We had something happen just last week that really surprised me. There is a rather large pecan tree on the south side of the house that makes the small size pecans. Think about the end of your little finger. It made a bumper crop last year and had only one guy picking them, consequently there were quite a few left on the ground this spring. Well last week the came up! Yep seems like every last one. Now I've seen a lot of pecan trees come up from the nuts missed last fall picking but never in the number that we have here now.
This shot real doesn't do justice to the number of seedlings that are in our front yard. There are at least 200 baby trees.
Now if you've ever tried grafting trees the best root stock for for the grafting is going to be a hardy native tree species.
One of the local nurseries will give me $5 for each of the seedlings that make it to the one year old mark. The price goes up from there for every year older that the trees get.
The best way that I could think of to get the seedlings up and into pots is a bulb shovel. The wife just happened to be in Alexandria the day that I had the idea for potting up the baby trees. She was able to get me one at a local big box.
Just center the seedling in the opening give it a good push and twisting action till the little tree spins around with the shovel as you're twisting it.
I tried to get at least 4 inches deep on each of the baby trees that way if I did happen to not get all of the tap root, it was only a very small portion that was exposed during uprooting and re-potting procedure.
Here are the seedlings potted up and under a red gum tree on the south side of the garage. Also on the left side of this picture are some wild persimmons that I got from seeds last fall. There are 50 pecan and 46 persimmons seedlings here. Those 4 spindly little trees right up front are black locust.
The chicken found out that there were bugs and stuff in the trash bag that I used to collect the persimmon seeds last year. Once they had broken the bag open the ants moved in to eat the rotting persimmons. Along with them came a ant nest with dirt and there you have it a bag full of persimmon seedlings. The hunters around here love to plant them on their food plots.
This is the tree that all the seedlings came from the coke can for scale. The seedlings will probably be at least 3 years old before I try to do any grafting on them. I may sell them before that.
