Instructional Video - Growing Oak Trees from Acorns

hi everyone this is bob marshall professor Harris's english 314 class this is my instructional video on how to grow oak trees from acorns this is my my passion I love growing trees of grown trees since I was a little kid and this is just one of the niches that I've always loved to do and so I'm going to share with you one of the traits of growing trees directly from seed so bear with me as we run through these slides and I'll talk you through it as best I can ok in particular I'm going to talk about oak trees and the seed of the oak tree is the acorns I'm sure everybody's familiar to what acorns look like there are several different types of oak trees I'm not going to specify any particular one all the pictures in here will be of different varieties of of oak trees this particular one happens to be White Oaks and so what you're looking for to start off is to collect acorns from a healthy tree so you're looking for a tall tree a mature tree and you're looking for acorns that are healthy looking like these on the picture collect up as many as you can sort out the ones any of them that look like they have holes in them or they're cracked or anything like that dispose of those you're obviously looking for the best that have the best opportunity of sprouting one of the tests to make sure that the acorns are viable is a float test what I like to do is I put the acorns in a bucket of water for about 15 minutes any that float on the top like this are no good those are dried out and the the seed is dead the ones that sink to the bottom are good seeds one thing to be cautious of is that you don't want to leave them in there too long because once they soak up the water they're gonna want to start sprouting so 15 minutes is about the longest you want to leave them in there the next thing you want to do is mix your soil I like to mix equal parts of moss and potting soil and you mix it together in a bucket like this in a five-gallon bucket and mix it really really good make sure it's all mixed together well after that I take styrofoam cups there are several different ways of doing this this is the most recent way that I've been doing it is to cut a hole from the center to the edge and that Moss in there the peat moss will keep it from keep the soil from leaking out I put a little handful right in the bottom and then put the mixture on top of that this was the way I used to do it is the three holes in the bottom and it has some advantages and it has some disadvantages the disadvantage is if it's when you're setting it on a flat surface this rim around the edge of the cup will create a dam and it'll stop the water from leaking out which is what you want and you can see on the sides of this one where it's cut when you pour the water in the top all the excess water will leak out the sides also I use grading this is expanded metal grading that helps it to drain out as well I've got on here that I use a razor blade to cut these that's the easiest way to do it I use a razor knife cut down on almost of the center and cut that whole piece right out the next thing you want to do like I said was put some of the moss in the very bottom to keep the soil from leaking out fill the cup almost at the top with soil and tap it down compress it lightly not too hard these cups break really easily so you just want to tamp it down enough so the soils firm and there's no air pockets in there that's the most important thing is not to have air pockets when you're growing trees that'll kill the roots the air gets around the roots the nitrogen leaves the roots they dry out they crack and they then they die so make sure your soil is tamp down gently not too hard okay next thing you do is you place the Acorn on its side a lot of people want to put it nose down because they think that it's gonna sprout from the nose up it doesn't actually it actually sprouts from the back but the Acorn itself acts as an anchor it'll split in the back where the cap is and the shoe will come off the bottom and go down into the soil and the leaves will come out through the top so you want to put it just down poka use your finger and poke the soil down just enough so that the Acorn sits right almost level with the surface okay water is the most important thing for growing trees they need as much water as they can get I like using a container like this fill the container completely full of water let it sit for about half an hour until those cups are completely saturated as you can see the soil here is completely saturated that's how you want it at least until the seedlings are six inches fall so water them twice a day take them out of the pot after the after you've soaked it in here I take each one of the cups out I put it back on the expanded metal so they can drain out and then put them in the windowsill which is the next slide okay you want a window a southern exposure southeast exposure is the best somewhere where the Sun is going to be shining on your plants all day long this is the most ideal way to do it we have a sliding glass door in the back and it sits right against the sliding glass door all my little plants it right there plenty of Sun you can see the back back there plenty of Sun coming in all day long they love it they're nice and warm in there and the sun's getting to them all day water and Sun are the most important things for starting trees okay again fill the cups up with water every day put them on the metal on the expanded metal to drain out you can see they're starting to