Tried a bunch of chestnuts planted in non-buried buckets of sand again. Didn't work again. Gotta bury them.
I had pretty good success starting Bur Oaks in pots.
1.) Selected good acorns off the ground and started them in pots - outside, so they would be subjected to some freezing temperatures.
2.) Brought them into the basement around the end of January. Watered the pots and started them with two cheap fluorescent tube grow lights. Put the lights on one of those simple mechanical timers.
3.) I think I had a 100% emergence rate(?). They grew very fast in that warm environment. I took the pots outside around mid-April, which is after our date for bitter cold.
4.) They still grew very fast during the late spring. A few grew so fast that they were a little spindly and I had to stake them up.
5.) Moved them into partial shade around late June, because the direct sun was baking the soil in the pots.
6.) Transplanted them to our farm in the late fall.
[I can't tell you how well they did after that. We had a drought at the farm most of the next year and the only things growing in some areas were in my little drip irrigation circles around my oaks. The d*mn pocket gophers went to the moist soil with various roots in the vicinity and killed every single oak.]
Lessons: This was not much work, but it was strictly a small-scale operation. I only did 10-12 trees, which was limited by my space availability in the basement.
I also should have put mulch in the pots during May. Just never thought of that, since my simple brain had only been conditioned to put mulch on the ground.
Please keep posting your tree projects. I live in an area with tough conditions for trees, so I am always happy to learn the good lessons (and bad lessons) from others.
