Growing Oaks

Hi I want to grow native red,white,black,chestnut oaks and any other oaks . Mostly planting for acorns, I read it takes 20 years to produce nuts. I just wanted to see if anyone got them to produce quicker then that.

Hi Justin and welcome to permies! Where are you? Climate, soil, and species will all play parts in determining how quickly a seed-grown tree bears acorns. I have a 20-year-old royal oak (Quercus robur) that is nearly 15 m tall and produces lots of acorns every year. One of those sprouted seven years ago, I potted it up, then planted it by the front gate. It bore acorns last year (age 6) and there are now seedlings under it. So there is a data point. Our climate is maritime temperate (never hot, light frost), annual rainfall 1200 mm, soil is silt loam with decent fertility, and trees in general grow fast here.

Phil Stevens wrote:Hi Justin and welcome to permies! Where are you? Climate, soil, and species will all play parts in determining how quickly a seed-grown tree bears acorns. I have a 20-year-old royal oak (Quercus robur) that is nearly 15 m tall and produces lots of acorns every year. One of those sprouted seven years ago, I potted it up, then planted it by the front gate. It bore acorns last year (age 6) and there are now seedlings under it. So there is a data point. Our climate is maritime temperate (never hot, light frost), annual rainfall 1200 mm, soil is silt loam with decent fertility, and trees in general grow fast here.

Wow thank you for that information. How do you maintain the oak trees, Do you prune them so you can harvest or do you just harvest when the acorns fall off the tree.

The acorns here fall off when they are ripe, and if I don't collect them the chickens and ducks eat them up. The only pruning I do on the oaks is removing the low branches that are liable to poke me or anyone taller in the eye, and to repair storm damage. The big tree lost about a third of its canopy a few years ago when we had a dying cyclone come through in April when the leaves were still on. That required some chainsaw work.