A customer just called from the Florida panhandle. Not to order anything, he was just busting to tell me about his trees. He planted about 100 sawtooth oak seedlings on March 1st. He covered 99 of them with tree tubes (he planted one in his yard and left if unprotected for purposes of comparison). He marked the tree tubes with the height of the seedlings when planted – on average 12 to 18 inches tall.
Since March 1 – during an extremely and unusually wet but not especially warm spring – the seedlings in the tree tubes have grown about 20 inches on average. Imagine how fast they will grow when the sun actually comes out and the weather warms up!
Oh, and the one sawtooth seedling he planted in his yard without a tree tube, here’s how the gentleman describes it’s activities: “It’s just sitting there not doing anything.”
Sitting there not doing anything. That’s a pretty apt description of two things: Seedlings not protected by tree tubes… and me!
