What can I do to help my oaks along?

[Teddy12b]

Some Pictures:

Sawtooth Oaks:






Apple Cocktail:

2-24-2013 when I planted it:


In Between:




Where it was last weekend:



Little Red Oak:


Area & Layout Photos:

[Teddy12b]

I'm not sure if those pictures helped or hurt the point I was trying to get across. I needed to use a better camera to show that the trees are small, but healthy. The layout isn't tightly packed in there, and I'm going to be buying a "big boy" pretty soon so I can clean up the last of the weeds around my trees next week. I hope it shows how I staked the trees down and whether it's right or wrong, it's worked.

[Teddy12b]

Here are some more pictures from when I planted them back in March.















I just found these pictures last night. These are from March this year when I planted all the trees. Many of the trees were tiny, but many others were decent sized starter trees. Hopefully this helps the

[applestar]

Where do you live again? (it's best if you put that in your profile)

I was looking for good links to more info to explain nurse trees and found this which may be helpful:
https://www.oakgov.com/msu/Documents/pub ... eruses.pdf

Here's a link about succession in plant communities:
https://www.marietta.edu/~biol/biomes/succession.htm

[Teddy12b]

I'm in the northeast corner of Indiana. Most maps show it as zone 6, some as zone 5.

I'm looking forward to reading the links, thanks.

[Teddy12b]

As far as mixing in some different trees goes, I've got PawPaw's, nectarines, and apricot's coming this fall. Hopefully that'll help.

[tomc]

Water, water, water. and as you note don't run over them with the brush hog. And lastly mulch. By the truck load from the saw mill.

I would plant pawpaw seed fresh and gooey, and let them grow on their own. They do not transplant well. if you simply must grow pawpaw in beds and transplant. Do your transplanting when they are fully dormant. A 10% success rate is about as good as I can dependably get.