Minimum size to tap?

[longbeard]

Hi folks - first post!

I know what the recommended minimum sizes are:

10" dbh in Canada
12" dbh in USA (I think)

But I have a lot of trees that are just below the 10" size and wondering if you guys would tap those or wait it out?

[PARKER MAPLE]

i did taps a few last season, they didnt yeild alot of sap for me, and the trees seams to be ok, i ams planing on tapping them again this season if poss also. just my two sense.. m.r.

[KenWP]

I tapped a few small ones just because they were close to other trees. Some really put out and a couple were a waste of a good tap. But on the other hand I had 12 inch and up trees that gave nothing at all. One I had to go check it the other day just to see if it even was a maple as its a good 18 inchs and never gave a drop.

[Thompson's Tree Farm]

Long Beard,
I would not be afraid to tap trees a bit below 10". Take into account the overall health of the tree and the size of the crown. If it is healthy, growing fast, and has a big crown, tap it. After you pull the spout, monitor the healing of the tap hole. If it pretty much closes up in one year, it will be fine. Many smaller trees are growing very rapidly and the tap hole heals much better and faster than in trees twice their size.
My opinion
Doug

[PATheron]

Ive always been told 8 inches is alright for a 5/16 tap. Last year I used quarter inch taps in my young cull tree stand. I used them for all the trees in that section and I think they are going to heal up real quick. Not sure if they would work very good gravity or not. Probly wouldnt get as much sap. Id say there just about as good for vac and its like a pinprick on the tree. Very small hole. Theron

[caseyssugarshack93]

i tap some8" with 5/16 and if my hand fitsacross the tree then i tap it, but mostly 10"

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

If you tap the small trees, use a small spout and tap shallow. I wouldn't go over an inch deep as there is basically no bark to go thru.

[Maplewalnut]

I agree with all comments here. A lot plays into tapping trees. Guidelines published are just that...guidelines. YOU should be the expert on your trees. Combined with that knowledge and some common sense (tap smaller trees shallow as Brandon suggests) (consider smaller diameter taps as Theron uses) (evaluate the trees health and crown as Thompson's recommends), a sugar orchard can keep going and going and going....

[Russell Lampron]

I generally start tapping trees at 8" with 5/16" spouts. I tap 1.5" deep so that the end of the tap doesn't get blocked because the hole is too shallow. On my larger trees I tap up to 3" deep depending on the size and health of the tree. I also tap cull trees as small as 3" in diameter figuring that they are going to be cut down anyways. I will get as much sap as I can out of them first. Of course all of those are on vacuum. If I am tapping buckets anything smaller than 8" won't yield enough sap to bother with.

[gmcooper]

Years ago I was at a maple seminar with a forester speaking. He preached 12" and then only one tap till 24" then never more than 2 taps. Good advice. A week later I was at his families maple operation. 4th tree from the road right beside the house was a 6" maple at best and it was tapped and had been several times!

[maple flats]

The old story, do as i say, not as I do! I only tap 10" and up except those marked to remove. I do not yet have vacuum so I likely gain little but I get some.

[red maples]

So if you can go 8" for one tap depending crown health etc. I have read in more than one place that it is 10" min. and 8" increments after that for example 10"for 1, 18"for 2 taps, 26"for 3 taps, now considering that was with the old larger spires then. if you had a healthy tree nice full crown good growth rate could you go more taps with a the 5/16 taps?

I do have 1 monster tree that is approx 43 inches in diameter its healthy nice full crown . ( my fabric tape measure only goes to 96". and there is till alot to go) how many taps???? any thoughts????

[dano2840]

for me i tap 10" and it has to be a nice crowned tree or i will wait until it gets to be 12" i really dont want to possibly damage a young tree so i tend to let them get a little larger than others before i stick a tap in them. if you think about it you drill a 2- 2 1/2" hole in a 8" tree then next year you do that on the other side and there is only a couple inches inbetween the 2 holes so you almost tap the heart wood so i tend to let them get a little bigger but thats just me

[KenWP]

Well the other idea is that since it's your trees one can do what one wants to do to them. If you have many many trees if you kill one off then its got another use anyways. I tap what ever trees I want to since they are mine and I haven't got years and years to wait untill they are bigger.

[Acer]

If the bit comes clear out the other side while drilling its a NH two tapper.

D

[red maples]

so then if I bore a hole with a 12" long bit through a 10" tree I will get tons of sap right!!!!!;)



seriously though..... how many taps can I get into a tree that is 43"in diameter and still be safe and not injure the tree 4 taps 5 taps???

