Culling by tapping

[Kirk]

In locations where there are tons of maple saplings very close to each other, has anyone tapped the saplings before culling? Say there are 10 trees between 2" and 4" in a ten foot diameter area - you want to remove most of them. Could you tap all ten for a few years before culling? How long could you tap a 2" diameter tree for? Would it die after the first year you tapped it? Is the sap yield as high on a 2" tree as a 10" tree? Thanks.

[markcasper]

No the sap yield is probably only 10-15% on a 3" tree or less. I have did this, but only notice a few dead during the short time I did it. You have to keep in mind the extreme cost of drops for that many....you reach the law of diminishing returns quickly.

[PerryW]

I had two 10" maples that needed to be cut. I put about 10 taps in each one. They still never ran worth a ****. I would still get more sap from one of my good-tree taps than 10 taps in a 10" woods tree.

[Russell Lampron]

Even if they are culls I usually don't tap anything smaller than 4". With vacuum it is surprising to see how much sap you get from those small trees. Tapping wont kill them. I have some that are in the 4" range that have been tapped 5 or 6 times and are still alive.

[GeneralStark]

I am slowly expanding vacuum tubing into an area of many 3-12" sugar maples that are in some areas very closely spaced. I have been doing an initial thinning to make it easier to get around and remove the dead and extremely spindly stunted maples. Then I mark the crop trees for a reasonable spacing with forestry tape and setup the mainlines and tubing for eventual crop tree tapping. But, even if the crop tree is over 10" (my minimal tapping size) I will not tap until final thinning has occurred(5-10 years). In the meantime I am tapping the cull trees and slowly thinning them for firewood or fungus food. So. the crop trees are left alone for several years as the culls are tapped and slowly thinned.

3-4" is the smallest cull tree I tap. Generally smaller than that if healthy gets left for regen, or if dead gets cut. If several are really tightly spaced I may cut a few.

[markcasper]

Theres certainly nothing wrong with that strategy, I have did the same on small areas. You will have to decide the risk to reward ratios though. Consider the amount of extra drops, spouts, etc and the labor to install and repair when the trees do finally get cut. Another thing to consider is how much the crop trees will get set back while doing this. If your spending .35 for a cv, .20 for a stubby, .20 for tubing drop, .25 for T, .25 for extra mainline saddles per tap =$1.25 per tap. Crop tree set back = hard to gauge. There should be a net profit after this, or else it'd be cheaper to just remove them initially. My 2 cents.

[Russell Lampron]

I have a lateral that has 5 red maples on it. 4 of them are growing out of 1 root ball and the other has skidder rash. The largest one is about 10" in diameter the smallest about 5". I consider all of them culls. I have been tapping them for 4 years now and think that it was well worth the expense for the saddle, drops and tubing. Every time that I check that lateral it is flowing sap when the vacuum is on. Annual cost $1.75 for C/V adapters. Initial cost hard to calculate but probably in the range of a quart of syrup.

[PerryW]

Theres certainly nothing wrong with that strategy, I have did the same on small areas. You will have to decide the risk to reward ratios though. Consider the amount of extra drops, spouts, etc and the labor to install and repair when the trees do finally get cut. Another thing to consider is how much the crop trees will get set back while doing this. If your spending .35 for a cv, .20 for a stubby, .20 for tubing drop, .25 for T, .25 for extra mainline saddles per tap =$1.25 per tap. Crop tree set back = hard to gauge. There should be a net profit after this, or else it'd be cheaper to just remove them initially. My 2 cents.

Agreed. If those small diameter cull trees are next to 10" or larger MAPLE trees, I would cut them immediately to help invigorate the bigger maples.

[markcasper]

I actually had enough sap flowing on Thursday that I performed sugar tests on about 75 trees ranging from 2-7". I had been thinning this area taking out the obvious crap over the last 8 years or so. It was stunning to see a few trees testing well below 1%, on the contrary I found some really sweet ones that definately will be staying. I am going to clip a few of them off now that are crowded, the rest I am contmeplating tapping the bad ones, installing them when I string out new lines. If I look at them and decide they will be a major hindrance to the super sweet trees in the next 5 year, they are gone. If the hindrance won't be too bad until 10 years out, I'll probably keep them and tap the culls.

