Oak saplings

A friend of ours donated about 300 acorns last October, collected from a large Oak in town. We planted most of them in our vegetable bed, as the poly tunnels at our Cromane site are not up yet. What better time to do a little experiment with a regular plastic pot. We packed the top of the soil with acorns in a single layer, covered them with a bit more soil and left them outside in a place they would get watered by the rain. As they started growing the acorns were pushed to the surface, not delaying them one bit. We are transferring them into their individual pots to continue growing until they are big enough to be planted into their forever home.

Their root system is a very simple one at this young age which makes it easy to transplant them into larger pots. Up until about 3 years old they have a single taproot which in time will become the tree’s most important root.