California [New Jersey] Live Oak.

6-2-10 SHORT HILLS: Yesterday, as I forgot to mention yesterday, in the morning, I noticed that a decaying stump had decayed sufficiently to be removed. I used the cordless saber saw cutting along the ground and sliced away everything above grade level in a half hour or so. The center had decayed to nice rich loamy soil too good to ignore.

I’m pretty sure I mentioned and posted a year or so ago that I had brought a handful of California live oak acorns back from San José. They germinated in a flower pot, and we had three seedlings that survived the winter in NJ inside in the sun room. These trees are supposed to be Zone 7 tolerant. Northern NJ is nominally Zone 6, but warmer every year.

So...I planted two of them in the old stump that’s now gone and surrounded them with a cage to keep the deer and lawn mowers at bay.
I plan to blanket them for the first few winters—we’ll see what happens.


The little fledglings make their way into the wide world.