I ran into two spots where two - 2" diameter trees tested almost 4%, while the 5" diameter trees about 6 feet away tested only 1.5%. I would have cut the smaller ones down if I wouldn't have sugar tested, what to do in a situation like this??????

[Russell Lampron]

I actually had enough sap flowing on Thursday that I performed sugar tests on about 75 trees ranging from 2-7". I had been thinning this area taking out the obvious crap over the last 8 years or so. It was stunning to see a few trees testing well below 1%, on the contrary I found some really sweet ones that definately will be staying. I am going to clip a few of them off now that are crowded, the rest I am contmeplating tapping the bad ones, installing them when I string out new lines. If I look at them and decide they will be a major hindrance to the super sweet trees in the next 5 year, they are gone. If the hindrance won't be too bad until 10 years out, I'll probably keep them and tap the culls.

I ran into two spots where two - 2" diameter trees tested almost 4%, while the 5" diameter trees about 6 feet away tested only 1.5%. I would have cut the smaller ones down if I wouldn't have sugar tested, what to do in a situation like this??????

I would do what ever it takes to save the 2" trees. If it means cutting the 5" trees now, do it. If you can tap the 5" trees for a couple of years then cut them do that.

[GeneralStark]

Agreed. If those small diameter cull trees are next to 10" or larger MAPLE trees, I would cut them immediately to help invigorate the bigger maples.

True. During the initial thinning I generally focus around the obvious larger crop trees to make some room for them to grow into and get more sun.

The costs of the extra pipeline, tubing and fittings seems like it can be balanced out by the production increase by tapping these smaller trees. They seem to give good amounts of sap and the sugar content can be quite high. I don't use CV's and stubbies and instead use CDL seasonal "smar tspouts" at $.17, which makes my drop and spout cost $.69/tap. Some more tubing for laterals and the saddle so maybe 4-5$ per lateral. I'm already tapping these areas as there are larger trees mixed in and my wet/dry mains aren't far. In my situation it makes sense, though it may not make sense for everyone to tap smaller trees.

The majority of sugarmakers' woods I have walked seem to tap lots of smaller trees (5-10") so it must make sense to most.

[markcasper]

I checked a whole pile of smaller trees today and have some questions. Everything was in the 2-7 inch. I probably did at least 300. Froze real hard the past 2 nights and took the oppurtunity to do this. I ran into a few larger trees that had full blown leaves coming on, small, but leaves were there. Those few didn't run that much and the test was below 1%. Are those trees so far advanced that the sugar test would be way, way off compared to if they did not have leafs on?

I was quite disappointed at the number of beautiful nice shaped trees that I had previously thinned around since 1998 and the sugar test was way bad. On the flip side, I was running into an equal amount of crappy trees, forked trees, doubled at the bottom, etc that were some of the highest testing ones out there. Its quite disappointing, to think I would have cut those down first had I not sugar tested. So do I cut the real good, picture perfect, low test trees down and focus on the releasing the crappy high test ones that will probably not last too long because of forking, cankers, etc? This is a tough call to make.

The sugar range of everything I tested was between .7% to 2.9%, one tree made 3%. I am thinking if this were done during a normal sap season, the sugar would be 1 to 1.5% higher across the board.

I ran into 2 clumps of red maple next to some nice sugar maple and in both cases the reds were a whole percent higher than the sugars. The clumps had about 3 stems each. It will feel pretty silly cutting the sugars down to emphasize the reds. About 5% of the trees I tested were reds, only about half of the reds were running though.

One last question, what works good for permanantly marking these trees %? I used black marker and a little white spray paint, (all I had) and one ribbon to mark those over 1.5% and 2 ribbons for anything over 2%. I have seen alum, tags somewhere? These trees need to be marked for the long term, I'm not doing it again.