Sugar Maple

Is any one familiar with or no where I could find info on encouraging Sugar Maples as a long term project/goal for expanding existing maples into a large sugar grove?

If you already have a lot of sugar maples, then I think you have nothing to worry about.  I think they will do their own propagation. 

And there is one interesting tidbit:  check out St. Lawrence Nursery for the "sweet sap silver maple":  ready to tap in 1/3 the time and the sap has 2.5 times more sugar per gallon!

Protect young maples from any grazing animal, they eat them when they are tiny. You have to walk round searching for their first two leaves and then protect them with sticks stuck in the ground round them enough things to put off what ever grazing animal you have around if you have any deer or  cows or sheep and such, maybe smaller animals eat them too. agri rose macaskie.

sugar maples are not as prolific as red and shagbark and amur around here..lots of people search for sugar maples to get starts..our neighbors when they bought the land from us desperately wanted sugar maples..

i agree that you have to watch for the seedlings and protect them..esp from browse of deer..but around here sticks won't do for that..better to fence them or wrap them in something..maybe the first year a toilet paper roll and then 2nd year unwind a paper towel roll and wind back around them..after that some good wire fencing until they are about 2 or 3" across.

Thanks for the input ladies. I fear deer must be the answer as there is a wild herd of them several hundred strong in the area, and prior to a few years ago the land had been grazed by 600 dairy cattle. Will see what I can do though individually caging each new sapling sounds less than cost effective given the long time for return, though I am still young. Will see, I also read some silviculture documents that said they grow best with shade though that was certainly not a problem.

Sepp Holzer makes a pyrolysis tar out of bones that he says is a long-term ("Decades!" says Paul) animal deterrent.

I have no reason to doubt this, but I would count it as a chemical method of pest management.  Pyrolysis liquids meet my standard of "toxic gick," but it sounds like something to consider for protecting your maples.

There's a fairly lively thread on it here, with diagrams & instructions & debate:

https://permies.com/bb/index.php?topic=1805.0

It is the very tiny maples i have seen around where maples grow in the village i go to, seedlings with just two leaves and they would not do for sepp holsters guke i suppose, maybe it would do for them. There are a fair amount of really small seedling with two three centimeter leaves but  i don't see any bigger ones, except one in a gorse bush, so I suppose the sheep goats and deer eat them. rose macaskie.

paul wheaton wrote:
If you already have a lot of sugar maples, then I think you have nothing to worry about.  I think they will do their own propagation. 

And there is one interesting tidbit:  check out St. Lawrence Nursery for the "sweet sap silver maple":  ready to tap in 1/3 the time and the sap has 2.5 times more sugar per gallon!

Paul pretty much has it here, and the sweet silver maples are on the list for us as well. I've seen them and have St Lawrence nursery in my favorites to plant a bunch of them, even though we've got plenty of sugar maples around.

Good catch Paul, how'd you come across the nursery?

Joel hollingsworth, tell us more about pyrolyses turning things into poisonouse material.

and, GCLECKS hope you are my uncle james clegg who i told to read these forums but i suppose you aren't. He does not live in america so how could he have a maple grove though his grandmother was american and taught them to drink maple sugar so it could interest him.
      If you are young you will enjoy whatching young trees you protect grow even if you never see them big, i do, sometimes they grow quicker than you think they will, the small versions are cool too though in a different way, they don't take up so much light and are decrative so protect them for fun, and because you learn about them and about time, how pleased you are in fifteen years for example to have them. May be you could by some gorse bushes to protect them, though if you need sugar look for a quicker method too.  agri rose macaskie.

>tell us more about pyrolyses turning things into poisonouse material.

Living things make organic chemicals (predominantly C, H, O, N) in an exquisitely controlled way.

Pyrolysis is what happens when these chemicals heat up enough to react with each other without any enzymes or other catalysts.  The result is something like fossil fuels: tar, flammable gasses, etc.  In fact, it would seem that petroleum and coal tar are formed by processes similar to pyrolysis, i.e. by heat deep in the earth acting on buried organic matter.  Synthetic petrochemicals are made by a process somewhere in between, with catalysts and (comparatively) crude separation apparatus, but still with some relatively high heat and with chemical conditions harsh enough to kill most sorts of life.

If meat is cooked over a fire in the wrong way, cancer-causing chemicals can be found on its surface, to give one particular example.  But in general, there are a wide variety of chemicals in any sort of tar, and it is almost a statistical certainty that some of these chemicals are harmful.  No one chemical will be present in concentrations as high as a synthetic chemical product, but many of the petrochemicals you might worry about will be there.

  joel hollingsworth, shit they are talking about the execution of a man on the television i don't like execution it is that knowing they are going to die buisness, any way i don't like it. Thanks for the information on pyrolisis. agri rose macaskie.

dvmcmrhp52 wrote:
Good catch Paul, how'd you come across the nursery?

