Seedlings galore

[eagle lake sugar]

I've removed about 20 cord of beech and fir from this area to open the canopy up over the past two years and boy did the maple seedlings take off! The entire forest floor is covered with them.

[DrTimPerkins]

Nice to see that. Your forest must have good calcium levels. Maple seedling success is pretty highly related to soil calcium.

[eagle lake sugar]

Nice to see that. Your forest must have good calcium levels. Maple seedling success is pretty highly related to soil calcium.

This is a new area I just tapped this spring. It has better, deeper soils than the hill behind the sugarhouse which is all shale. The downside is, I'll be needing to thin all those out in a few years.

[collinsmapleman2012]

Nice to see that. Your forest must have good calcium levels. Maple seedling success is pretty highly related to soil calcium.

so what would the ideal ph and calcium levels be? i've been toying around with the idea of soil testing and applying lime where i plan to expand to in the next couple years, suspect the smaller trees could use a boost. also working on thinning some to go with this too, but my guess is the ph could be a bit low in that area.

[Michael Greer]

You won't have to thin many of them though. Seedlings like that will drop out from crowding, especially in a dry year, and half of them will disappear just about every year until there are only a few dozen left. Given about 50 years to continue, you may find only a few of that batch actually continuing. A little stand of seedlings like that is a great place to watch for trees to transplant. I like moving them when they are about 3' tall. Given ample space and water for the 1st year, those babies have a good chance of becoming giants.