Meat Plow wrote:
On Tue, 10 Jul 2007 14:40:37 -0500, dpb wrote:
....
When in VA had a large yard full of huge (red, mostly) oak and the
leaves and acorns drove me nuts (so to speak, pun intended...)


I have maples, oaks, shaggy bark chestnuts and some dogwoods. The
squirrels take care of the acorns and nuts pretty well ...

They can manage to keep a few dogwoods hanging on in town where they're
more protected, but no dice on the farm. Do have one old redbud that
Mom planted when she first married Dad in early 40s. It's about 18" in
diameter of the main trunk and managed to get to _maybe_ 18-20 ft max
tall before the borers killed the main trunk. I cut it back thinking it
was dead when we moved back but never got around to pulling the trunk
and to my surprise it came out w/ renewed vigor the following spring.
I've now let it spring up more bush-like w/ a half-dozen suckers and in
the last several years they've reached 80% of the old crown height...

Folks tried a few maples and oaks but the soil isn't acidic like they
like here so they didn't make it. Hackberry and cottonwood both do
reasonably well. No that there are the "cottonless" varieties, I'll
probably put some out as they fluttery leaf like the aspen is really
nice in the wind.

We have one really nice American elm specimen that story goes came up
after the "Dirty 30s" from the roots when all the rest were killed by
the dirt/drought. I keep intending every spring to save some seed pods
but forgot again this year to collect. That's busy farming time so
little stuff like that gets set aside for more pressing things...

Anyway, in VA I would haul away one or two full longbed pickup loads of
nothing but acorns almost every year. They would be inches deep over
the entire lot -- pick 'em up w/ scoop shovel w/o any gathering together
required. Eventually, wised up and thinned the oaks considerably...

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