Tapping in Ashby

[DavidSB]

With a stretch of warmer days coming next week, we put 20 taps in this afternoon and the sap was gushing out. Might put another 20 taps in tomorrow, and we'll wait and see... Cheers, DavidSB

[socraticd]

I'm actually super curious about this, as the conditions look good this week for sap flow, but I'm interested in whether tapping any of the trees this early would affect their yield later in the "real" season? Would those trees make it with roughly full flow until the end of the season?

Hope you get a good run this week!

[DavidSB]

Hi Socraticd, It's unclear, the tapped hole might dry out, but then the tree itself should continue as the other trees around it, you might even move the tap to a new hole on the same tree if it's big enough for a second tap hole. I'm not sure what the guidelines are today for the 5/16" taps, used to be 1 tap for every 12 inches of diameter. I have seen taps run longer than the 6 weeks we usually expect from a sugarmaple. Also, the flow is always on and off thru most of the season, depending on the weather. The sugarmaples give us roughly a six week window of opportunity, and if the weather is right, it flows.

[DavidSB]

We put in aprox 60 taps 2 weeks ago, got about 350 Gallons of sap, and just finishing it now, hoping for 6 or 7 gallons of light syrup when we're done, and we'll put in another 100 taps in around Valentine's Day.