Seedling Maintenance

In between all the excitement this week, I've been doing some maintenance on the TreeProject seedlings.

The seeds were all sown in February, and some are big enough to plant out now. Others had poor germination rates. Only 2 seeds germinated in two whole boxes of Yellow Box, Eucalyptus melliodora. The Landcare group they are for provided the seed, but apparently the seed was not fresh. I've had to fill those two boxes with transplants of other species. Some of the other species have had rather patchy germination. This box, for example, is mixed swamp and manna gums (E. ovata and E. viminalis), although looks like it is mainly manna gums. There are 9 or 10 tubes where nothing came up, so I've transplanted a few, but they are a long way behind the trees which did germinate:

You can see some of the transplants at the front. It's obvious that they are not going to be ready to plant out when they should be (in a couple of months).

This is a box of swamp gums (E. ovata):

The maintenance involves taking each tube out, trimming off roots sticking out of the bottom, ensuring there is only one plant in each tube, and keeping an eye out for any pests. I still have about 3 boxes to do, so I'm glad we are having this lovely patch of warm weather. But it means I do have to keep watering the seedlings as it is so long since we had rain.