Trooper - What state are you in? You may want to do a little research and see if your state has a program that provides bundles of bare-root seedlings at low cost. Many do.

And I would skip the peat. You want the trees to grow into the "native" soil, so why add anything else? The mulch will, over time, add organic matter, and hold moisture better than peat - when dry, peat is slightly water-repellent, and needs soaking to begin to hold water. There's NO guarantee that any rains will be really heavy. Save your money on the peat, and get more mulch if needed.

Since you seem to want to go with acorns, why not see if you can get free chippings from a tree-trimming service? They are usually very happy to have a place to dump their loads and not have to play land-fill prices. By the time the seedlings come up, the chips will have begun to break down.

A mix of acorns and the free/low-cost trees from the state should give a nice mixture of trees.

We've had a few discussions in this forum about this topic (reforesting large plots of land). There is lots of good info in those posts that should directly relate to some of your questions and might also shed light on things you haven't even considered. I'm not really sure how to find them quickly without doing a lot of searching, but I bet someone could give you the links.

And, for what it's worth, I'll second everything dibbit just said about the soil/peat.

I also agree with everything Dibbit says. Good advice there!

Resin

Thanks for the suggestions guys... I'm in central NY. I will see what kind of programs that the county has or maybe co-operative extension. The idea to use acorns is because I have read so much about trees for far away might not do as well as those that are already growning there so I figured I would use genes from trees that have been growning on the property for 100 and in come cases 200+ years.

Good thinking on local seed sources!

Resin

Several people in this forum are involved in reforestation projects. johnstaci from Missouri embarked on a large (20 acres+) reforestation project about 4 years ago. If you type "johnstaci" into the search box, you'll find dozens posts by him - reading them is like reading a book about how to tackle a project like this.

Last summer, I began planning a smaller reforestation project in southeastern VA. The advice from members of this forum was invaluable. Here is a link to my post describing the site and what I wanted to accomplish:
http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/trees/msg0810192218793.html

If you are serious about a reforestation project, contact your local forester. Foresters have knowledge about local conditions and can tell you about financial assistance programs that will help defray costs. Our forester made several site visits and offered advice about subjects I hadn't considered. Although my project is relatively small, he even offered to provide a tree planting machine! (I declined and used a planting bar.)

I planted seedlings. If you get seedlings from a state nursery, the costs are minimal and the quality is often superior to commercial nurseries. The people in this forum gave advice about the best trees for my area. They helped me find seedlings and suggested strategies to deal with problems. (For example, I used black locusts and loblolly pines as "nurse trees" between the oaks so they will grow taller and faster.)

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/trees/msg021731506695.html

Most of my seedlings came from state nurseries in Virginia, N.C. and Texas (some states sell to people who live out-of-state, others do not), and from two commercial sources.

In March, I planted approximately 1,100 seedlings. Most are doing well. The seedlings that did not do well were purchased from Musser's, a commercial nursery in Indiana, PA. I ordered tupelo/black gum, native dogwoods, Washington Hawthorns, and thornless honeylocusts from them - none leafed out, most are dead.

One more piece of advice: if you decide to go forward on a reforestation project, learn all that you can about this subject and how to proceed in your part of the country. This will help ensure that your project is a success.

Good luck,
Pam

This site is a huge wealth of knowledge and I appreciate everyone's input.

Peat is dreadful stuff. Once it dries out its a nightmare to wet again and the tree loses out,plus its frowned upon over here.
I have one oak grown from a acorn and i can tell you they're slow to grow(not Q.robur,has bigger leaves) at least in this country. Maybe they grow faster in a warmer climate? Good luck with the project!

I don't know if a Burr oak will grow in NY but I bought twenty BIG acorns on ebay and after planting them in a bed of potting soil last fall... and neglecting them entirely... most of them came up and are doing well.

This Fall, harvest all the ripe acorns you find. Do not limit yourself to only the oaks growing on your lot.

Pay attention to mature oaks around town, which are only about 20 to 30 years old. If you find any of these oaks, which you especially like, then offer the property owner where the tree is growing your service to do a one time sweep over the area where the acorns have dropped, and collect all you can find.

