markcasper
05-04-2012, 05:34 PM
I posted a few weeks ago and should have started its own thread. Any opinions or ideas are appreciated. Thanks.
I was hoping for a Dr. Perkins response in regard to these situations.
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? In other words...what I am trying to ask, was it too late to be comparing trees with small leaves, compared to say a neighboring tree with no leaves. Did I not get a good represenative comparison compared to doing this in the winter or normal sap season? Once the leaves hit, does the sap sugar just completely bottom in those trees compared to a neighbor with little or any leaf start? And therefore would be unfair to those leafing out trees?
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.
I was hoping for a Dr. Perkins response in regard to these situations.
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? In other words...what I am trying to ask, was it too late to be comparing trees with small leaves, compared to say a neighboring tree with no leaves. Did I not get a good represenative comparison compared to doing this in the winter or normal sap season? Once the leaves hit, does the sap sugar just completely bottom in those trees compared to a neighbor with little or any leaf start? And therefore would be unfair to those leafing out trees?
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.