Most of them died but theres still a dozen left leafing out as spring here has arrived. The slugs keep eating their new leaves every night, its getting frustrating.
Thats a shame, but you have a few survived. Have you tried crushed egg shells on the surface of the pots ? I use this method for slugs and it has worked for me. Wouldn't cost anything to try Soumil.
Half a dozen 'Okushimo' - I hope they will look somewhat like the real ones, and various seeds from French friends, some of them just labelled "peau de serpent" (snake bark) : Others are still waiting, including a tray of "Acer mono" that is the only one that these *%@*^ birds dug into... EDIT : all right, all right, I love the birds. But I just can't teach them where to scrap the soil...
i have that problem with the squirrels. i like them but *&^%$#@@#$%^&* yep Alain! i understand my friend.
<LOL> Actually, I love them. They wake me up in spring, a much better melody than an alarm-clock. I also love them roasted when they small, or as a "casserole" when they're bigger (honey, cider, etc.). My Dad made me love "pigeons aux petits pois", "pidgeons with peas", a traditional dish here in France. I haven't had any for some 40 years actually, and I gave his .22 rifle to a friend whose father is a hunter... Memories are much better than keeping a lethal weapon at home.
That sudden transition you made from loving their melodies to loving their meat made me chuckle lol. I love certain species of birds like jays
Yeah... The world is not only black or white, there are at least about 50 shades of grey - I heard... (Just ordered second-hand books by Thomas Pynchon. Not very weel-known in France, but it's been a long time since I've wanted to read something from him...)
Exciting day! Removed my maple seeds from cold stratification (40 days) . Theres big leaf maple, bigtooth maple, sugar maple, and one boxelder maple seed (it sprouted!) photos of all the seeds being soaked after stratification
The bigtooth maple seeds (acer grandidentatum) unexpected but welcomed, 2 actually managed to sprout! (very small white root coming out) i will cut my nails today, i didn't have a nail cutter at my moms house. Sorry for the fingers
And finally the sugar maple seeds. Only one sprouted during stratification , but they are all viable so lets see if they germinate. If not ill dig em back up and treat with low ppm ga3 all the maple species seeds are being planted in one pot (they will be transplanted eventually)
"Natural double stratification" : I was surprised to see some Acer davidii sprouting. I planted them in December 2020 and two or theree showed up in the spring of 2021, but it seems the rest of the batch needed and extra year. Lazy bones... And I'm very pleased to see that all my 'Atro dissectum' are pushing new leaves. We're not out out the wood yet, but that's encouraging. I will clean up the top a bit, and add some slow-release fertilizer and a layer of soil. And tomorrow morning, I'll wash off the sand ! ;-) It hasn't rained for quite some time, or maybe 1 or 2 millimetres, and we're going to have a dry, sunny week here.
That is good news, they look great. These are so tricky: no fertilizer and they don't grow, then keel over. Too much and they grow, then keel over. I don't have any going at the moment, the last was a really nice, very black and finely dissected plant that got into a 7.5l pot before, erm, keeling over. Here's one of last year's A. granatense seedlings, with another coming up in the pot. Could be another granatense, or a random JM that landed in the pot. Nothing happening in the fridge yet.
I wasn't sure what "keel over" meant, so I checked : ...to fall over suddenly: He finished the bottle, stood up to leave, and keeled over. Sometimes too big a pot means the death of the tree, for whatever reason. How old was it when it died ?
Yeah, it was like 6 years old. Delicate maples like that I never, ever try to over pot them. It would have filled up a 5l pretty convincingly before I moved it up. Keeled: some like to speak of a "loss of turgidity" which I find rather overly ribald, but "keeled over" has a nice generality about it: "My grandma hit her 91st birthday running and then keeled over." Meaning, kicked the bucket, bought the farm, pushed up the daisies. ;)
Acer pubinerve (syn. A. wuyuanense) have started strouting. I tried them in 2020 and just about all sprouted. I use the frig method and put the rest outside in seed trays this year. Surprisingly they have all started to sprout. The ones outside are a little ahead of the ones in the frig. Some of the frig seeds Outside seeds 2020 seedlings
