nice purchase. Can I ask what you paid for them?

To answer your questions yes you can plant now, only thing Im not sure about is the preemergent herbicide. Look carefully at the label. They will generally transplant better as smaller plants.

They like a little bit of shade. If your lawn fertilizer is the typical amonium sulfate high nitrogen fert keep it away from the trees. Use something organic or slow release on them if anything at all. Best advice w/respect to fertilizer is get a soil test before you do anything. most often little or none will be needed. Next best is to use something low analysis and organic.

here are some pics of big tooth maples in west texas took them hiking in the guadalupes.

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Thanks for the reply. The trees were $39.95 each. Some might say they are a bit expensive for the size of the trees, but then again considerin how hard these trees are to find I think it was a bargain.

The trees are in great condition even though they are small their shape/form is very nice.

The nursery where I bought the trees from called me back and gave me a ton of great info on planting fertilizing etc... The folks at Love Creek Nursery are really nice people.

They recommend fertilizing with Osmocote and basically digging a shallow whole and back filling with "field dirt" if there is not enough soil to backfill the hole that has been dug. That is actually a problem in Central Texas as when you start to dig a hole you hit a large rock about every shovel full of dirt.

that doesnt sound too high a price (just a little high). Id guess it took 4 years to get that size. I paid 200 for an 11 gallon several years ago, of course it was three times that size or more. it hasnt established very quickly.

basic tree planting you dont dig a hole deeper than the root ball but much wider. if you replace rocks with topsoil use something close in texture to your native soil if possible (not a peat based potting soil) cheap topsoil is fine.

I have almost 100 seedlings of big tooth maple growing now. Great trees. I live in San antonio by the way....Does love creek collect seed in texas I wonder?

Yup. That's how Love Creek nursery grow their own trees from the seeds. Authentic Texas Big Tooth maple! It is located in Medina, not far from San Antonio to the west. I've bought one from them a few months ago. I had asked them to keep an eye for red fall color and they were happy to do that for me.

The ones I found up here were terrible looking and they wanted 50 dollars for 2 feet or smaller size! Needless to say, I went with Love Creek nursery because it had nice form and the owner was very nice person to talk to.

Newguy-

Plant it right into native soil. No amendment directly to the hole please.

1) loosen dirt within 5 feet diameter. I used the Claw Garden tool for it. it seemed to work better in caliche soil than shovel. Roots spread out fast when the soil is loosened up. I probably did it around 8-12 inches depth. I planted slightly above ground level. I've used topsoil to build up a couple inches over the hole. You can do the same thing if you want to. Eventually, the soil will settle and sink to slightly higher than what it was before.

2) provide 1-2 inches of compost over the entire 5 feet diameter hole followed by 3-4 inches of aged mulch that will break down before year is over. Mothing should touch the trunk.

OPTIONAL - You can provide organic fertilizer directly on the compost if you want to. That's what I did. I think it goes a long way to helping improve the soil biologically. I used soybean meal, alfalfa pellet, and corn meal to lightly dust the compost then cover the mulch. I gave it a soil drench of fish hydrolysate and seaweed liquid to provide immediate food for microbes in the soil. I've also sprinkled some greensand on the compost for extra iron and others to help deal with alkalinity just in case. No harm in that.

I already had all these stuff in the garage so it's not like I went out of the trouble to get them just for the trees. I think the best alternative is to just buy a small bag of Organic Alaskaî Dry Pure Fish Fertilizer 8-5-1 that I saw at Wal-Mart (or is it the 7-2-2? I dont remember, either one will do fine) and apply on the compost before mulching. It should be enough to feed microbes in the soil.

thanks lou,

I put the trees in the ground last weekend and mixed in some Osmocote per instructions from Love Creek Nursery.

The owner instructed me to dig a small hole but what you say about loosenin the dirt surounding the hole makes sense. I will do that this weekend as my tree is still dormant so I doubt the roots have started to spread yet. I will also apply compost but might wait a bit before applying mulch.

Thanks again !

The wider the hole the better, as far as the tree is concerned. Don't dig deeper than the roots go at planting time. Mulch right after planting. Fertilize if indicated by soil test, using fertilizer with right formulation for your particular soil. Check with Cooperative Extension about soil test, the more different factors tested for the better. Usually only one or two things need to be beefed up, if that many; most commonly used fertilizer products have too many kinds of nutrients, often with some of them in too high amounts - especially if designed for use with heavily leached soil-less potting medium.

Make sure the root flares are slightly exposed. Planting deep is about the worst thing you can do to the trees.

