Edit the above post. They are Shantung Maple seeds not Japanese Maples.

Mine are in full sun. Did you fertilize them? I use Lily Miller 18-6-12 from Lowe's. Have to be careful not to water them often to minimize risk of damping off. Bring them in the house if you get severe thunderstorm warning. Big hails can ruin them.

My shantung seedlings are outside in full sun in a rootmaker tray. Probably in another month or two I will pot up to 1g pots. So far I have been using a liquid fertilizer but will probably use some sort of CRF similar to the one mentioned above after potting up.

Where did you get the seed from? What size pot are they in now. What are you using for the growing medium?

Redrhodes got them off his Fire Dragon.

Yes, they are off the Fire Dragon. I did not fertilize them yet. I was worried about burning them. How often do you apply the fertilizer?

And Great comment about hail. We had to replace our roof due to hail last year. I'm sure seedlings would have been toast.

Lily miller fertilizer is controlled release fertilizer. Once a year depending on the size of pot you're using right now. If small and eventually into bigger pot then more fertilizer.

Metro Maples had bad hail storm 2 years ago and trees would not grow much for the rest of the year while they recover from the damages. I bought FD that year and you could see hail damages on it. Hopefully, we don't see that kind of damage.

How are things going so far?

I lost most of my seedlings due to ignorance and the Icelandic volcano. But the good news is I have 3 left. They should be nice trees if I can keep them in good health. What's really remarkable is that they all have different leaf shapes. I guess the Genetic possibilities really are diverse. Has that been your experience?

My original fire dragon had a large girdling root on it. I had to take that off with a chisel a month ago. Since then, it seems to be happy and is putting on new leaves. I can't believe Metro let this one out the door with the roots in the condition they were in. I doubt it will grow much this year because of this, but there's always next year...

What's nice is that I stopped by Red Barn nursery in Austin and found 5 Shantung Maples. They were all around 12 ft. And although they didn't have a great shape to them, they were healthy.

I lost most of my seedlings due to ignorance and the Icelandic volcano. But the good news is I have 3 left. They should be nice trees if I can keep them in good health. What's really remarkable is that they all have different leaf shapes. I guess the Genetic possibilities really are diverse. Has that been your experience?

My original fire dragon had a large girdling root on it. I had to take that off with a chisel a month ago. Since then, it seems to be happy and is putting on new leaves. I can't believe Metro let this one out the door with the roots in the condition they were in. I doubt it will grow much this year because of this, but there's always next year...

What's nice is that I stopped by Red Barn nursery in Austin and found 5 Shantung Maples. They were all around 12 ft. And although they didn't have a great shape to them, they were healthy.