Rookie Dunstan Qustion

[yoderjac]

With protection and enough water, direct seeding has worked great for me in PA. Most were taller than a 54" tree tube by the second summer. I planted stratified seeds with radicle roots a couple weeks before last frost. I was able to water during dry spells. It was much easier, less work, and more successful for me than starting inside.

That is another good point. One big difference for me is my soils. They are not fertile and my trees grow at a significantly accelerated rate for the first two years in containers. If you look at the "maximizing growth" thread linked in my previous post, you can see a tree over 6' with significant caliper when planted in the fall after a single growing season. The Dunstans I've direct seeded are well less than half that after the first growing season and they don't catch-up during the second season either. Some differences we might have are our soils and care. I don't provide any supplemental water to my trees in the field after the initial planting. I've got too many and live too far from the farm. By contract, my container grown trees get great care at home.

You can probably provide the OP better direct seeding advice than I can. I only direct seeded for a few of the early years until I found a better approach for me.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[chickenlittle]

http://www.habitat-talk.com/index.php?threads/mostly-successful-direct-seeded-chestnuts.5438/ This thread shows my trees. I used a coffee can or tall bean/spaghetti sauce cans and an 18" Ben Meadows plastic mesh tube. That worked until a squirrel learned it could chew the plastic mesh, pull up the seedlings and get the nut. If I'd have removed the nuts just a little sooner, it would have worked perfectly. I only lost a handful. To do over, I'd likely do a tight chicken wire cage around the can. Or maybe some tall aluminum flashing tube. A hard plastic tree tube would probably be pretty good by itself. You would still want to lift the tube before the seedlings got too tall and clip off the nuts.

 

[98uconn]

Thanks again for all of the info. My dunstans that I got from chestnut hill as bare root seedlings grew to an average of 7 feet over the first 2 seasons. I was pretty happy with that. I do have a drop irrigation system and water them regularly when it’s very dry, so I’m sure that’s been a big help. I’ve only lost a few and I think those were due to weeds growing inside the tubes and chocking them out.


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