Assessing Cultural Practices to Enhance the Establishment and Survival of Sugar Maple Seedlings Assessing Cultural Practices to Enhance the Establishment and Survival of Sugar Maple Seedlings Efforts to establish sugar maple seedlings through plantings are important to create new sugar bush areas either on land without sugar maple or following catastrophic disturbances such as the January 1998 ice storm throughout New York, New England, Ontario and Quebec. Also, with current advances in the sugar maple tree improvement program that is selecting for sugar maple with higher sap sugar concentrations, improved growing stock will soon be available for outplanting.
Several factors are important for the successful establishment of sugar maple seedlings.
These factors include cultural practices such as tree protection devices as described here and proper site selection which is described elsewhere. Ongoing research in the Cornell Maple Research and Extension Program includes an experiment to test a variety of devices for their ability to improve the establishment and early survival of sugar maple seedlings. In the Spring of 1997, with funding from the North American Maple Syrup Council, sugar maple seedlings were used to establish a plantation where specific cultural practices could be rigorously investigated. The first plantation was established at the Uihlein Sugar Maple Research Field Station of Cornell University near Lake Placid, New York. The plantation was mapped and heights of seedlings were recorded at the time of planting.