Obsessed w. Yellow-Cedar in eastern Quebec

[seedling]

Congratulations on your new baby yellow cedars! I have found PRT trees to be exceptional in quality. I normally have >95% survive the initial planting.

Are not the trees in cold storage and you can wait a few weeks to ship?

PRT seedling awaken extremely rapidly once taken out of cold storage. I often see white root tips beginning growth within a week of thawing. If I had to deal with then I would unpack them, standing the bundles upright in plastic tubs or paisl and cover the root bundles with moist peat moss and store in a cool place. Not sure what temps are in your area but a couple of degrees -/+ freezing would be best. Monitor carefully and plant as soon as possible.

This is an interesting Canadian fed gov site that runs species adaptions through various climate change models and predicts future ranges. Although for long lived species like trees, climate change is a trend and process not an end point.

Canada's Plant Hardiness Site


Good luck with your trees.

Denis

Oh wow, that is a great resource site, it confirms everything I was gambling on with respect to global-warming ..and then some! I would've asked for shipping in time for early May but it ended up being planned almost directly, they might be enroute already, I think that this is more prudent too because at this point it is unlikely that they would awaken enroute in the box. I have days to decide about handling, once they arrive I was thinking of potting them temporarily into plug-trays with 2"x2" compartments and real potting soil (a blind guess), then cycling them inside/outside daily for acclimatization and to stay as close to but above 0c as conditions permit until May. I bought a 220 box, a lot more than the intial plan, so I might give some away to family members who I think could use a little 'sensitivity-training'  

[mike_belben]

seedling, it is nice to see someone your age with the excitement and fervor of someone much younger.  i wish you good luck in your foresting endeavors. 

[seedling]

seedling, it is nice to see someone your age with the excitement and fervor of someone much younger.  i wish you good luck in your foresting endeavors.

The trees thank you... I have trees in my roots so to speak, or my roots in trees. Didn't know it until a few years ago but it looks like my foresting ancestors go back almost to the roman empire in one case and back as far as maybe the 18th century in another, these on the paternal side. My maternal granpa on the other hand was a cartwright making wood coaches for the rich and for the poor, my late brother and I would sit for hours in his shop just watching him work wood without ever a single electric tool, we didn't then know about the other older heritage yet but both of us ended up loving to work and build with wood all our lives. I flew for the forestry a few years in the '60's and became kind of a fan back then but still not a real tree-terrorist just yet. That came with Enya's song about trees which got me immersed in the celtic tradition also closely weaved with forests; THAT was when it all came together I guess

[SwampDonkey]

Amazing, are you saying that there are still trees of that size in NB today?

Yes, you just gotta know where to drive.

Good luck with your yellow cypress seedlings.

[seedling]

The 30 lbs package could arrive today or Monday (don't know if Purolator ship on weekends and the 'express' tag is already in its 5th day). A week in transit at unknown temperatures is likely to give me one of 3 results

1
still frozen which I doubt although here we're still at -12 for another day or two.

2
refrozen enroute which I would not be able to tell

3
awakened which I 'think' might be shown by white shoots on root ends?

If warranted I can

A
store them in the freezer which at the warmest wanders between -2c and -11c

B
store them in the fridge which at the coldest maintains +1 to +2c pretty steady

C
pot them temporarily indoors in 2"x2" germinating trays or small pots which I probably won't have time to get but would try.

D
store outside as in a day or two outside temps enter into the +5 to -4c day/night regime

I cannot plant them because the spots that I'm eyeballing for the best snow-cover for fall and spring root frost protection are also the ones that will be last to melt off (about mid-April, forced maybe early April). I never had any ship from this far away before or with cold temperatures involved.

Any hints/suggestions?

Thanks

[seedling]

...while doing research to plant 250 trees last summer, I became OBSESSED with the idea of migrating yellow-cedar to my supposedly hostile eastern Quebec near 58n66w (many samples ARE growing here but all too far for me to visit)...

This is not a landmark but rather a marker event all the same. Received the plugs yesterday in very nice condition that spoke clearly of the amount of care that the PRT person who packed it took! But after 8 days in transit they were warmish, definitely not cold or frozen. With my fridge freezer giving -2c to -10c I got scared of that option so I put them in the fridge at 1c to 2c and that only for a single day. Today, too late to scramble for a set of pots, we rounded up whatever was on hand and potted them all. I owe many thanks to many good people, including on this forum and I'm very grateful not to mention happy.     Looks like I can neither link to my page with pictures nor upload any 

[SwampDonkey]

Good luck.

[seedling]

This is pretty much as old growth as it gets.

western red cedar 1000's of years old

(Image hidden from quote, click to view.)

northern (eastern) white cedar.  100's of years old.

I just noticed (you?) at the bottom of this one! 
WOW!

[seedling]

habitat is both dying out and being overrun while the seeds (according to my theory) can't migrate without help to other just as ideal habitats but too far away.

