名媛直播

I just bought three "started" Red Japanese Maple Seedlings. They are still in dormant stage, i.e.. they are merely "sticks" about 12-15 inches long with a ball of roots including a long taproot almost the same length as the stick. I have each of them in a pail mostly filled with top soil mixed in with perlite and moss. The perlite and moss were soaked in water for a couple of days in preparation for these seedlings. Each seedling was planted in a 5 gallon bucket, so there is a lot of room for the roots. The bottoms of each bucket were drilled with several holes for drainage.

This is my first attempt in raising Japanese Maples. Am not sure if what I've done is appropriate or correct. Your comments will be appreciated. The nursery that sold them to me had them in a cooler. Questions: How much watering should I give them? When can I expect these seedlings to begin budding out?

To be honest.. unless you are in the southern hemisphere, your first mistake was to buy these seedlings.
Plants should be in full flush by now. So when would they start growing? Not sure where you are. Here in Germany the plant shouldhave buds opening within a week or two. But as said: It is too late to have dormant plants. You have lost out on a lot of time to build rootmass, foliage etcetc. Next time just buy plants in a container with leaves, or dormat plants in winter.

There should be no need to soak all the soil components.

What moss are you using? Spaghnum could work, but I personally don't add it to the soil.

A 5 gallon container is on the large size for the plant. It is better to start with smaller sized pots, and repot every so often as the pot fills with roots. You get better usage of the available space, and the plant has better influence on the in-pot moisture.

Thanks for your speedy response. Am using sphagnum moss. We live in the Puget Sound region in the state of Washington. Temperatures are moderate; rainy season runs about six months of the year. I have a vineyard that goes dormant beginning in December, we start grape pruning in January and February, finish in March. The roots on the Maples were so large I didn't want to squeeze them into a small pot, hence , I used the large pail. I hope the trees will live. I've done business with the nursery who sold them to me before. But this is my first venture with Japanese Maples.

Leatherback is right, if you don't have leaves by now (in the northern hemisphere) then your seedlings are likely dead.

I bought some japanese maple seedlings earlier this year and had leaves by early march at the latest. Some of them showed no leaves at all by this point. It's tempting to hold on to hope that they are just late bloomers but by the end of march, I uprooted the dormant seedlings and found that the ones without leaves were dead entirely. My guess is that yours are similarly deceased.

Don't feel too badly. I am new to 名媛直播 and gardening in general and I have made my fair share of rookie mistakes. learn from them and try again next year.

science as a verb wrote: Leatherback is right, if you don't have leaves by now (in the northern hemisphere) then your seedlings are likely dead.

Hm.. Nope. Not what I meant. I meant it is a bad idea to keep plants in cold storage (fridge) for most of the spring season. You loose a lot of growth, the plant gets weaker and you have a sub-optimally rooted plant at the onset of winter. I do n't think they are dead; I realize you can keep some plants dormat quite long, if you know what you are doing.

sorry, my mistake.

A horticultural friend suggested I make a tiny scrape on the side of the seedling. If the cambium is green the seedling is still alive... I did that and saw green cambium, so the seedlings are still alive! Am hoping they will survive now. Will let you all know when the buds start breaking out! Thanks for your interest.

good advice. You have weak plants, and you start breaking the bark. Like you are ill, and we scrape away your skin to see whether you are alive.

Odd advice some people give, but this must be the strangest (yet somehow common!) avdvice imaginable..

Well...am not scraping away all the skin! Silly. We will see if these survive or not. Then , I will have learned my lesson. I see some very tiny buds that are trying to break out. This horticultural friend I referred to is THE horticulturist at this nursery. I've done business with them in the past and trust her judgement.

Good news to report. Thanks to Platinum Boarder and others... I am pleased to announce as of today that all three seedlings that I had referred to have survived! I had given up on two of them and assumed they were dead. We went on a cruise for a couple of weeks, returned today, and found that two of the seedlings have broken out with tiny leaves. The one that had broken out earlier is in great shape with many, many leaves. I am happy! Wish I could share a photo of them with you all, so you can see what they look like now...