The customer who send me the sequence of photos shown in the previous post sent me another text last week: “Another one popped out today.” These are Chinese chestnuts from Mossy Oak’s Nativ Nurseries, planted in spring 2014 and protected with 4ft tree tubes.
I love it when customers can tell me the exact day a tree emerges from a tree tube. Hey, watching your trees grow in their tree tubes is a whole lot more relaxing and rewarding than 99% of what’s on TV these days! Here’s the latest to emerge:
Another Chinese chestnut (planted as 18″ seedling spring 2014) emerges from a 4ft tree tube. Note the glossy leaves and straight stem! (Click to enlarge)
Two things to note here. First, notice how straight the stem is – only a slight zig zag characteristic to chestnut trees. One myth is that chestnut trees grow with spiral stems in tree tubes. That might have been true in the past with the old un-vented tubes, but it is not true with today’s vented tubes.
Second, when you see those light, bright green glossy leaves in the tubes (sometimes tinged with red) you KNOW that the tree is just screaming up the tube with very fast growth. I call those glossy leaves supercharged growth leaves. If there happened to be an un-tubed Chinese chestnut seedling planted next to this one (and there’s not because this customer will never plant another tree without a tree tube!) you’d notice very different leaves: Darker green, thicker, smaller and duller. Stress leaves. Leaves whose primary concern is conserving moisture first, photosynthesizing second.
In tree tubes seedlings don’t have to “worry” about stress, so they can “concentrate” on growth. Am I anthropomorphizing too much. I don’t think so. Trees are smarter than we think in the complex way in which they respond to environmental conditions.
And they really like the conditions in tree tubes!
