Collecting in Northern NM

[Hartinez]

Spent the weekend at 9000 feet with @Colorado on the hunt For spruce, fir, and aspen with 10 wilding permits in hand. Weather and company was excellent, colors were extraordinary, and the trees were plentiful. All in all over the weekend we walked about 12 miles and took around 25000 steps. Heres a little photo dump of the area and some of my trees. Im sure @Colorado can chime in at some Point with his finds.

 

[Hartinez]

Most of what i got is Doug fir

This is my favorite collection. Massive trunk, great movement, small foliage and lots of obvious traumas the tree has been through over the years.

This one is really interesting with a huge abrupt natural bend and a great natural Jin.

 

[Hartinez]

This is the pondy I dug. I had no intention of digging a pondy because I dont love the needle size. Then I found this massive trunk that should be in perfect scale with the trunk and can be made into an excellent formal tree.

 

[LuZiKui]

Awesome trees! Fingers crossed you have 100% success rate.

So it looks like you guys have them wrapped sitting there at camp. Do you do anything special with them or just try to keep the root ball moist until you leave to head home? Any ill effects of digging a tree on your first day and having it sit for a couple days until you get it home to pot?

 

[Shogun610]

Yes m8 , very cool

 

[Hartinez]

Awesome trees! Fingers crossed you have 100% success rate.

So it looks like you guys have them wrapped sitting there at camp. Do you do anything special with them or just try to keep the root ball moist until you leave to head home? Any ill effects of digging a tree on your first day and having it sit for a couple days until you get it home to pot?

So far my fall collection success with these elongating species is dam near 100%. I do make sure to time collection so that they only stay wrapped and un-potted for 1 day. We scouted Friday, collected Saturday, went home Sunday. Also, the soil was so moist and loaded with mychroryza that they were plenty happy for that day. We did pour some water into the wrapped ball but that’s about it.

 

[Colorado]

Had a great time collecting with @Hartinez !!! He is a very skilled collector. I am very gracious for the lessons and techniques I have learned collecting with him! And we found some pretty awesome trees.

This is my first time with fall collecting but I’m going to give it a shot and protect these trees as needed through the winter. I also have a heat mat and am going to get some heat tape to experiment with.

Didn’t get the best photos but I snapped a couple quick ones on the repotting bench.

Englemann


(big) White Fir


Douglas Fir


Aspen


Also collected a Rocky Mountain Maple but didn’t snap a pic. Will be watching these trees closely! The conifers are planted in pure pumice, I just used a little “junk mix” on the top layer to even out the soil line because I was running short on pumice.

The aspen and RMM are in junk mix mixed with a little nursery mix for more water retention.

 

[Hartinez]

The goal was to search rock outcroppings looking for pockets to pull from. Some of these came from those pockets, others were surprisingly in flatter open areas.