Compost and mulch are very important to improving the soil specifically for trees. If you let grass grow up to the trunk, the tree/root growth is significantly reduced. The growth is accumulated year after year. you can see as much as 10-20 ft growth difference after 10 years between mulched and non mulched. Young trees just hate grass growing around them... The wider the mulch over long period of time the better...

Grasses give off chemicals that stunt trees. Trees produce shade that interferes with the growth of grass.

Only the forests will stop the growth of the grass...

Hello Everyone,

Since some folks took the time to help me out with how to plant my Big Tooth maple's I thought I would update you on their progress.

Both trees I planted are doing awesome ! They leafed out about 1-month ago (I live in Round Rock, TX). One leafed out a bit stronger then the other one, by that I mean one tree's leaves developed more quickly then the other tree's leaves. The 2nd trees leaves looked more droopy for a couple of weeks but are now a deep green with dark red branches. When I say branches keep in mind the trees are only 3.5 to 4 feet tall.

The arborist from Love Creek Nursery might be right when he says these trees will grow 3-4 feet a year with proper fertilization. My little trees both have 6-9 inches of new growth on them since leafing out. I am amazed and realize that type of growth can't sustain itself for the whole growing season but WOW that is pretty impressive you have to admit.

Anyways, thanks to everyone who gave me advice I did everything you said with the exception of adding mulch as the arborist said compost is much better then mulch at this point considering the age of the trees. I will add mulch down the line when the trees get a bit older.

Thanks again !

Your "arborist" is half wrong. Mulch will eventually turn into compost. I always apply one inch of compost followed by 3-4 inches of aged hardwood mulch over 5 ft diameter circle. The problem with compost is that they do not last very long. That's why mulch is used. Not only that, it will get very hot in the summer and could get a bit dry so mulch will help A LOT. Please do more research on it.

Also bigtooth maple will look slightly different from seedling to seedling. Purely genetics... so it's probably wise not to expect both trees to look exactly the same and exactly have same growth rate too.

I would be surprised if yours grew 3-4 feet this year esp when you just planted it. Usually, you don't see that kind of growth till 2nd year at the earliest.

I planted one that I ordered from Love Creek, only 3 feet... and it leafed out in late march, I think. The new leaves are tinted red. I wonder if I will get red fall color as I asked the owner to keep an eye for before shipping one to me.

I personally think synthetic fertilizer is not a good idea for trees or for anything anyway. I use organic fertilizer and it has always worked very well for me. There are a lot of things that it can do for the soil while synthetic fertilizer can't.

I don't think Love Creek nursery owner understands soil biology very well... It's like eating synthetic food vs real food loaded with nutrients that are missing in synthetic food and people tend to be more healthy and robust when eating real food.... Know what I mean???

I have other maple called 'Fire Dragon' shantung maple and it sure grows faster and have nicer foliage. Very nice summer growth (new leaves are reddish color) and fall color is red. It remains to see how my bigtooth would compete with it... So far, I give shantung maple a big advantage...

Lou,

Thanks for the advice I really did appreciate it. But you are coming off a bit like a know it all. The arborist at Love Creek Nursery has been growing these trees for 30 years and has 5,000 growing right now I think I will follow his advice.

I live in Round Rock, TX about an hour from Medina and the climate and soil conditions are almost identical to Medina's. So I think I will listen to the guy that has been raising these trees for 30-years.

I have read as much bad stuff about mulch as I have good stuff. I understand the concept of mulching but there is more to it then buying a bag at Home Depot and laying it down. The type of mulch these trees would get in their natural habitat is far different then buying a bag that you don't know what's in it like fungus which could kill a tree etc...

In their natural settings these trees grow out of rocks without any mulch and through very tough, drought conditions. I seriously doubt that if I don't apply mulch the trees are not going to grow well they are doing great right now.

As far as I am concerned these trees are living a country club life style as they have a sprinkler system which they don't have in nature.

Thanks again for the advice I did appreciate it.

All the best !

Hi Everyone,

It's been a little over a year since I planted my Big Tooth Maple trees so I thought I would give you all an update.

The trees have established very quickly. 1-tree grew from 3 feet tall to right a 6 foot tall last year during the growing season and the caliper increased in diameter by close to 1/2 inch. This tree gets sun from sun-up to right around 5pm all year long.

The 2nd tree I planted grew from 3 feet tall to about 5 feet tall. This tree gets sun from sun up to sun down but the caliper did not increase in diameter much if at all.