Do this for as many locations as you have the energy and time to collect.

Each time you bring a bunch home, immediately dump them into a bucket of water. Skim off all that float and throw them away, or grind them up and throw the ground acorns anywere you want to help enrich the soil.

Drain the water off all the acorns which sank to the bottom of the pale. Gently shake them dry, and spread them outside for the sun to finish drying. If you do this where there are animals, which feed on acorns, you may need to cover them with a mesh that is made and then installed in a manner which keeps the animals from taking them for food.

While the acorns are drying, line up a number of one gallon sized black nursery pots, which you have filled with a woody and high humus type, well draining potting soil.

Place all the pots under the shade of your mature oak trees. Then poke the acorns into the pots of soil. Space the acorns about 4 inches apart. and repeat until you have filled each pot. After doing this you will need to secure the type of wire mesh over the pots, which will keep the squirrels and other acorn loving animals from digging up the acorns.

Then leave the pots alone. Some of these acorns you have collected will sprout next spring when the new rains arrive for that year, Others will take 2 or even 3 more years before they sprout. And others will simply end up rotting and creating food for the ones which have sprouted.

Each Spring, whenever you see any that have sprouted, begin to watched them closely and transplanted the ones into individual one gallon pots, which end up growing tall enough for their tops to touch the mesh you installed over the pots to keep the squirrels out. Make certain that once some of the acorns have sprouted, and if the spring rains are not frequent enough, you have kept the pots watered only enough to keep the potting soil just moist but never soggy. For the ones which will need to be transplanted into their own one gallon sized pots, When transplanting, Make sure to keep quite a bit of potting soil around the roots and try to not disturb the roots much when transplanting.

After planting any of the sprouted ones into their own one gallon pots, inspect them each day, and keep them watered just enough to keep the soil in the pots evenly moist, but not soggy. These individually potted sprouts do not need to be covered with mesh, because the acorn eating animals will prefer acorns which have not been so transformed as these young water sprouts will have cause them to be.

Keep these one gallon sized sprouted trees watered and under the mature oaks shade until late winter, or early spring, just prior to them breaking dormancy. At that time you can cut the bottoms out of the pots and plant these trees pot and all in a well draining and humus rich virgin soil nursery bed, which you have pre-installed in an area, which receives full morning and noonday sun and hottest part of the afternoon shade. Keep these beds watered enough for the soil to remain evenly moist, but not soggy. Also they will do better if the ground in the nursery bed is mulched with lightly shredded oak leaves which you collected from your mature oak trees earlier that winter.

After these trees you plant in the nursery bed have grown well during the following Spring, Summer, Fall, and most of the winter of that year, then in late winter just prior to them breaking dormancy, dig out enough soil to expose the remaining sides of the one gallon pots around the tree's rootball, and cut the sides of those pots in a manner which will allow you to completely remove the pot without disturbing much the young tree's root ball and tap root. This step should not be too hard to accomplish since earlier you had already removed the bottoms of the pots.

Fill the nursery bed soil back around the tree's root ball, and continue caring for the trees until they are the size you want them to be before you are willing to transplant them to their place where you want them to grow on your property. Just make certain that once they reach that size, you do not try to transplant them until they have gone dormant. With oaks, since so many of them do not drop their leaves in the fall, they usually transplant better in the late winter or early spring, just prior to them breaking leaf bud. I like to bare root transplant my young oaks that are grown in a nursery bed by the time their their trunks are no larger than 1/4th inch in diameter. Even then be sure to dig them deeply to keep as much of the tap root as possible. Any larger of a trunk will do better if they are dug with much of the soil around the rootball still around the roots, and secured together with burlap and string. Usually the ball and burlaped ones end up with their tap roots cut shorter than I like to see done with Oak trees. Of course most tree farms commonly cut that size and even thicker trunked oaks tap roots much shorter than I prefer, and if planted properly those trees usually seem to have adjusted well enough, even inspite of that practice.

**************

If the Mature oak trees on your lot produce lots of young water sprouts from acorns they have dropped under their canopies, simply dig them up when they are about 6 inches tall. take lots of dirt with them, dig down deep enough to get all of the young tap root, and disturb the roots as little as possible. Then transplant them in your field wherever you want them to grow.