Meanwhile I underwent triple-A surgery from which I'm just recovering. Preparing to plant-out the potted baby trees (they're doing just GREAT BTW, so far none lost), I'd like to know more about the nature, depth and length of frost that the roots can handle. I've picked out some micro-climate spots where snow is last to leave (suggesting insulation) and where ground frost underneath is either none or barely 1 ft thick. I'm also avoiding high-wind spots where eastern spruce for example get capped from time to time.

[SwampDonkey]

The gnome in the woods.


Cedar ground, yellow cypress grows where there is lots of water seepage. Those sites do tend to get late spring frost and early fall frost outside their native range. But rarely does cedar ground get deep frost. Try it with a skidder in January, them tires will bring up some black mud.

[seedling]

The gnome is the woods.


Cedar ground, yellow cypress grows where there is lots of water seepage. Those sites do tend to get late spring frost and early fall frost outside their native range. But rarely does cedar ground get deep frost. Try it with a skidder in January, them tires will bring up some black mud.

In addition to dozens of articles dealling with the tree's sensitivity to root-frost I just read another one which instead points a finger at the specie's readiness to awake from hibernation, a readiness mentionned here by saskatchewanman with refrence to PRT seedlings. Where spring thaw comes in waves as it were, the quickly spreading root shoots expose themselves to temperature reversals which devastate the new root shoots. Concurrently in this location I have never seen any RE-freezing of the ground itself.

So I need to wrap my brains around the hibernation phenomenon as a whole, with which I'm only very superficially familiar. Is the wake-up triggred by increased insolation, air temperature, or ground temperature, or all of the above?

The species does appear to have survived the ice ages which would limit the significance of root frost during hybernation per-se.  If the potential ground-frost in the 2-3 available micro-climates that I can come up with is a factor only after ground-defrost has initiated wake-up then I have less to worry about. Real-life however tends to be more complicated...

[SwampDonkey]

Wake up with air temperature, go to sleep with loss of daylight duration.

Had a bristly locust wake up here in Feb 1981 with very mild weather. March turned cold and killed it stone dead.

[seedling]

Wake up with air temperature, go to sleep with loss of daylight duration.

Had a bristly locust wake up here in Feb 1980 with very mild weather. March turned cold and killed it stone dead.

That's good to know, I should be OK with the onset as real cold doesn't come much before winter solstice. Wake-up will be either/or, ground that was already frozen when snow fell on it might still be frozen when it melts, otherwise it may have spent the winter unfrozen and insulated.

[seedling]

Congratulations on your new baby yellow cedars! I have found PRT trees to be exceptional in quality. I normally have >95% survive the initial planting.

Are not the trees in cold storage and you can wait a few weeks to ship?

PRT seedling awaken extremely rapidly once taken out of cold storage. I often see white root tips beginning growth within a week of thawing. If I had to deal with then I would unpack them, standing the bundles upright in plastic tubs or paisl and cover the root bundles with moist peat moss and store in a cool place. Not sure what temps are in your area but a couple of degrees -/+ freezing would be best. Monitor carefully and plant as soon as possible.

This is an interesting Canadian fed gov site that runs species adaptions through various climate change models and predicts future ranges. Although for long lived species like trees, climate change is a trend and process not an end point.

Canada's Plant Hardiness Site


Good luck with your trees.

Denis

Well PRT certainly WAS WORTH THE MONEY!!!!
Been a while but I'm still kicking, currently just starting a Deutz-Fahr Dx-6.05 hot-rod restoration (estimate 2-3 years).
About my little cedars:  I'm really surprised and very happy that almost all not only survived the first year but are doing really well.  About 6 died, I accidentally ran 2 down with my backhoe, there are about 25-30 I cannot find (4-5 foot tall weed etc.)  I'll look for these in the spring, I have a rough map but didn't have time to mark all of them when planting.  The tallest one is about 3 feet, there are about 30 of these.  One type of terrain they didn't do too well in is a swampy ravine bottom with very black soil that is onl;y half a foot deep with reddish clayish mud underneath. These ones, about 20 in all haven't grown and seem to be alive and green but traumatized by something.
I think I read most of the habitat documentation and came up with a simplified version that goes like this: "plant them where the snow is last to melt" (ditches, depressions, etc).
I liked the smell, just before planting them the house was full of 200+ yellow cedars in pots. What are the chances if I replant one in a pot for indoor keeps by my bed?
Other than that, if there are any Deutz-Fahr gurus here please stay in good health, I'll need your expertise :-)

[Kodiakmac]

the lowest winter temps are now about -15c instead of -25c,

Holy Mackerel!  

So Michael Mann's hockey stick is right!

[seedling]

the lowest winter temps are now about -15c instead of -25c,

Holy Mackerel!  

So Michael Mann's hockey stick is right!

I don't know if the hockey stick is upon us yet but there will be significant yoyo episodes, short ones relatively speaking (like a few thousand years or multiples thereof) before the overcenter tumble and a slow downhill of the next 100 thousand year ice-age. But before then, if all goes well, we out here in the sticks will be selling cheap brass jewelry at the airport, we already heave the PM for it :-)