Tapping Other Than Sugarmaples

[Spike]

I'm about to run tubing to a new section. There is a mix of sugarmaples and reds and also some silver. Should I run tubing to all or just sugar?

[Russell Lampron]

I have a mixture of reds and sugars in my woods and tap anything 8" or bigger. I am doing phase one of an expansion this year and all of the new trees are reds. If it is a maple and you are going by it with tubing tap it!

[Jeff E]

I have heard discussions about what tree size to tap, and had great advice to base it on tree growth and health. Also, if you have more maples in an area than you really should have, and will need to thin in the future, some have said to tap even the small trees, if you will be removing them in the future anyway.
With this in mind, I am tapping some 5" to 6" trees as they are cull trees, that would be removed in 10 years or so anyway. I am skipping the 6" trees that are the future prime trees and waiting until they are 8"+ before I will tap them.

Here is a question for you long timers: After a release cut how do trees respond in the first few years? Are they stressed and less vibrant?

[maple flats]

I do the same as Jeff E except I tap at 10" for keepers, I do tap at 5-6" if going to be culled. A silver will make syrup but will break bud earlier, watch and pull those taps before but break. A silver is also quite low, but if you have an RO or extra boiling capacity tap them, if boiling time will be tight, skip them.

[adk1]

ok, now this question is really gonna show you all how much I know. What do you do once you pull the taps at the end of the year? Do you do anythign to the tap hole or just watch the sap run out of it?

[OGDENS SUGAR BUSH]

take the taps up to the sugarhouse and wash them

RICH

[Dennis H.]

just pull the taps and they will slowing stop running after the hole "Dries Up".

Everything I have read and been told is do nothing to the hole once the tap is pulled.

Its cool going back thru out the year and see how the hole is closing up. I have severeal trees that were completely closed up months ago.

[sugarnut]

greenhorn here, but i wanted to chime in on the silver maples. they have made nice syrup for me, but they also make lots of sediment. another thing i noticed is that although they are low in sugar content, they seem to make up for it with sap production. all of the silvers i tapped out produced the reds i tapped, some by more than 50% (measured by buckets, lol). i had a 25-30 inch tree produce around 3 gallons per day with 2 taps. i tapped another silver once that had sap nearly running out in a trickle. it was a tree that had been cut 20 years earlier and grew out in a cluster of trunks, so it had a large base under the cluster of trunks. i only tapped one of the trunks.


is anyone making any boxelder syrup? is it worth the time?

[dano2840]

i have heard of a guy who doesnt have any thing but boxelder and thats all he taps, little bit diff tasting syrup i gues

[maplwrks]

I was told a couple of years ago, that the largest syrup producer in the state of Vermont tapped 75% soft maples.

[Fairfield Sugarmaker]

If we only tapped the sugar maples we wouldn't tap too many. Probably 1/4 of our over 4000+ are sugar the rest are soft maple (red)

[ennismaple]

Very interesting... every single one of our 4000 taps is sugar maple. I might be able to find a soft maple in a swamp if I looked hard enough and the only red maple around is the one that was planted in my Mother's front yard!

[maplwrks]

Up here, if it's a maple, we tap it!

[Russell Lampron]

Same over here. The reds aren't quite as sweet as a sugar and they don't produce as much sap either but they do make some nice flavored syrup. When I first started I had about 300 taps in sugars and about 6 taps in reds. I now have about 100 taps in sugars and close to 400 in reds and trying to get more online for the coming season. All of my taps are on my own land now and the sap will be pumped to the sugar house. No more trucking sap!!! If it's a maple tree tap it!

[maple flats]

I tap sugars and a few reds. As the season progresses i watch closely for the reds to break bud, which comes several days before the sugars. When the reds are just about to break bud i pull those taps and continue with the sugars only. Most of my reds tapped are in groups and I ran seperate laterals for the reds so If I am in a pinch for time i can just unhook the lat from the mainline and let the reds sap fall to the ground until i have more time.

[TapME]

We generally tap all the trees that we can get, some run well and others don't. I have a story about 2 trees that we tapped last year they were silvers in the front yard of the neighbor and about 40'' in dia. We set 2 5 gallon buckets on each tree with line taps to the bucket. We were offered these trees a few years back and didn't use them. Last year with the 4' of snow on the ground we did them and wow. I thought we were over tapping them but for 2 weeks straight they overflowed the buckets on a regular basis. It just amazed us all. They fad 2 taps per bucket 10 gallons per tree for better than 2 weeks. Never did test the sugar% but they tasted sweet. Wish I had 50 of these all up hill from where we evaporate and on vac. Just imagine.

[C.Wilcox]

i have heard of a guy who doesnt have any thing but boxelder and thats all he taps, little bit diff tasting syrup i gues

I tap almost entirely box elder. I grew up in hard maple forest country, but the only thing I have at my current location is box elder so that's what I tap. It does make a different tasting syrup, kind of like a mix of honey and molasses, but it's still good and cooking it scratches the itch. I usually try to mix in sap from two soft maples to make the syrup taste a little more traditional.

[KenWP]

I have just two hard maples that I am sure about and 6 huge silver maples and the rest of my trees I have checked every book and web site and can find nothing that shows a maple tree with green bark. Going to tap them anyways and find out what comes out of them. Maybe someday I can find more hard maple's to tap.

[royalmaple]

If it is a maple, and green bark it should be moose maple or striped maple or mountain maple. All the same tree. I don't know if you can get sap from them or not. I don't think they are true maples.

Normally they only get to be a few inches in diameter tops.