OP has delivered!!!!! Here are the pics I promised. I didn't read through all the comments again to see if I ever explained what I had done so I'll just do a quick shake down. I bought seedlings from the Idaho extension acorns from a website called acorno.com. I planted the seedlings in 1 gallon rootmaker pots, 3 gallon rootmaker bags, and some in my garden boxes. I planted the acorns in the little 2.5"x 2.5" rootmaker pots and a few in my raised beds. I planted bur, n. red oak, and a couple pin oak acorns. The seedlings were all bur oak. I build a little potting bench from scrap wood I had lying around and put all of my pots on top of that on the east side of my house. They get good sun until about 1300 hours then shade. The ones I planted in the garden boxes get full sun and there isn't great drainage so the box soil is basically always wet. (Its my first year with those so I have some work to do this fall/spring getting the drainage issues figured out.) We have had the hottest summer on record and have been in the mid 90's basically since the beginning of June. I have tried to water the potted plants every afternoon when I get home from work and have only missed a few days. As you can see, the small potted acorns have all died. I think that the pots were just too small to store moisture during the day heat and dried out before I could get to watering them after work. The 1 and 3 gallon potted oaks look great other than a bit of leaf scorch. The oaks planted in the raised beds seem to be doing just as well. They have some scorch but the little guys are green and have good leaves. I haven't gotten any real growth out of any of them. I'm not sure if its the heat, lack of water/ too much water, or anything else. I am not sure where to go from here. This was totally just an experiment but I need to decide what to do with them before winter. I have a spot in the back south west corner of my yard that is just dirt. I haven't gotten around to doing flowers there yet and have considered planting my oaks in tidy rows there to have them mature a bit and bare root them when they get 4-5 feet tall. I still haven't decided on that though. Here is a link that might be useful: Oak Seedling Album

I would just guess that the tree needs to conserve energy, or the stuff others here have said. My Chestnut oak used to have TONS of acorns every year, BUT, the last couple of years it has been either like last year, NO acorns at all, and this summer I can see a few here and there, and they just may abort before they become a decent size. And, I have NO idea why, I just can guess that the tree needs a break. I had seen NO catkins on it at all this spring, so, I am shocked it even has a few here and there this year so far. The deer have gotten used to the feast of acorns each summer. They still have the apples to eat though. It shouldn't be a big problem. I hope not anyway. I have a Live oak that has had a couple of tiny buttons on it and it NEVER keeps them, or they never get any bigger, so, no biggie, that LO is NOT very old anyway.

Just a note to sayÃdon't underestimate the acorn-dropping efficiency of those squirrels. In the house where I used to live, the neighbor next door had eight huge walnuts in his back yard. I'm talking big, old, healthy trees, 40-50 feet, and a couple of feet in diameter. In a good walnut year those trees would produce bushels of nuts. More than once, I've watched three our four squirrels get into the trees, start at the top, and in a single day, literally cut and drop every single nut. Absolutely amazing! Of course once all the nuts were down, it would take them days to clean up the messÃeven though I usually helped by going over and picking up five or six bushels of the dropped nuts. This, BTW, was never more than a third of the nuts on the ground, which gives you an idea of their numbers. I'd dry and hull these gathered nuts, then crack and pick out a few quarts of nutmeats for things like fudge, cakes, and for adding to cereals. The remainder of the hulled walnuts I I would crack or just put out whole in my backyard shelf-feeders for the squirrels during the winter months. So while you may, indeed, be losing acorns to a dry or early autumn, it could just as easily be a handful of squirrels with a go-get'um work ethic.

In my experience which is just with a couple oaks, ( Burr and English) direct sowing where the tree is to grow is the best thing I know of. Those 2 trees are growing great, the Burr did about 4-5 ft in the 2 years from acorn sowing, usually after a transplant, the first year is about 5 inches max height growth, vs. 2-3 ft from acorn, no watering needed in a dry spell. The tree will be stalled for a year or 2 to replace the root mass, to resume the maximum growth in a potted tree. I have dug up trees about 1-2 ft tall in the past, and the oaks have such deep roots, I swear they went to China. I'm talking a 1 foot tall red oak Q. Rubra, with a root system that I never did find the end of, and I THINK the red oaks don't have as deep a taproot as a White oak family oak. You can get an oak in a pot and it will transplant fine etc. but, if you've got the acorn, you know where you want the tree, you are prepared to protect it from critters til spring, it just makes sense to direct sow, maybe refridgerate a spare acorn or 2. I guess if your in a critter riddled area, you've got no choice but to pot, but if you can direct sow, that is the best in my opinion. And I have a limited amount of experience, I would say about 20 years since I planted my first oak. The first oak I planted is about 40+ ft tall, and is putting out acorns, it is a Q. Rubra, or Q. Velutina, likely Velutina, no real fall color. I will add that Sycamores can lose a ton of roots and bounce back like nobody's business. Poaky1 Oh, I have a Q. Alba from an acorn but it in a lot of shade so only did a foot from acorn, but I'm talking nearly full shade, the tree that shades it is on it's way out likely within 10 years, and the Q. Alba can hang in there in shade til this other tree croaks. But of course all this I said is for my yard, and YMMV. Poaky1