Soft maple sugar content

[snakes14009]

So i hear various information about sugar content with red maples. It my first year tapping reds and one silver. Next year i probably wont waste the tap on the silver it has not given much sap at all. All my taps are 5/16 spiles into 5/16 tubing that go into buckets with lids. This past weekend i bought a sap hydrometer so i could see what my sugar content is from tree to tree and species to species. All of my reds in the woods produced about half what the sugar maples did. With reds giving 1.8% and sugars about 2.0-2.3% but i have a red in my yard that gave 3.5%. So my question is do trees that produce higher or lower sugar content tend to do the same year over year. I know that the sugar % each year is different due to many factors but do certain trees tend to follow a pattern being better or worse producers year over year?

[raptorfan85]

Yes you can have "sweet" trees. I have one large red in my front yard that gets full sun and is usually around 3% sap while all my woods Reds see usually around 1.5. same goes for sugars. Some trees are sweeter than others.

[littleTapper]

Silvers can be a bit "odd". Many of mine don't run well on buckets, sometimes. Sometimes they run like mad. Some yard silvers I tap will overflow a 5g bucket before you can blink or give you nothing on what should be a perfect day. But, all silvers I've put on vac run really well - they'll keep going as the temperature drops each day where ones on buckets tend to stop when temp starts to drop. Last year I pulled 18g of sap per tap. Vac changes them dramatically. Sugar content has varied but I'm always near 2% but one late batch several years ago was >4% was 19.x:1 IIRC (yeah, I was surprised).

[Ultimatetreehugger]

Yes, it all depends on light exposure and soil quality.

[Michael Greer]

I'll agree with littleTapper. The biggest difference between species isn't sugar content, but reliability. Sugar Maples do the daily cycle thing with textbook precision, while the Silvers may or may not run depending on who-knows-what. Both Reds and Silvers can have great sugar content but can be funny about giving it up. The Sugar Maple is truly a gift.

[Daveg]

Yes, some trees have what it takes to produce more sugar than others. The book "Sweet Maple", 1993, describes cattle, 4-wheelers, fungi, snowmobiles, road salt, poor thinning, deer, mice, porcupines, and 8 insects as things that can hurt a sugarbush. They also describe "the 10% tree", located in "north-central Vermont (they tried to clone it). A researcher kept records of sugar output of 29 trees for 25 years, measured continuously throughout the tapping seasons and discovered that not only is the sugar content high for certain trees but also the sap volume, with the two going hand-in-hand.

[lyford]

Hey Dave, who is the author of that book?

[snakes14009]

Well I just collected again this evening and we got about 20 gallons from 35 taps. And the warm weather is supposed to continue till Friday evening. So we should have a decent amount to boil. Overall sugar was 2.3% which I am happy not that I could do a thing about it if was 1%. But that side yard tree was at 4.2% today and gave about 1.5 gallons so I think I will keep tapping it for a few years. I wish all of them were that high but you get what you get without vacuum. In a few years I will start putting up 3/16 lines but for now it is what it is.

[ctdavete]

My 2 silver maples usually don't run much early in the season, later most days some buckets will full even when the buds are full bloom

[Cedar Eater]

A well developed crown is usually a good indicator that sugar content and sap volume will be higher than average for a tree. That's why yard trees tend to do very well. They get lots of sun and have lots of branches and leaves. All else being equal, a sugar will usually outperform a red or a silver. Reds do better on vacuum than they do on buckets or bags. Without vacuum, they shut down sooner, usually before they turn buddy.