Tapping sugars and silvers

[tonka]

How many of you guys tap sugar and silver maples on tubing? Do you worry about your silvers budding out before the sugars?

[western mainer]

Not in my bush it ends the same time

[maple flats]

I tap mostly sugars around the sugarhouse but there out of what was 225 taps for 2018 48 were reds and 2 were silvers. They do not end at the same time as the sugars for me. Last year the sugars went 21 days past the reds and silvers, this year they went 12 days past the reds and silvers. I have most laterals all sugars or all reds & Silvers, that way when the soft maples need to be removed, I just cut that lateral and plug the part going to the saddle. I have 2 exceptions, on one lateral it is all sugars on 3/16 except 1 large 2 tap tree. For that I pull those taps and plug them so the vacuum does not leak. On the other I have 2 softs on another 3/16, There I do the same, either pull the tap and cap it or clip the drop and plug it.
In my lease there are no soft maples, only sugars so there I have no problem.

[Ultimatetreehugger]

I tap everything on one and have seen no issues with bad sap.

[tonka]

So it seems odds are one will not have to worry about having to pull taps early on soft maples due to budding out before hard maples.

I currently have all sugar maples tapped, there are silver maples that can be tied into the tubing easily, would be an easier way to get more taps out and produce more syrup.

[Sunday Rock Maple]

One third of our taps are young soft maples. Without question they impact the length of our season but overall we have more syrup with them then we would if we didn't tap them.

[Russell Lampron]

Most of my trees are red maples and I have never made buddy syrup. My season is just as long as the season is for the guys that have all sugars around me. The reds just seem to stop running at the end. I have read here that the silvers bud earlier than the reds and sugars so keep an eye on them if you do decide to tap them. There are a lot of guys that make syrup with silvers.

[Tweegs]

I tap both sugar and silvers on the same lines.
First, realize that the silvers will flower.
This often looks like they are budding out well ahead of the sugars, but I haven’t yet had buddy sap or off flavor syrup during this period.
Normally, I pull all taps at the same time.

Also, I have a single conductor line at the releaser. Main lines tee off from this conductor out in the woods.
It just worked out for me that all of my silvers are on 2 main lines, sugars are on 4 others.
Each main line has a ball valve.

If things were to get really dicey, I can shut off the vacuum to the silvers and maintain it to the sugars.
You can always set up your woods with the ability to isolate the silvers if you’re worried about it.

The ball valves in my woods are really only there to help find vacuum leaks quickly.

[BAP]

I have always tapped both soft and sugar maples over the last 40+ years I have been sugaring. Yes, there is a chance of the soft maples budding out enough to create buddy syrup, but I have found that usually the sugar maples are only behind by a very few days. I have more variation in sugar lots depending on how they face than in the species or trees. The benefits of the extra sap throughout the season outweigh the little lost sap at the end in my experience. There are days that the soft maples will run. when the sugars will not thaw out enough to do so. So in the end it all balances out.

[tonka]

I think I might tap some silvers next spring. I'm hesitant on tapping silvers because it seems like everyone loves my syrup, I hear it's the best they've ever had so it's kind 9f on the lines of "why fix what ain't broken" situation.

I can easily incorporate a bunch of silvers in to my mainline since the silvers are scattered in amongst the sugars I have tapped already. Thanks for all your experience!