The best ones of these little sprouts to dig and transplant are the ones which still are connected to the spit open acorn from which they grew. When transplanting dig and handle, throughout the transplant process, the sprout in a manner, which will not dislodge the acorn that the sprout still needs to feed on once it is first transplanted.

Katrina's advice is excellent.

However, if all you want to do is to plant acorns out in the field(s) and let them take their chances (I assume having spread your mulch in the areas you want to plant) then you can do that. You will have no control over what sprouts when or where, and NO control over predation (deer, bunnies, squirrels, etc.), but enough oaks should grow to make your forest. The only exception to a total hands-off attitude I might make under the circumtances is if deer start nibbling or rubbing on them (the latter on older saplings). Then I might either cage them or use one of the deer repellent sprays (just remember to alternate the brands, so they don't learn to ignore the repellent).

Good luck on your project - please do report back on how it goes!

The advice on local acorns is sound. But with fifty acres to plant, may I suggest spending a hundred dollars or so with "OikosTreeCrops" for some oak seedlings? They have a wonderful selection of interesting hybrid oaks that might make for a beautiful forest and they only cost about $8 each...and cheaper in bulk. Also, if some future oak blight comes your way, some or most of the hybrids should have some resistance.

From their site:

"The tendency of oaks to cross-pollinate with one another creates hybrids. Hybrid oaks are fully fertile, self-reproducing crosses of two distinct species. For the last 25 years, Oikos Tree Crops has maintained a hybrid oak planting for the sole purpose of producing the most vigorous oak seedlings. Selections have been made from thousands of seedlings produced from both wild and cultivated trees. What started as a simple horticultural curiosity has resulted in some distinct improvements. The results have been dramatic. Here are just a few of them: Faster growth rate: Exhibiting two to three times the growth rate of pure species. (Without supplemental irrigation and fertilizer.) Precocity: Acorns begin bearing in 4-8 years from seedling compared to 15-25 years in pure species. Ecological adaptability: Adaptable to different soil types and climates exhibiting greater vigor even if the conditions are not optimum. Heavy Acorn Production: Some selections produce spur type fruiting or dense branching that greatly increases the yields per individual tree. The very first hybrid oak was discovered in 1812 by the French botanist Francois Andre Michaux. At the time it created controversy concerning whether it was a distinct new species. Since then, it has been generally accepted that hybrid oaks represent a unique facet of the oak world."

Here is a link that might be useful: Oikos Tree crops

My father died in late 2005, but he became very good at growing many kinds of oak, as well as other nut-bearing trees, in very much the same fashion as Katrina1 intimately and thoroughly described.

The squirrels are absolutely RUTHLESS on his property...to the point that some of them would even seem to learn how to 'work' themselves around the ( somewhat distant) edges of the black plastic mesh that covered his 1 and 2 gallon containers, containing acorns !!

...like they have some sort of wierd predisposed 'nut sonar', in all sorts of places where they couldn't have obviously even PLANTED them !!!

(:

Bur oaks will, indeed, grow in NY. In fact, they're native to much of the state.

I think the OP is spot on about maintaining the genetics of the magnificent old oaks already on the property. However, I would also bring in some seedlings from reputable nurseries, too.

I sink my black pots with acorns and young sprouts, into the ground. Dirt kept the temps even, didn't allow the pots to dry out like they did when above ground.

I do fence them over winter, the rabbits have been relentless the last couple winters with heavy snow cover. The ones I planted out in my field were stem trimmed off at ground level. The fenced ones were fine. A big under taking with the quantity you talk about! In my woods area, some of the new seedlings did just fine by themselves.

A suggestion would be to mix your trees with other hardwoods, perhaps Hickory, other nut trees. Both get along in my small woods area. Locally they grow Chestnuts, but as a production tree. Could be a nice addition though. Beech is supposed to be a good tree for wildlife in the forest, nice wood. Just an idea.

The Oaks hybridizing natually was interesting. Not an idea I had heard before. Might be very useful in woodlot production, reforestation projects for quick cover with that speedy growth rate.