Blue Atlas Cedar Seedlings

[Tak]

I started this Blue Atlas Seedlings and a few took.

However there seem to be about 1 to to inchs between soil and the start of the first needles.

Should I try to burry them deeper?

I also read a post from Jonas Dupuich about cutting the tap root and treating them as a cutting. I may try that with a few in a bit though I am a bit concerned as I feel lucky to even have 5 or 6 specimens at this point hahahaha.

Any other suggestions moving forward?

For context these spent 2 months in the fridge in a mix of coco-perlite-vermiculite. About half had root showing at that point. I planted them all. Those who had the root took well. The others so far not a lot of activity.

They don't seem to appreciate wet medium either.

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

I have worked with cedar seedlings and they are finicky about their roots. I'm not sure if seedling cutting works for them, but if you grow them in a bit of organic like you are, their root systems are pretty good for nebari making.
Don't repot them the first year, depending on how fast they grow maybe the second spring is best, or maybe the third.

They stay young and vigorous for abou 6-7 years, after that they grow a lot slower in my yard.

 

[Tak]

I have worked with cedar seedlings and they are finicky about their roots. I'm not sure if seedling cutting works for them, but if you grow them in a bit of organic like you are, their root systems are pretty good for nebari making.
Don't repot them the first year, depending on how fast they grow maybe the second spring is best, or maybe the third.

They stay young and vigorous for abou 6-7 years, after that they grow a lot slower in my yard.

Awesome that's great advice thanks!

I have them in a mix of coco choir-perlite-pine bark at the moment. I'll wait and see how they turn out. I know this is a lifetime project at this point but pretty fun/exciting little experiment!

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

Do not be surprised when you find out they grow faster than expected, and they like water a lot!
Coco coir and perlite and bark sounds like a good starter mix to me. I use something similar for all my conifer seedlings, since the root system automatically goes radial most of the times, and if I keep the containers tiny for the first year, they don't make tap roots. The lack of growth and keeping them short at first, nulls the need for seedling cutting all together. The buds are low, the roots spread in all directions; that's what we do seedling cutting for.

Rowdy birds have flipped mine off of the benches a couple times, they bounced back for about 5 times, number 6 in dead summer did them in.

I wonder though, if it's a lifetime project. My seedlings picked up speed in year 3, sending out an inch or four in all branches. Cutting back an established trunk and regrowing it from a branch, sure, that takes ages. But I think this is one of those cases where you might be faster with seedlings. The roots are easy to fix, they grow quite fast, and you don't need to hack back to a weak branch; instead you work from strong stuff all the time.
Make use of the escape branch technique, it does speed up the thickening a lot!
Pruning the terminal buds of branches after the spring growth, can get them to push a second and third flush.

 

[Tak]

Awesome info thanks!

I'll try to document the journey here so perhaps others can refer to it

Much appreciated!

JP

 

[Tak]

Update on the blue Atlas Cedar seedling process.

Germination :

Had about 75% rate of success by doing the following :

Soaking seeds in water for 24 hrs. Then put in a ziploc bag of slightly moist mix of 1/3 of each Perlite, Vermiculite, Coco choir.

In the refrigerator. Seeds started sprouting after 1.5 month. After 2 months almost all seeds had sprouted.

I did two batches. What I found out is that humidity in the medium was very important. I added just enough water to start seeing sings of condensation form on the inside of the bag. The medium almost looked dry. Any more than that and the results were not as good and I started seeing signs of mold.

Planting :

Once I saw a half inch long sprout emerge, I planted into the coco-perlite-bark mix described above.

Suffered some losses again. Most likely due to watering. They are super tempermental. Too dry and the seed stalls, but water too much once and the seedling rots and fails at the base.

I lost about 10-20 percent of seedlings that way after the first set of leaves had opened up and they looked healthy and growing strong, all of a sudden out of nowhere they rotted and failed at ground level.

From what I found the substrate can never be water logged and needs to stay on the lightly dry side. Waiting for the top half inch to dry out was too late. I found giving them just a few drops once the surface looked dry seem to work.

I wonder if there isn't a nutrient or calcium deficiency at play there as I water with very soft water and didn't add much in term or fertilizer other than a little sea weed fertilizer.

I had a few leftover sprouted seeds that I tried putting together in a larger pond basket to start a future raft and the result was abismal in that one (2/8)


Definitely not easy but I should be left with a few trees.

So far I count my success rate as about 40% from seed started to seedling still alive.