Seedlings are a lot of fun. Here are some of mine, from the shade table which only gets a couple hours of sun during the day. Almost all of these are maples. Lets see some of your seedlings from this year!
Quite true! I didn't have any luck with Acer tegmentosum, but I have a few A. elegantulum, and dozens of A. buergerianum: I also have Carpinus Koreana, Carpinus laxiflora, Pinus thunbergi, Malus micromalus and a few Sequoia sempervirens.
Great. This year I planed to try again seedlings if I get enough seeds. Three years ago I got quite nice dissectums but nothing really great. One question (a dumb one for you) : on a same lot of seeds (seeds from the same acer) can we get some very different seedlings ?
I do find that certain maples tend to come quite true here, A. davidii or buergerianum for example, most seedlings are the same. Within the palmatum section there is an enormous amount of variability, which is what's so fun. Alain, 2 years ago I had good germination with micranthum, this year almost nothing. I guess the years are quite variable with respect to viability. (Last year I had everything in seed trays, the mice ate virtually the whole thing. I dutifully put the trays out this spring, but over all of them all I got was a couple of A. argutums, which are very nice indeed.) Those elegantums are gorgeous, are the 1st or second year? What do you give them to get that kind of growth? -E
It's their first year, amazing growth isn't it? I used "Terra Grow"two or three times, then Solabiol "Biostimulant aux algues" a couple of times. So I didn't really used a lot of fertilizer, and my other seedlings had the same treatment so I think it's a characteristic of the species - or maybe they better react to this kind of fertilizers (?). It's hard to draw conclusions without the necessary hindsight given by several years of experience and an important number of seedlings that would enable one to make comparisons. I will add that I use a rather free-draining mix (pozzolane, 1/4 planting mix, 1/3 coarse sand) to which I add some activated charcoal when putting them in small pots, after removing them form the "grow-tray".
Interesting, thanks for the info. Yes, the elegantums really are amazing! I've started using super thrive, I got some from England that wasn't too expensive to ship. I guess that's like the solabiol basically. I haven't been using any fertilizer on seedlings, but I may start; your buergerianums are much more developed than mine. I too use a very coarse mix, about 50% pine bark with pouzzolane, sharp sand, partially composted coco, some cocoa shells. Centre Leclerc sells very low quality pine bark, perfect for these purposes! :) I always feel funny ordering from the sort of shop you link to! :)