Collecting Hedge Maple (Acer campestre)

[pweifan]

I'll be collecting a Hedge Maple (Acer campestre) in the next week. I was wondering how root cutback much they tolerate. @rockm let me know I wasn't aggressive enough when collecting a hornbeam 2 years ago and I want to make sure I don't make the same mistake twice. @AlainK, I know you have a lot of experience with Hedge Maples, what's your opinion? I'm thinking since they can grow from root cuttings, they can probably tolerate aggressive root trimming, but I just wanted to confirm. Thanks in advance!

Scott

 

[pweifan]

I collected the tree tonight. I was losing daylight so I'm going to pot it up tomorrow. Does anyone have an opinion on if I should bare root it?

 

[aml1014]

In my experience maples in general can handle being bare rooted and recieve heavy root reductions. I'd just make sure theres a good handful of feeders and it should be good.

Aaron

 

[pweifan]

Thanks, Aaron! I've got a 12" x 12" training box ready to go, but I think I might need to build a bigger one. I'll have to see how many feeder roots there are and go from there. Thanks again for the help. Good luck with all your new collections this year. I'm totally jealous of that sweet hookup you've got

 

[Tieball]

How did this tree turn out during the 2017 season?

 

[pweifan]

Thanks for checking in I started a thread for it here.

It grew well this season. One of my Hornbeams got a some sort of fungal issue and I think this tree did as well right at the end of the season. I sprayed with Daconil twice about a month apart. Sometime about mid-October I moved the tree close to the garage to semi-protect it from an early frost. While it was there, my daughter's puppy dug almost all of the substrate out of half of the growbox and chewed on the exposed wood a bit I found it a few hours later, and did my best to put everything back together again. I'm not sure how to handle this one in the spring. I was planning on cutting back the top pretty strongly and cutting the roots back as well. Should I not do this now? Maybe just do the top only?