Cooked down my first 10 gallons of sap ever yesterday. All from.box elder. Turned out great ! Just gotta come up with better cooking process for next year. Took waaaayyy to long to cook that amount. 7 hours outside another couple in the house.
On the bright side found some silver and Norway on the property I can tap also. Found what looks like a black maple?? Is that common in s.e. Wisconsin?
Box elder is in the Acer (maple) family so while you have to boil alot more due to lower sugar content its doable. For trees outside of the maples, have heard of using birch but not the ones you mentionedBox edler hmmmm. can I tap my thorny locust and hedge trees?
Anyone know if trees would be worth tapping down here in Texas? Most of the trees will grow down here even though they aren't native. We have a few very small native populations of bigtooth maples around the Guadalupe Mountain range referred to as the "lost maples" because they are all that's left from the retreat of the last ice age. Also, red maples are a very common decorative landscape tree.
I guess our mild winters would be the biggest drawback. I wouldn't mind planting quite a few for cover and browse, tapping them would just be a fun added bonus down the road.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I guess black walnut can be tapped too. I don't remember if it was walnut or birch but the ratio is 100 to 1. That's a lot of boiling down.Box elder is in the Acer (maple) family so while you have to boil alot more due to lower sugar content its doable. For trees outside of the maples, have heard of using birch but not the ones you mentioned