Saturday, September 4, 2010

Nitrogen, Climate Change, Drought, and Tree Physiology.

by NNadir

We're having a terrible drought - coupled with outbreaks of extreme temperatures - here in Western New Jersey, and it seems to be killing some very old and very beautiful trees.   It's very sad.

From time to time in autumn, my boys and I hike some of the protected forests here, and we gather nuts - nuts we don't know, as well as nuts we do know, like acorns - and plant them in our yard.   It will be interesting to see what this year has wrought on the, um, nut harvest.

A lot of the oaks from last year's hikes seem to have taken.    We had about 15 oak seedlings - and tried to water them to keep them alive.   Some were killed by extreme heat on the days we just couldn't get to watering them, a few were trashed by animals, but I would say that about half of them will get to try out next year.



continued at Daily Kos....