renaissance_caveman's Acorn to Oak Tree Thread

[renaissance_caveman]

I collected about a dozen acorns from a small-leaved white-oak near me in Brooklyn (maybe an English Oak?). I pushed them into some peat/perlite mix in the fall and several have come up so far.



And these three are squirrel-sown. Before I heard about this contest I pulled and threw away at least a dozen more of these. I think there are a few more coming up in various pots around the garden so I'll probably add those to the thread later.

I think two of these are willow oaks and the third might be a swamp white oak (there are a lot of these on the street in Brooklyn and the squirrels seem to plant a lot of them in my pots). The middle one has an interesting red tinge which saved it from the compost bin, I'm interested to see if that lasts when the foliage matures.




Looking forward to developing these! My plan is to get them into large containers as quickly as possible. I'll probably end up putting the 3 most promising in 15-20 gallon grow bags.

 

[renaissance_caveman]

Ended up with 18 seedlings. 13 of the volunteers (a mix of willow oak, swamp white oak, and some kind of red oak) and five from the suspected Quercus robur (though the Parks department says it's a generic "white oak" - #3659624). Either way, the tree has small leaves which I'm hoping works out well for bonsai. The parent tree:



I'm planning to slip pot the seedlings into larger containers at least once this summer to thicken them as quickly as possible.

 

[renaissance_caveman]

Here's everything near the end of the first season:

 

[renaissance_caveman]

So far, I think the english oaks are the most promising. The leaves are already quite small so I think the scale will eventually be pretty good.



I was very aggressive with root pruning the seedlings this spring. Before:



After:


Several didn't make it, but the ones that survived seem to be bouncing back well. In future I'll try removing the tap root in the first season. I started a few this spring with that approach but they won't be part of the contest.

Here are a couple examples of the other survivors: