planting acorn sprouts

[gasman]

My kids found a pile of white oak acorns sprouting today. They wanted to plant them. I told them the could use a corner of a vegtable bed that was pretty much tilled up and ready to go with some decent soil. Well they planted about 50 of those little guys. How deep should they have been planted?

 

[Kneejerk Bombas]

Squirrels go about 2 or 3" and that works.
The bigger problem is after they sprout, all kinds of rodents like to eat them. It's a real numbers game. It takes about two or three years before they are safe. If they make it to about three feet tall, you have a good chance.
Good luck!

 

[windthrown]

acorns...

I guess it depends on the type, but you can go up to about 3-4 inches deep with the larger acorns. They have a lot of energy stored up. I have seen Califoirnia live oak acorns push themselves up 6 inches from a squirrel burial chamber in the soil. The blue scrub jays around here tend to plant the acorns randomly about 2 inches deep. I would plant them about 2-3 inches deep I guess.

Around here the big problem with oak acorns and seedlings is that the deer love to eat them and the rodents love the acrons as well. We have some very old (400 years?) California black oaks here that are over 60 feet tall. Huge old guys that produce tons of acorns each year. We get seedlings in the spring and then the deer eat them and that's it. So we put plastic tree savers around the oak seedlings last spring to keep the oaks from being eaten. So far, so good, but they have to get to about 6 feet here to survive the deer here.

Also another creature that collects acorns are woodpeckers. Acorn woodpeckers gather acorns and put them in holes in trees. Then they come back hoping that a grub has crawled inside the acorn and eat it. I am not sure whay the scrub jays plant acorns. ???

Good luck with your planting adventure.

 

[gasman]

Thanks for the input. Very interesting info. I'm not surprised to hear that animals are going to be the biggest obstacle to success. Because it is the kids project I don't want to interfere too much with technical solutions. If they do get a tree out of it, I want them to feel like they did it on thier own. I think for now we will just see what happens and hope for the best. I did have the kids mark each acorn planted so we can follow what happens.

 

[Kneejerk Bombas]

Once they sprout, you can use some hardware cloth to protect them. Although last tme I did that, the tree lasted a year and a half until a chipmunk dug under the fence and ate it up.

 

[Ed*L]

I keep my seedlings (White Oak & Walnut) fenced (5' high fence) until they about 2" in daimeter. Lots of work but it is the only way they survive. I don't have to be quite so protective on my Red Cedar trees though, they are fenced for 2 or 3 years. Nothing wants to eat them, they are to prickly.

Ed