This fall one tree had salmon colored leaves and the other tree had deep orange leaves with yellow specks. Very pretty trees.

This year (2009) the trees leafed out in early April and have already grown 4-6 inches each. The crown of both trees are much fuller this year already. I am very impressed with these trees as last summer we were under draught conditions in Central Texas and these trees got beat down with sun all day long and they looked healthy and perky all summer long.

I did use Osmocote last year per instruction from Love Creek Nursery. But I did not do that this year. I ended up using Lady Bug Brand Sylvan tree formula for my mulch and I fertilize the trees with Texas Tee Lawn Fertilizer and Lady Bug Brand 8-2-4 fertilizer along with Medina Soil Activator.

I have the trees planted in the corners of my back yard about 7 feet from the privacy fence and in the middle of the yard I have a Lacey Oak tree which is about 12 feet tall. I've got a damn nice looking back yard with some pretty kick ass trees in my opinion.

Thanks for everyone's planting advice last year and if I could figure out how to post pictures of the trees I would.

Interesting. Mine didn't show much of fall color. Shantung maple's fall color was much better for me. Who knows why... I emailed Metro Maples in Ft Worth since they grow all kinds of maples in the ground and apparently they do not really put out great fall colors. Must be the location, I guess after all, they have been growing in central Texas for a long time.

So far my BTM has grown almost 19 inches. Last year it was 24 inches or so. This is 2nd year so hopefully it will have better fall color. Performance wise, I give shantung maple a huge advantage over big tooth maple so far. Maybe it may change later on but BTM has a lot to catch up.

Everything is done organically. I think fish hydrolyzed fertilizer was very good for soil drench into the rootball during the first year. After that, they pretty much get whatever they can get from dry organic fertilizer when I spread them all over the yard mainly because the root system have spread out. The idea behind fish fertilizer is to improve soil biology activity unlike osmocote. Whatever Love Creek Nursery told you, it sure isn't about improving soil at all. You have to understand that the Lost Maple Forest has been there for a long time and the mulch they get is from leaves and dead trees that fall down enriching the soil over many years. That's vastly different than your "artificial" environment. What I'm doing is to improve the soil biological wise as much as I can to mimic natural ways. That is for in ground only. For container growing, that is entirely different. I'd use osmocote to promote maximum growth. Organic fertilizer won't work too well for above ground containers as I am growing probably 100 seedlings of different trees in the containers. Too harsh because it gets very hot compared to the ones in the ground. I think liquid fish fertilizer works better during first year because it takes a while for dry organic fertilizer to improve the soil enough to make a difference, probably 2 years at least.

Anyway here is the photo album of BTM - Click on it to see the progress of BTM since Jan 2008.

As a comparision - Shantung Maple 'Fire Dragon' {{gwi:345677}}Fire Dragon

I planted BTM only because I was told that they would do better than Shantung maple in rocky limestone soil...

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I guess I'll find out by end of Fall...

NewGuy,

Do you have any updated info on your trees? How about any pics? Im thinking about going down to Love Creek myself and getting some BTM's

I've had a bit of an odd experience with the big tooth maple I bought from Love Creek Nursery (I wanted a Texas native shade tree that was different). Unfortunately, I didn't ask for any planting advise. If I had, I'm thinking my tree would be much larger than it is now. Basically, I planted it the same way I have with other trees and shrubs. I dug a hole as deep as the root ball and twice and wide. I mixed a bag of compost with the soil in a 1 to 3 ratio, backfilled and watered. I got about six inches of growth the first year; it was 3 feet at planting. I figured it needed time to establish. I fertilized it in the fall and the spring with Treetone (Espoma product) and once again got 6 inches of growth this spring. At this point I was thinking that it was just going to be a slow grower. A landscaper from whom I got an estimate to redo the backyard confirmed this saying that the big tooth maple needed the micro-climate of the hill country to do well and that in San Antonio it would grow slowly. Needless to say I was disappointed. A few months later I was at a local, privately owned nursery and noticed they had some big tooth maples. I talked to one of the owners about my experience, and he said that they had grown quite a bit in the pot since they had received them, they should be growing up to 3 feet a year and that I should be fertilizing them monthly. This got me thinking, so I started researching on the web when I ran into Love Creek Nursery's website again. I kicked myself when I realized I should have called them earlier. I ended up talking to the owner (super nice guy) and told him my story. He said that landscaper didn't know what he was talking about and that I needed to do a few things to really make it take off. He said I needed some 5-6 or 8-9 month slow-release Osmocote, I needed to remove the grass I had around it in a 3-foot radius, and I needed to water it regularly. So I went to Love Creek Nursery for a bag of their 8-9 month slow-release Osmocote the following Saturday (couldn't find to locally), and noticed that their operation certainly was not in some deep, cool, hill country canyon type micro-climate. They were on a huge open plane and it was pretty hot. I went home; killed the grass around the tree; and put the down osmocote, a bag of compost, and 2 inches of aged mulch (NOT TOUCHING THE TREE TRUNK). I watered it well once a week and after two weeks it started budding again! This is the first time it has ever done that in June (or at all after initial leafout for that matter) so I'm pretty confident the advice has worked! However, if the big tooth maple doesn't grow more than a foot I'm going to have to relocate a couple of roses. Then I'm expecting 2-3 feet of growth. In hind site, I should have known that grass and roses would compete with a big tooth maple; I just didn't realize how much.

