I thought I would be nurturing our baby oaks for at least 2 seasons. While I have read various methods and recommendations on the best ways to give your baby oaks the best start in life they are not always in agreement with one another.

If I had my own land I would certainly try to grow the acorns direct in the ground and provide them with the space and protection they would need to flourish.  I am persuaded by the arguments for establishing them from the outset in their forever homes. Protect them but do not over tend to them, seems to be the message. Do not over water and do not fertilise for the first couple of seasons. The thoughts behind this is the encourage their beast of a rooting system to explore and conquer.  Healthy wide reaching roots are what makes the largest, strongest oak trees. This seems to all make sense.

However… Bearing in mind I have a terrace house with small back garden, just about enough room to swing three cats simultaneously (not that I would).  Our garden is not large enough to host even one of our oak trees once it is fully grown…  We have pots, 50 of them, all lined up along our neighbours fence.

The general principles I have applied to their care are:  Not to over fertilise the trees, although I believe they may have had a couple helpings of seaweed fertilizer early on (nothings rigid). Being in mind, that they are in pots it’s only expected that they will need to be watered regularly.  All this seems relatively straight forward – But I needed to know when would be the best time to transplant the saplings into their forever homes? So back the to the internet I trawled.

It would seem… The larger the sapling the more likely is will go into ‘shock’ and possibly not recover. For this reason it is actually best to transplant them after just one season during the Autumn. I am a little surprised, I thought I would be handing over 4-5ft saplings as you would buy in a garden centre.  But I’m open to whatever works for them. Besides, this is actually great news, I can start finding homes of these little oaks and look at growing some more next year.