose end digital timer, like an Orbit brand, and poly tubing. I ran 1/2" trunk lines from the timer and branched off with the 1/4" tubing to a sapling. I put 3-5 trees on each tote & timer. Gravity is what fed the system so you have to lay it out with the slope in mind. Overall this has worked very well.
I bought a gasoline powered 2" clear water pump from Harbour Freight and fill a spare tote from my well. I then drag it on a trailer and use the same pump to pump it in to the totes set around my property. It takes less than 10 minutes to fill and another 10 to empty the towed tote. It takes me longer to drive from the well to the trees than it does to empty the towed tote. I try to stagger my filling so I don't have a ton of them empty all at the same time.

So it is a labor of love for me. I want big, mature pecan trees on my property some day. I call them my vertical food plot since it does not rain enough to grow good crops consistently out there without real irrigation. I also hope to get some turkeys roosting in them eventually. Long term project with long term goals. Gotta start somewhere though and every winter that I do not plant more is one more year I will not have big, mature trees in the future.

Plant as soon as your saplings go dormant for the winter (loose their leaves) up to the time whenever they start to bud out in the spring. That's the best times to plant. I'll start this weekend with my saplings I potted last winter.

Tim

[locolobo]

Yeah cool thread I'm trying to follow. Get it back up there!

[texansfan]

I got 200 acorns from a tree my uncle planted in his front yard 35 years ago
And I'm going to grab another 200 from a row of live oaks I see in this park.

[Dirtymike]

One of my friends that has a tree farm has over planted this year, or undersold last year....

Would there be an interest in seedling trees for cheap? Live oak, red oak, and few white oak. He said he will know numbers available in spring. He did not sell off as many of his larger ones last year so thinks he wont have room.

[BCL]

in for pricing on Dirtymike's tree farm friends trees & info

thanks.

[TxAg]

One of my friends that has a tree farm has over planted this year, or undersold last year....

Would there be an interest in seedling trees for cheap? Live oak, red oak, and few white oak. He said he will know numbers available in spring. He did not sell off as many of his larger ones last year so thinks he wont have room.

I would be interested in some white oak

[batmaninja]

Do yall think there is any issues trying to take oaks from East Texas and plant them in the Hill Country?

[J&M Hamilton10]

Do yall think there is any issues trying to take oaks from East Texas and plant them in the Hill Country?

What kind of soil? Better off with chinkapin oak or Texas red oak for the hill country

[J&M Hamilton10]

One of my friends that has a tree farm has over planted this year, or undersold last year....

Would there be an interest in seedling trees for cheap? Live oak, red oak, and few white oak. He said he will know numbers available in spring. He did not sell off as many of his larger ones last year so thinks he wont have room.

I would be

[timoub007]

An update on cost effective cage material...

I finished up my hunting early this season so I got a jump on my planting Thanksgiving weekend and several weekends since. If you read my post above (#138) you'll get an idea of why I need to cage my trees and recommend others do the same. I had about 35-40 trees to plant this year and wanted a sturdy but cheaper option for cages. I called around a lot of local farm & ranch and hardware stores and came to a conclusion. The welded wire rebar mesh (remesh) comes in 20'*8' panels. With an abrasive blade on my circular saw I easily cut each panel in to four 10'*4' sections. These are perfect to wrap around a tree. I got them for about $36 each at z local hardware store. After cutting each panel into four sections I have an expense of about $10 per tree cage. These are stiff and sturdy. A few concrete ties or wraps of bailing wire makes them maintain a circle shape and secures them to a couple of stakes. For stakes I bought 20' pieces of 1/2" rebar and used the saw abrasive blade to cut them in to 5 foot lengths. I drive them 12"-24" in the ground on at least two opposite sides.

For good measure I also got a bag of hair clippings from my barber. I added a handful at the base of each tree to help keep curious deer away for a while.


I should have more pecan saplings than I can plant this year. I will dig them out of my yard and put them in planter bags. If there is some interest I may sell some for $5-10 to recover the cost of the bags and soil (each bag will be about 4-5 gallons, tall for the long root of the pecan). Let me know if there is some interest and I will get a good count in the next few weeks. I typically dig these in the winter, keep them in pots/buckets/bags for a growing season and plant late fall or the following winter. I have had a high success rate with these hand dug saplings from my yard growing at my place near Junction as opposed to poor results from trees I have purchased from several different sources.

Tim

[IkemanTX]

I am trying in-ground knit fabric pots from RootMaker this year. I bought 20, but they sent 21 by accident. Heck ya! I have an assortment of chinkapin oaks, post oaks, and sawtooth oaks. I also have 3 acorns I smuggled back from the US cemetery/memorial at Normandy beach. I figured it would be cool to have their progeny if those actually make it.

I don’t know yet if the 8”X15” net pots I got will be ready after a single season, or if it will require a second one.

https://myrootmaker.com/collections/knit-fabric-containers/products/knit-fabric-8

I had previously tried superoots airpots, but they require far too frequent watering. One missed day in 100 degree temps and your trees lose half their root mass to being sun scalded and dried out.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[toledo]

The foks that had trouble with Mossy Oak Nativ Nursery trees, any idea what the problem was? Im waiting on an order now of 100 total White, Nuttall, and Willow Oak. They were the cheapest I could find that aren't bare root. I think I have adequate soil moisture for them. Theyre all going in either Navasota river bottom slick topsoil/clay or sandy loam wet weather drain areas in Brazos and Burleson county.

[BCL]

I planted 12 last year from Native Nursery and so far they have taken off well. I used a tree tube and "t" post then mulched around them and watered as often as I could when it did not rain on them.