[KenWP]

You could do 4 taps but 3 would be plenty and then your not makeing to much scar tissue.

[mtnmeadowmplfarm]

A 43" d tree is a lot like an old man. He cant recover from injury nearly as well as when he was 20. You would do much more damage putting four taps on that tree than you would putting two on an 8"d tree. I use 8" as a minimum for one 5/16 spout then go to two taps at 18" in d. A maple tree reaches its prime at around 70 years old so I never put three taps on a tree.

[caseyssugarshack93]

I only go two taps max,

[3rdgen.maple]

I still tap trees that my grandfather tapped when he was in his 20's. He passed away in his mid 80's about 10 years ago, so if I can add right that is about 70 years ago. His oldschool way was to put a tap every 12 inches. I got trees he had 6 or 7 taps in that are still healthy and I still tap every year. It still makes me wonder everytime I hear this same question. Now do I put that many in? NO, I stick 4 taps on them big old trees and the norm is I never go over 3. As far as how small a tree to tap, I don't go under 12 inches as this is what gramps always said and the way I figure it is those trees he tapped 70 years ago are still alive Im sticking with that theory. I should mention I'm talking buckets not vac.

[vermaple]

The old saying with buckets, was never tap a tree smaller than the diameter of the bucket. :) hence the use of 6" buckets in Canada. :lol:
Seriously I don't remember any trees that I hung over three buckets on when I hung buckets. I more recent years I now have no trees with over two taps, and new areas I follow Proctor's lead of one tap per tree, with about a 10" minimum. Proctor has had a yield of about 1/2 gal. per tap for quite a few years now and I feel that if it works for them it should work for me. I have yet to approach the 1/2 gal/tap mark, but as I improve my system my yield is increasing to where I feel that I should be getting at least 0.33 gal/tap and my best year to date was 0.38 gal/tap.
I'll see what I can get with the check valve adaptors, but I don't expect to get the gal/tap that Proctor did this year. After all many sugarmakers in that area had record years this year. Maybe next year I will.

[dano2840]

i dont put 3 taps per tree unless the thing is about 3ft in diameter and has a nice big top

[cncaboose]

Based on Cornell's latest recommendations, which rely on tree growth rates, I put no more than 2 buckets on a tree, and I have some over 48" in diameter. For the biggest trees you need to look at actual available tapping space and their slow growth rates. I will tap them down to 8" tho since those young healthy trees are the fastest growing and will heal their holes in 1 growing season. Vary your tapping height and consistently rotate around the trees from year to year and you will have more available tapping space on trees. Using this approach we made .38 gallons per tap on buckets last spring.

[red maples]

thanks for the input guys...I guess it all depends on the individual prefernce and respect for the trees...there are the two charts in NAMSPM but wanted to get some feedback on the subject What I think I will do is 2 taps for this year and see what that grandpa tree yeilds and heals and we'll go from there. but I will max it at 3 if all goes right for the following year but if not then 2 is fine !!!

It is not on my property its my neighbor so have to be considerate!! Not the he really cares that much he said yeah go ahead and hang 10 buckets off there!!!! then it would be a DEAD TREE!!!!

I have noticed it really all depnds on the tree I have some tap holes that are closed and some that still open a little and the trees are similar have similiar growth and same diameter and some bigger trees that healed so fast you can barely see where the holes were from just last spring...

[Homestead Maple]

I've tapped a few small trees ( 6" dia.) with health spouts just to see if they would die but I've tapped them for 5 years straight and they show no signs of dying. To lazy to cut them out. I was spiramintin!

[caseyssugarshack93]

Here is photo that the Governor took when he went with Mike Farrell to look at a producers tubing system in Northern NY and the guy wondered why he wasn't getting the sap per tap ratio he though he should? Trees 24" to 36" had 4 to 6 taps in each of them. If any of you went to the presentation that mike farrell put on at Bascom's house? the gov took most of the pics as mike's camera battery died. They politely told the guy that he needed to reduce the # of taps to 2 max. per tree and the Gov found one of the valve's closed on the back of this guys extractor= Wonder why the sap flow was weak !!!.

[caseyssugarshack93]

There she flows after the gov opened the valve.

[Haynes Forest Products]

What is the vac guage showing? I would say the sap should be shooting in the manifold harder than that if it was just opened.

