5yr Native Tree Challenge - Dingus's quercus bicolor (Swamp Oak)

LittleDingus

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This thread is my quercus bicolor...swamp oak.



I've been looking for a larger caliper chinquapin. I have some babies chinquapin in another contest thread, but I wanted something in the 2" trunk range. I haven't found any harvestable ones. I've found a nursery where I can get one, but they're field grown and a 2" trunk is going to be something like a 36" root ball to start. ~800 pounds. Way too big for me to handle!

The local mom-n-pop nursery had a few swamp oak last fall that I thought long and hard about. I really want a chinquapin but maybe swamp oak is similar enough?? I think most people would say swamp oak is "close enough". Anyway, one sold in the fall but there was something about the base of the remaining one that makes me stop and stare every time I visit that nursery! Finally, today, for better or worse, I picked it up.

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Yeah, I was "that guy" who bought something too big to fit in the vehicle he was driving. Luckily I had brought along heavy duty pruners!

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I probably shouldn't have bought this tree. Sometimes decisions aren't rational...they're emotional. I'm not going to regret it. I should have bought it 2 weeks earlier though...the timing would have been better for the abuse I was about to perform!

Now that I had it home, the goal was to comb out the fringes of the root ball and try and open it up a bit and get it into some better soil. My intention was to tease out the bottom and ends...see what kind of tap root situation I had to deal with...and gather up all the information I could to develop a 5 year plan to get this into a pot ;)

There wasn't any tap root to speak of. There was a dense mat all around the surface and lots of smaller circling roots...but nothing thicker than my pinky anywhere. I was even able to comb out the entire bottom 2 inches or so without thick roots in the way! I spent some time teasing out some of the side roots until I ended up with this:

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Which is where I stopped. This was good enough to get it into a 10 gallon grow bag.

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Since there was no tap root and no large tangle of root mass to deal with, I probably could have gone ahead and combed out everything and been done with it! I didn't though. By this point it fit nicely into a 10 gallon grow bag. I like the structure to the base as it is so I didn't feel combing out roots to get a better nebari was worth the effort. In two years, I hope to hack the bottom off shorten the root ball to something closer to 4-5"...that will remove most of the circling roots and I can comb out what's left to start taming them to fit into a pot then.

We'll see how much I regret that line of thinking in 2 years ;)

For now, I filled the grow bag with DE (NAPA 8822).

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I'm a little concerned about that cracking bark on the back. It stands out a lot more when the trunk is wet. It looks like healthy tissue underneath. I'm hoping for some buds to pop near enough and hopefully above that area to help it heal up. There are a couple of buds that look like they could "turn on" in a couple places now that the top is hacked off...but none as near that area as I would like. I hope I'm not carving out a hollow at some point down the road!

With the tree now in new soil, time to hack again! I cut to about 5' to get the tree in my car and to have a decent handle to help manage the tree while I worked it into better soil. But now...the final cut!

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The plan now is to watch it burst forth with tons of new growth! I feel it's a great plan...even if I have very little control over it's execution...
 

LittleDingus

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It brsted forth with new growth!

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Mostly from around two old branch sites. One set of growth had 5 new branches piling up...so I rubbed off the weaker 3.

One of the new branches looks to be making branches :)

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The chop has formed some callous.

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I still have hope I'll get some higher buds eventually. The current branches are directly opposite though. If I don't get anything higher up, I can maybe carve back to a fork someday. I might throw some wire on to help those branches go horizontal. If I don't get any higher buds, I might go for a wide canopy from those existing branches.

The 5 year time line really makes you think a little different...
 

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LittleDingus

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Well, dang it!

The storms last night broke one of this guy's recovery branches :(

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The tree was on what is normally the leeward side of the house, but the winds from this storm put it on the windward side. One of my cherry trees got knocked over into it which appears to be what snapped the branch :(

There are still 2 strong branches...one of them branching itself...and a third that is pretty small. Hopefully enough to power this guy through the winter.

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So, how big of a tree does one need for 10" leaves to be in scale??

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LittleDingus

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This guy isn't quite ready for winter yet. Close...but it's hanging on to its green as long as it can!

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I'll wait until at least all the leaves have dropped, but the two small branches off the trunk will almost certainly go this winter. I haven't decided if I just leave the chop alone for another year and see if anything buds near the callus near the top or if I stick with the 2 leaders and carve the chop back in the hope that it eventually heals over. Or maybe carve it with the intent of never letting it heal over?

I'm leaning towards carving it to try and heal it over and go with the two leaders. I might put it into the ground to speed that process...or I think I have the next size bigger grow bag as well.
 

Leo in N E Illinois

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You are at cross purposes. You want to thicken up your main and sub trunks, but you need more branches. If it were mine, I would prune off the apical growing tips of all your growing branches in late winter or early spring. This hopefully will activate buds higher up on your trunk. If nothing buds during the 2022 growing season, prune one more time late winter - early spring 2023. Then 2024 assume you will get no further back budding on your trunk, carve accordingly.

At least that is my 2 cents. I might skip 2023 wait, and just assume that what you have at the end of 2022 is all you are going to get.
 

LittleDingus

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This guy woke up all nice and healthy :)

I trimmed off the smaller sucker growth that was around each main branch. You can see one of the wounds here

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The two trunks are about 6' tall now and still extending.

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And we have leaf reduction!

Last June

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The largest leaf I could find today

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Yeah...I'm just being silly. But anything is better than those foot long monster leaves I had last season!

I think I've decided I like the way the 2 trunks are developing enough to carve up the remains of the original trunk with the intent to try and heal it over. That probably means taking it out of this challenge as it'll need time to heal over before I chop the two trunks, but I'm ok with that. I'll continue to track it here as long as it's alive so that people have a reference of what to NOT do to an oak :)
 
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