I can't remember.  It's been many years. 

a tangent, perhaps: it's not well-known, but big leaf maples (Acer macrophylla) can be tapped for syrup production.  I haven't tried it yet, but I'm led to believe they're fairly productive.

i learned the hard way that deer love the young leaves of sugar maple sapplings.  tree shelters are awesome, well, at least the research and retailers who sell them claim them to be. they provide temperature regulation and increased carbon dioxide which makes them grow very fast like they were in a little greenhouse. they suggest 6 foot tall shelters to get them above the deer "browsing level".

some info and dealers:

http://www.treepro.com/id77.html

these are the ones i bought from oikos tree crops.  they were having a sale and had them at 50% off.  u can find them on ebay.

http://www.treessentials.com/products/tubex_shelters.htm

I know this is an old thread, but did any of you who posted here buy any sweet sap sugar maples? If so could I buy/trade some of the seeds from these trees? Getting an actual tree sent over here would be very difficult, but seeds could be put in an envelope and sent and I’d be off on the journey.

Thank you,

Jason

Jason Learned wrote:I know this is an old thread, but did any of you who posted here buy any sweet sap sugar maples? If so could I buy/trade some of the seeds from these trees? Getting an actual tree sent over here would be very difficult, but seeds could be put in an envelope and sent and I’d be off on the journey.

Thank you,

Jason

I have three sugar maples in my yard. I can send you seeds. It's dark out here now, but tomorrow I can check for dropped seeds under the trees - I'm not sure if they've dropped them yet as it is a warm fall and things are happening a little late.

That would be wonderful! Let me know when there are seeds please and I’ll send you my info. Interested in a bloody butcher corn that now grows many ears. It is not stable yet, but some are growing multiple ears out of one node. Also it is sometimes purple and white.

That corn sounds really cool! I checked the ground under my trees - no seeds dropping yet. They have barely dropped any leaves, as we haven't had a frost or strong winds, but they will be coming down soon, in the next couple weeks I'd say.

This is from one node, it tried to make four but made three. The node under had a single ear. There were a few under that that started but didn’t develop.
Another stalk I save for seed had three ears and many unformed under that.

This variety I have also has the buttress roots that drip sweet fluid for nitrogen fixing bacteria.

The birds seem to really like my corn.

Jason

Jason Learned wrote:That would be wonderful! Let me know when there are seeds please and I’ll send you my info. Interested in a bloody butcher corn that now grows many ears. It is not stable yet, but some are growing multiple ears out of one node. Also it is sometimes purple and white.

I was able to collect the sugar maple seeds! Let me know where I can mail them. You can PM me on here or email me, mywildwisconsin at gmail dot com.

Marisa Lee wrote:

Jason Learned wrote:That would be wonderful! Let me know when there are seeds please and I’ll send you my info. Interested in a bloody butcher corn that now grows many ears. It is not stable yet, but some are growing multiple ears out of one node. Also it is sometimes purple and white.

I was able to collect the sugar maple seeds! Let me know where I can mail them. You can PM me on here or email me, mywildwisconsin at gmail dot com.

Did you get my email last month?

Thank you

Jason

Jason Learned wrote:

Marisa Lee wrote:

Jason Learned wrote:That would be wonderful! Let me know when there are seeds please and I’ll send you my info. Interested in a bloody butcher corn that now grows many ears. It is not stable yet, but some are growing multiple ears out of one node. Also it is sometimes purple and white.

I was able to collect the sugar maple seeds! Let me know where I can mail them. You can PM me on here or email me, mywildwisconsin at gmail dot com.

Did you get my email last month?

Thank you

Jason

I did! I mailed your seeds out, oh, maybe a week to 10 days ago? I had a bunch to send and they all went on the same day. I know people in the states have already received their mail from me, but not sure how long it will take for yours (and one I send to Canada).

I don’t need anything in exchange when looking up info about swapping seeds by mail, it looks like most places are pretty cool as long as the seeds are labeled (and mine are in a small labeled envelope inside a normal envelope & card addressed to you). But not the U.S., I guess they might get irradiated on their way in? So, share with someone locally instead.

Marisa Lee wrote:

Jason Learned wrote:

Marisa Lee wrote:

Jason Learned wrote:That would be wonderful! Let me know when there are seeds please and I’ll send you my info. Interested in a bloody butcher corn that now grows many ears. It is not stable yet, but some are growing multiple ears out of one node. Also it is sometimes purple and white.

I was able to collect the sugar maple seeds! Let me know where I can mail them. You can PM me on here or email me, mywildwisconsin at gmail dot com.

Did you get my email last month?

Thank you

Jason

I did! I mailed your seeds out, oh, maybe a week to 10 days ago? I had a bunch to send and they all went on the same day. I know people in the states have already received their mail from me, but not sure how long it will take for yours (and one I send to Canada).

I don’t need anything in exchange when looking up info about swapping seeds by mail, it looks like most places are pretty cool as long as the seeds are labeled (and mine are in a small labeled envelope inside a normal envelope & card addressed to you). But not the U.S., I guess they might get irradiated on their way in? So, share with someone locally instead.

If I had been patient another day, I would not have needed toe write. The seeds came today! yeah!
Thank you so much,

Jason  

We already have the hillside set aside for them.