[TapME]

size of trees that are taped, in days past the small end was 6'' with one 7/16 tap. Now seeing that a 5/16tap is about 3 times smaller than the 7/16 I would think the trees would be fine. I personally taps all trees that going to cut out of the woods no matter how small(cull trees). We use the 8'' rule here and the 4 tap max after 24''. We have one monster that I would love to put 8 in but I restrain myself. That tree is 5 in dia.

[caseyssugarshack93]

Looks like 20.5 HG to me on the vacuum gauge. After carefull consultation with a vacuum expert the diagnosis was that the system was tight and very little if any atmospheric air was entering the tubing system. So thus hardly any incoming air to create extreme velocity of atmospheric air from behind to push the sap into the chamber/ Thus it was kinda falling into the first chamber of the extractor under perfect conditions.

[jason grossman]

casey you are right. that is how sap should always flow into the releaser. if you have a good system it should just flow in!!

[stevepipkin]

We tap 12 inch and up. We assess trees that are over 18 inches and put a max of 2 taps on those trees. We have quite a few large trees (40 inches and up) and they are slow to heal.

[kinalfarm]

we just had our woods cleaned up and selective cutt and they had about 5 really old trees that were marked to be girtled. i told them not to bother and i plan on tapping the snot out of them. why not right? if they do die it would give the small trees around it more room. i will prolly put 4-6 taps in them. they arent doing so good anyways but not dead. they are prolly about 45'' trees but i dont put any more than 2 in most trees and sometimes only 1 in trees up to about 18-20''. i also dont have a vacum system. I was told by the biggest produer around here that if you run vacum olny put 1 tap per tree and only tap12'' or bigger. he said thats how you get yer syrup to tap ratio up. makes sense

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Those old almost dead trees will often produce a lot of sap and live for many years in that condition. If they are good producers, why not take it easy on them for a few more years. They may provide you with many gallons of syrup in the future. No need in killing them if you don't have too.

[johnallin]

That 45" tree is older than your great grandmother. Be nice to er', she'll probably out live all of us, just getting a little grey that's all.
Richard's Maple in Chardon has a knarly one by their drive, been hit by trucks, plows you name it, looks like heck, but still puts out 3%-4% sap each year. Think they hang one bucket on the old girl each year just to keep her in shape.

[KenWP]

I have a huge boxelder here that has these great big shoots going off to the sides. They are in real bad shape with a lot of dead limbs and moss 6 all over the tops and such. They still give sap which did surprise me. I will have to trim them off one of these days as they are only there becasue they lean on big cedar trees.

[Hop Kiln Road]

Sugar maples are hard to come by around my neighborhood but they grow well. I don't tap under 12" although I tried the 5/16ths stainless insert and they didn't seem to work very well on gravity. I wait for 20"+ before adding a 2nd tap and no more than 2 taps for any tree. Much of the effort seems to be placed on the amount of sap extracted from the trees instead of the amount of sugar.

Procter said the other weekend 50% of their survey respondants added a 2nd tap at less than 16" in diameter and many of these are probably on vacuum systems. I suspect the actual standard practiced in the field is now 8" for the first tap and 16" for the second.

Now, none of us would put 3 health spouts in a 12" tree, yet there is no concern about one tap with 25" of vacuum.

Bruce

[moeh1]

I listened to a Cornell guy talk about avoiding old wood. If you start with a 10" tree, and methodically go around the tree by the time you get back to the first spot, the tree has outgrown the old tap area. If you go smaller, you eventually hit bad wood. He also tapped smaller than 10" that he planned on culling. My takeaway was that if you wanted a lifetime sugarbush, the 10" rule applied. Made sense to me.

[PerryW]

plenty of good wood on a 10" tree if you don't mind using a ladder. :)

I will tap as small as 10", but use a health spout on anythingd 14" or smaller.

[maple flats]

If you have some groups of smaller ones go ahead and tap them. If smaller than 10" just tap that tree every other year until it reaches 10" or more. You will not kill the tree. The main thing about tapping small is 2 points. #1, you run out of new wood to tap before the tree gets enough growth over the old tap holes as you work around the tree and #2, small trees generally have smaller crowns. The crown or leaves to be specific are what makes the sugar, few leaves = little sugar. However it would be a rare case that you would kill the tree if it has every other thing going for it. If it is however understory it might well die. Sugar maples grow well and hold their own as an understory, just waiting for an opening to shoot up and become co dominate or dominate. If such a tree is tapped it could weaken too much especially with several years tapping in sucession.