LittleDingus
Omono
In early 2019, my wife, daughter and I went to Louisiana for a long weekend. Among other things, we saw quite a number of amazing live oak! I picked up some acorns from under this one. They must not have squirrels in Louisiana...or maybe live oak acorns aren't tasty? There were acorns everywhere! That doesn't happen here. Unless it's a mast year, I need to pull them off the trees before the wildlife can!
I didn't expect them to sprout. And they didn't
There were no signs of acorns still on any of the trees we saw so I was sure they had been on the ground too long to have a shot at germinating. We were there in January so I figure they probably fell a few months earlier. They did sink. And I did look as closely as I could for insect holes. But they eventually rotted.
Since that failed, I ordered a 6" pot full of live oak acorns that had germinated but were still tiny. Sheffield's was out at the time so I turned to ebay. It was "30" in a pot already germinated or 5 acorns un-germinated for the same price. I went with the "30" as that seller was from Louisiana...I can pretend they are from the same tree, right?
The pot was literally a 6" pot that was wall to wall acorns each with ~6: of "trunk". Half of them had even fallen out of the pot during shipment. I counted over 40 in total.
I shoved ~20 them into better soil and pots, tossed the rest, and proceeded to watch the few leaves they had all wither and die Even most of the "trunks" died off since they were still softwood.
But...they're oaks! Acorns store a crapton of energy! I left them alone, and, about a month later, most of them started growing new trunks
I'm sure I have pictures, but I'm not very organized sometimes Given I tried my collected acorns, gave up on them, found and ordered more, etc...that must have been late summer, early fall of 2019 at the earliest though. I wintered most of them in my garage in a grow tent under LED lighting for the first winter. A handful I kept indoors in bright south east facing windows.
Today, I still have ~15 of these guys that are now entering their 2nd or 3rd growing season depending how you count the great rebirth of 2019
To celebrate...and, well, because I have too many and need to pare down...I picked a loner and shoved it into a tiny pot 
This is the one I picked:
Most of the ones I have are in community grow bags where I have 4-5 trees in a single 5 gallon grow bag. This one was in a 1 gallon bag all alone.
Most of my root ball pictures are blurry Wet dirty hands and a cell phone don't mix! But here's one to give an idea:
I recently bought yet another @sorce pot...well, this one was bought along with a few others. I raked @sorce over the coals during one of his sales! Or I like to think I did! This one was a last minute..."what the heck, it's 50% off" click to dump it into my basket full of goodies The full sized tree...which is really quite small for an oak...looks pretty ridiculous in it!
But, after some chops??
OK, still a little ridiculous looking.
I kept those two leaves hoping to keep the branch...plus, they were kind cute up there all by themselves. I shouldn't have bothered...they fell off on their own anyway.
The repot and chop was done 3 weeks ago. Most of these guys had already burst new buds. This one was no exception. The new buds had extended to 3-4 leaves already in some cases. I really should have done this work about 3-4 weeks earlier!
Today, despite being potted back into a new container a fraction of the size it used to be in...AND that I chopped it later than I probably should have...it's going strong!
The new growth feels a little too tender for my fumble fingers to wire safely. I'll give it a few more weeks. I'm hoping to wire them out into something reminiscent of the medusa like branch structure many of these had when we were in Louisiana.
And yes, this guy is just something fun to futz around with while I wait for some of the other ones to grow out more! If I kill it, it's not a big loss, I have a dozen more This was mostly something to do to see "what if" while I wait...and wait...and wait on the others to grow more!
This is my current "champion"
So you see that I have quite a wait ahead of my yet. May as well have something to do to pass the time
I didn't expect them to sprout. And they didn't
There were no signs of acorns still on any of the trees we saw so I was sure they had been on the ground too long to have a shot at germinating. We were there in January so I figure they probably fell a few months earlier. They did sink. And I did look as closely as I could for insect holes. But they eventually rotted.Since that failed, I ordered a 6" pot full of live oak acorns that had germinated but were still tiny. Sheffield's was out at the time so I turned to ebay. It was "30" in a pot already germinated or 5 acorns un-germinated for the same price. I went with the "30" as that seller was from Louisiana...I can pretend they are from the same tree, right?
The pot was literally a 6" pot that was wall to wall acorns each with ~6: of "trunk". Half of them had even fallen out of the pot during shipment. I counted over 40 in total.
I shoved ~20 them into better soil and pots, tossed the rest, and proceeded to watch the few leaves they had all wither and die
Even most of the "trunks" died off since they were still softwood. But...they're oaks! Acorns store a crapton of energy! I left them alone, and, about a month later, most of them started growing new trunks
I'm sure I have pictures, but I'm not very organized sometimes Given I tried my collected acorns, gave up on them, found and ordered more, etc...that must have been late summer, early fall of 2019 at the earliest though. I wintered most of them in my garage in a grow tent under LED lighting for the first winter. A handful I kept indoors in bright south east facing windows.Today, I still have ~15 of these guys that are now entering their 2nd or 3rd growing season depending how you count the great rebirth of 2019
To celebrate...and, well, because I have too many and need to pare down...I picked a loner and shoved it into a tiny pot This is the one I picked:
Most of the ones I have are in community grow bags where I have 4-5 trees in a single 5 gallon grow bag. This one was in a 1 gallon bag all alone.
Most of my root ball pictures are blurry
Wet dirty hands and a cell phone don't mix! But here's one to give an idea:I recently bought yet another @sorce pot...well, this one was bought along with a few others. I raked @sorce over the coals during one of his sales! Or I like to think I did! This one was a last minute..."what the heck, it's 50% off" click to dump it into my basket full of goodies
The full sized tree...which is really quite small for an oak...looks pretty ridiculous in it!But, after some chops??
OK, still a little ridiculous looking.
I kept those two leaves hoping to keep the branch...plus, they were kind cute up there all by themselves. I shouldn't have bothered...they fell off on their own anyway.
The repot and chop was done 3 weeks ago. Most of these guys had already burst new buds. This one was no exception. The new buds had extended to 3-4 leaves already in some cases. I really should have done this work about 3-4 weeks earlier!
Today, despite being potted back into a new container a fraction of the size it used to be in...AND that I chopped it later than I probably should have...it's going strong!
The new growth feels a little too tender for my fumble fingers to wire safely. I'll give it a few more weeks. I'm hoping to wire them out into something reminiscent of the medusa like branch structure many of these had when we were in Louisiana.
And yes, this guy is just something fun to futz around with while I wait for some of the other ones to grow out more! If I kill it, it's not a big loss, I have a dozen more
This was mostly something to do to see "what if" while I wait...and wait...and wait on the others to grow more!This is my current "champion"
So you see that I have quite a wait ahead of my yet. May as well have something to do to pass the time
