Acorn to oaks question?

[Jordan Selsor]

While taking my boys for a walk this wk I noticed a nice burr oak loaded with giant acorns. None had fallen to the ground yet so I picked a handful for the boys to play with. They got a kick out of them. They are still very green. My question is can I direct seed these or do they have to fully ripen in order to germinate??
They have dried out some since picking.
?'s
Will green acorns grow?
Is a burr fast growing in Midwest?

 

[SD51555]

I stopped and talked to a guy buy Aberdeen, SD a few weeks ago. I noticed he had tree tubes around the building of his seed business, and he was walking around. So I popped in to talk to him and see what he had growing. He was pretty jazzed somebody understood was going on there.

Anyway, he had burr oak growing in his tubes. He had 5 foot tubes and probably 7 foot bur oaks in 3 years. I'm not sure if that's fast or not, but it sure was neat to see a line of them well on their way.

One thing to consider with burrs though. If you plant them, are you going to protect them? If not, squirrels may dig em up, or deer nip them off. If you do, you may have extra work in acorns that don't produce. Depending on what you want to do, it may be easier to just buy burr oak plugs. I cannot say enough good about how easy that was, and I had 100% success with them so far.

 

[SD51555]

I'm the same way Stu. If I run into someone that has something growing in their yard that interests me, I'll get to jawing about it as well. Sometimes a person doesn't have enough beer around to outlast the conversation.

 

[Jordan Selsor]

I have so many people that are amazed with my tree tubes and have yet to run into anyone else in my area using them.

 

[SD51555]

It's an insane and futile effort to not use them when they're an option. Too many times have I seen trees fail. Almost broke my spirit completely.