Alaskan Birch stick in pot

[berzerkules]

It's another newbie stick in pot thread. I'm bored, I post stuff. Sorry not sorry

I dug something like 8 birch this spring all looking something like this of various sizes, more or less roots and no branches. Just experimenting with what I can get away with and what I can expect from future collections. They are all pushing growth but this one is in the top 3 that pushed the hardest.

Collected May 19 2022 right before bud break. A little under 30 inches top to bottom.

look at that garbage first pic! that's how you start a thread folks.

Wired into a basket in a pumice heavy mix with some collected/shredded sphagnum moss and a little bit of pro-mix. fng using organics on collected tress...


50 days later we have a dozen shoots from 12 to18 inches and a few roots popping out the bottom of the basket. Feeling good about this one.
front I guess

You dawg I heard you like sticks in pots so I put sticks on the sick in the pot. Stick around and you might just see some sticks on those stick on the stick in the pot.

right


back

left

 

[berzerkules]

We got roots coming out the bottom of the basket, that's a good sign.

We also got saw fly leaf miner larva. They're unstoppable, fn thousands of them. Late June through July is a bad time to be a birch. No Bueno.

 

[DavidBoren]

Strong root development should give it a decent chance to push through the pests... a little struggle never hurts... builds character. Any leaves lost to bugs it's just pruning. Lol.

Cool little experiment. Keep us posted.

 

[Joe_B]

That looks fun

 

[berzerkules]

Strong root development should give it a decent chance to push through the pests... a little struggle never hurts... builds character. Any leaves lost to bugs it's just pruning. Lol.

Cool little experiment. Keep us posted.

Since all my birch collected last year survived I'm not too worried about the leaf miners. I'm only in my second year doing this and last year I had a lot more damage to my birch from leaf miners because I kept all my trees close to a big birch in the yard. I moved them as far away from the birch in my yard this year and the damage was significantly less. Next year I might make a shade cloth structure for my birch so I can keep them protected from late June through late July. After that it should be safe to move them out.

That looks fun

It is fun. I did a little experiment this year digging birch trunks with very little to no roots and no branches. Kind of pushing them to see what I can get away with when collecting. I dug 8 birch in 2 days, they were all between 1 inch and about 5 inch diameter. The hard part is keeping up on removing the suckers that sprout from the base and below the soil line. Of the 8 I collected all have roots coming out the bottom of the pot but there are maybe 4 I will keep. Most of the ones I will get rid of either sprouted too low or only a couple shoots sprouted in places I didn't want. It's a crap shoot but at least I learned I can dig a birch stump at the right time of year with basically no roots and make them survive. Getting growth where I want is a totally different matter. I did try to scar some dormant nodes and wrap the trunk up like an air layer but use BAP instead of IBA. There was no noticeable difference, some sprouted high, some low and some everywhere in between.