Collected Oaks

[crab apple]

I have these two oak trees I dug and if I hurry up I can get a few more before the bull dozer shows up. These two are live oaks but there are also some Laurel Oaks I can get. there is a lot of good info on here about collecting oaks but one thing I'm still unsure of is if I should cut off some of the top so there isn't so lopsided, the roots really are terrible but I still want to try, if the roots survive and start greening things up this spring is there going to be too much vegetation to handle. The tree on the left dropped its leaves after 3 or 4 weeks after being harvested, the tree on the right is beginning to have its leaves die off as well but it happened sooner, like maybe two weeks. There pretty tall, 6 feet for one and 8 feet for the other one. The other trees that I can get are tall too. It seems like commercial tree movers always lop the top, Maybe I should too.

 

[Leo in N E Illinois]

I suggest removing most of the leaves by cutting the leaf petioles. Do this right after potting the tree up. Leave only a few tufts of leaves on the ends of branches. Remove 90% of the leaves. Oaks are "tardy deciduous" removing the leaves will take some of the stress off the root system, but keeping a tuft on each branch you want to keep helps to preserve sap flow. New batch of leaves should emerge after your average last frost date or when your soil temp gets high enough to trigger leaf growth.

 

[crab apple]

But leave all the branches for now? Im not going to use them in the design

 

[Leo in N E Illinois]

If you are certain you are not going to use the branches in the design, you can cut them off. But if you think you need them to help thicken or increase the diameter of your trunk, you might want to keep the branches until your trunk is the desired diameter. Its up to you.

 

[rockm]

There are no branches on either tree that will be useful in a design. Those branches are most likely dead, or partially dead anyway.

If these make it, you're going to have to lop off more than two thirds of theirs trunks to make a decent bonsai.

At this point, I'd just leave them alone and see what happens. I would NOT remove anything. The dying leaves hopefully will be replace with new shoots in the coming weeks, OR the tree will die. Messing with them now that they've been in pots for over a month will just complicate things needlessly.

You will know in a couple of weeks if you were successful when or if new growth appears.

 

[crab apple]

The larger of these oaks has a bunch of 3" sprouts coming out of the roots, should I let the root sprouts grow to help build vigor or are they taking away energy from the tree. So far the root sprouts are the only signs of life. Also if the tree should start showing growth should I reduce the canopy some, seems like to much tree for too little roots, I wish I would have reduced it some at time of harvest.