sprout here there's they're getting up to about six inches and that's where we want them to be before we can start moving them outside there's a process called hardening off that when the seedling is big enough you need to put it out so the wind starts moving it around so the roots can set in hard otherwise you'll have a weak root system so again water them heavily put them back on the windowsill okay you're looking for the first leaves stick to poke out this is what it's gonna look like and again you can see right here where the cap is popped off the shell is cracked and the sprout has started coming up root is already going down this is what it looks like in the wild these two right here or right Oaks you can tell because they have the lobelia the white oaks are a very sweet low tannic acid a corn and the wildlife loved to eat these so you're looking for these leaves to appear and it takes about three or four weeks this is when the seedling is at its most vulnerable it doesn't take much for them to dry up and it doesn't take much for them to freeze so you want to make sure they're warm in the Sun they have plenty of water okay so now once they've reached about six inches tall we're gonna start hardening them off you set the cups out on a patio or the deck once today you you want to start off the first couple of days only for a little while maybe an hour and then bring them back in and the next day do them for a little bit longer a little bit longer eventually when it's it's saying to leave them out all day and then at night bring them indoors when there's no danger of frost which in our area is May seventeenth is our last frost danger day you're able to leave them outside all night long the sooner you can get them the harden off the quicker though they'll start growing rapidly okay so now we've got them hardened off they've been outside for a couple of weeks they've been exposed to the wind is the big thing is to get those roots so the roots are grabbing into the soil and we want to remove them out of the cup like this this is remove the root ball the clumps of the roots and the soil from each of the cups and planted out outdoors and the late part of May this is the way I like to do it this is a great drawing you need to dig a hole that's very generous I I do a hole that's three foot wide three foot deep fill it up with a soft soil with a lot of organic compost in it and that'll give the roots something to adhere to one thing it's really important is to keep that lower part of the hole open I dig the hole the three foot by three foot hole and fill it completely full of water saturate that hole completely full and then I put the root ball in there and right here is called the crown see this is right there is called the crown of the tree that's where the root starts and the stalk ends it's very important to have that flush with where the dirt is where the soil is not above not below that's where your your soil line needs to be so whatever you need to do to make sure that that stays above the soil is what you need to do okay you can see we did a few layers of sand in here so it's sand and then the the compost and then sand and then the compost and then some really nice topsoil on top of that water it really really well after it's in and water every day ten foot is the minimum I would put these apart if you're gonna leave them there and I would highly recommend once you plant these to plan on leaving them where they're gonna be because they don't transplant well at all make sure when you plant your tree you look around for things and remember this tree is can live up to 200 years and it's gonna get six foot in diameter the base of it and it'll probably get up to a hundred feet tall depending on which which type you're going in and it has a huge canopy a 60-foot canopy for a hundred foot tree which means you don't want to plant it right next to your house you don't want to plant it right next to your driveway near the road underneath powerlines you're just setting that tree up for failure I in a good open place with good rich well-drained soil and planted there and sunlight is ultimately important plant them if you're gonna stagger plant which means if you're gonna plant five or six this year five or six next year always start planning your trees north and work south that way your trees aren't going to be shadowing each other so as the trees get taller they'll still have all day sunlight and again ten foot is the very minimum because these things are going to be huge you'll probably even have to weed them out if you plant them in 10-foot intervals that is typically what you would do for a lumber if you're planting grows for lumber because these trees will grow very straight and the first branches will be very high in the air so you'll have really good lumber maybe the first 20 feet of the tree will be straight straight stock and it'll be great won't have any knots in or anything like that if you're growing these trees for your backyard put them 30 foot apart that way they have plenty of room to Bush out and grow so I hope you enjoyed our video and learn something from it it's been a pleasure doing this and I look forward to doing more videos like this in the future if you have any questions you can get a hold of me at RC marshal at Alaska edu thank you and have a great day you

Channel: Robert Marshall

Views: 76,711

Rating: 4.9143729 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: 6GnYFwXYn9o

Length: 14min 45sec (885 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 27 2014