Just an update on the Big Tooth maple in my yard. In the past month since following the advice of the owner of Love Creek Nursery, my tree has grown a foot. I'm pleased with the progress; I just wish I would have done it earlier. I think I'm still going to move the roses that are next to the tree. Two don't seem to do well here (no vigor and diseased), and the other is very vigorous and healthy but is too tall (hybrid tea) and looks odd in the middle of the front yard.

Hello all!
I was wondering how everyone's maples are doing. We purchased 3 this past fall and planted them over the winter. Two of the trees are full of big, green leaves and very lush looking while the third has slightly droopy leaves and darker red branches like newguy123 had mentioned. It also hasn't grown as much as the other two trees. I know there was mention of each tree being different but I was wondering if newguy's droopy tree ever perked up. I've done the whole osmocote and mulch route with each but I worry about the droopy tree. It appears that something is chewing on it's leaves more as well even though I've put deterrent on it. Any thoughts are welcome. Thanks!
Ash

I planted a bigtooth maple here in the Houston area 2 1/2 years ago, purchased from Love Creek Orchard after visiting (3rd pilgrimage) to Lost Maples. No real special treatment, some standard fertilizer-infused soil mixed in with the regular soil, about a 3-foot diameter hole, mulch on top. Last fall and spring, put a tree food spike close to the dripline, probably have gotten 2 feet growth from it. Everything was going well until we had some significant rains this spring and early fall, which made us limit our standard watering. Two weeks after the rains had stopped, the severe Houston heat kicked in and we started to get some significant leaf scorch going. We attempted to water a bit more, but the leaf scorch has taken hold. I fear we may have lost the tree at this point, as it is covering 80% of the leaves. Two questions:
1) Is our tree a goner? and
2) Is there anything we can do to help save it?

Thanks!

It may be due to excessive amount of water in the ground where the roots can't "breathe" and they died off. Your tree probably lost a lot of root feeders so your tree might not look best till next year. In the meanwhile, spread compost around its root zone and apply alfalfa pellets at the rate of 20lbs per 1000 SQFT. (Let grass grow tall, apply pellets, water them in, mow the next day).

Thanks so much!

I agree that it may be from the really wet weather we had to start the year though some of that will depend on your soil and more importantly drainage (is it in an area where water pools and doesn't drain?). We also went from cloudy and somewhat cool temps (for Houston at least) to a lot of sun and heat the past few weeks which may be a factor. If your tree doesn't make it and you want to try another maple, I have a ton of shantung maple seedlings and could give you one (or more) for free.

Itruett: are the seedlings popping up on their own or are you planting them?

Hi Elizabeth,

Most of my shantung maple seedlings are ones I started in trays/pots. I will have a few that pop up on their own but not too many.

I have read through all of the question and answers about the big tooth maple . I noticed some said they had some seeds of the big tooth maple, would you like to trade or sale some?

I am soon to get a 30 G BTM planted in Plano ,TX. I am wandering how your's all maples are doing. I am also thinking to get a Shantung maple in the fall from Metro maples, anyone have those? Thanks to all for a great discussion.

Tennis-

I saw your two questions and your location and had to log in.

I planted two Big Tooths about 7 years ago in Plano. They have flourished in my back yard. Fast growers and the fall color is always amazing.

I also have 5 or 6 shantungs and fire dragons. They are also fantastic trees. All of the trees at Metro Maples are the healthiest trees you'll find. No compacted soil or girdling roots. You can't go wrong there.

Tennis and Ryan, I live in Plano and would love to get some Big Tooth maples in my yard. Where did you get them?