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Sugar bush in Alberta
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Posted by sherwood_botsford 3a (My Page) on Sat, Dec 10, 11 at 14:04
| I want to start a sugar bush. I've got 24 sugar maples from Jeffries, and they have all survived a winter. However these are offspring off a very small number of trees. I want more genetic diversity.
I know that for every hundred trees I plant and get to sprout I'll lose half the first winter. And another half the second winter. Start with a diverse seletion of 10,000 seeds, and let Darwin go to work.
I've got a similar program going on with mountain hemlock. Started with 500. I've 40 two year olds now.
So I need your help. If you live in Saskatchewan or Manitoba, or in north east Ontario well away from the lake, or are in Minnisota around Bimiji or Rosseau and have a sugar maple in your yard, I'd like seed from your tree. Probably too late for this year, as most of the seed falls around the same time as leaf drop. But if you are willing, email me (sgbotsford@gmail.com) and I'll try to remind you next September.
If you send me a picture of your tree, I'll even post it, along with credit to you on my (hopefully) new sugar maple page.
Sherwood of Sherwood's Forests |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: Sugar bush in Alberta
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| Sounds great!!! Hope your endeavor works! I thought about starting one over here in Kenai (AK), but don't even have the land at this point. Lots of people have Birch trees that they make syrup from. The first 2 or 3 days of sap are all that has a good flavor, though. |
RE: Sugar bush in Alberta
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| I don't really care if they make syrup or not. A tree has to be 8" in diameter before you can tap it. I'm unlikely to live that long. I want more color and variety in the bush. |
RE: Sugar bush in Alberta
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| I suggest seeking seed only from trees that colour up unusually early in each area. I am growing a sugar maple in my Edmonton suburb backyard, from seed I collected in Barrie, Ontario, in I think the fall of 1992. The tree (pictures below) is about 5 metres tall now, but is more of a tall shrub than a tree. Tough winters prune it back a bit, in one particularly tough winter maybe 10 or more years ago, it killed all the way back to about a half-metre tall. In most winters, losing half the past season's growth is not uncommon. Having no winter-kill is rare (but does happen). All in all, after almost 20 years, the sugar maple makes a nice tall bush in the backyard. The problem for getting those bright maple colours like they get in Eastern Canada is that my bush/tree doesn't want to colour up until around mid-October or later. So most years the tree has summer-green leaves when they are hit with a hard frost in late September or early October, and the leaves then just turn brown and shrivel up. The long mild fall in 2011 allowed it to develop some decent colour, though my bush/tree is obviously more of yellow-orange than some of the brilliant orange-reds that other sugar maples get. The photos below were taken October 22 of this year. I think there are some commercial sugar maple varieties that are supposed to colour up in late September, but if you want to try growing your own maples from seeds (maybe creating your own variety?) then I suggest looking for seeds from trees that colour up unusually early. My sugar maple bush/tree, on October 22, 2011:
 Close up of the leaves, same date:
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RE: Sugar bush in Alberta
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| Barrie is close to the lake, and has a MUCH longer growing season than we do. Zone 5? 6? Definitely want to get a zone 3 seed source. That said, even my Jeffries sugar maples held on to their leaves long after the poplar had given up. |
RE: Sugar bush in Alberta
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| Nice photos Don! I look forward to more selections being introduced to the prairies, though I'd also like to do as Sherwood and grow plenty out from seed. T |
RE: Sugar bush in Alberta
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| We have tapped a sugar bush for about 30 years and live near a park full of maple trees. There are some years that the trees are full of color and some that they are drab. Some of this is breed of tree but there are a number of factors that impact this including rainfall, temperatures ( fall, winter and spring) early versus late frost, and, certainly, things we haven't figured out yet. We find that you can go into the woods in the early spring, pull the young (2-5 feet tall) trees up and plant them, you likely have a good a survival rate and have several years of growth already on them. Our camp has been very rustic with carved spiles. I will recommend you plant some sumac on your land, it has beautiful red leaves in the fall and red heads of berries that can be used to make a really tasty drink. The pithy center makes it an ideal wood for making spiles. |
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