Keep in mind too that anything you touched with the ivy's oil on your hands can give you a rash for, well, years. So wipe everything you think you might have touched with rubbing alcohol. Once I touched poison ivy with the inside of my forearm without noticing. I went to bed without washing it off and it got all over my stomach, my side, my chest, and my face, as well as a light rash all over (my doc said it was a systemic reaction.) It was funny because the pattern was quite clear - the shape of the rash on my arm was printed all over the rest of me. Ok, maybe not so funny :) It takes a day or so to get the rash after exposure, but depending on the amount of oil and the type of skin, it can start reacting for 3-4 weeks after contact. It's best to get to the doctor for some prednisone the instant the rash starts looking bad. By the way, once the oil is wiped off with rubbing alcohol and then washed, the rash IS NOT contagious. So whether you get it or not you can still hold your nephew...although his mama will be quaking if you're covered with weeping, itchy sores!

Ive got the cones. I made a cone picker out of a coat hanger and a broom stick. The garage roof was a little sketchy, but I survived. Now Im debating how natural Im going to go. I found some great info at the forestry center website, although the link above is dead. That website seems to encourage cleaning the seed, stratisfying them (making them think they went through winter), and them planting them in january thru may, or somthing like that. I might take that approach with some of the seed, but for the sake of experimentation Im also going to try the planting method described above. I found a baby fir tree on a two foot thick strip of dirt between my drivway and house the other day. Its barely three inches tall. I think Ill need to pot it and protect it from the cold over the winter because Im asuming it got a late start. Its amazing what I find when I put my interest in a certain place. Heres the link I ended up at. http://www.rngr.net/Publications/rsah

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.

The answer will vary somewhat between species, depending on how much variation is found within a particular species. In other words, if you do this with seeds from a species where there is not a lot of variation in size, the seed grown tree will probably wind up a similar size. If you do this with a species where there is a lot of variation in size, then who knows what you will get. As an example from my limited experience, I planted a few dozen red maple seeds, all from the same tree, in a prepared bed this past spring. Their current heights range from three inches to about 12 inches. On the other hand, I grew up in a yard with 5 large elms. Every summer there would be dozens of seedlings at the edge of the garden, almost all identical in size. Now, I can't be sure what would happen if these were all grown to maturity, but I suspect the maples would vary in size much more than the elms. Other considerations: If you do this with a tree that is susceptible to inbreeding depression, like Dawn Redwood, then the seed grown tree will likely be much smaller than the parent. If you do this with a tree that easily cross pollinates with other related species, you could get something quite different than the parent. For example, if you plant seeds from a red maple that was pollinated by a silver maple, you could get a very vigorous seedling that will wind up larger than the red maple parent. Oaks are also known for hybridizing. I'd guess that for most trees, the growing environment will usually be a bigger variable than genetics. What tree did you have in mind? Alex