AusBonsai

I had to travel out west today for work and stumbled on some oak trees with acorns in fruit. There would be about 8-10 of these within 200 meters of each other. Form a web search, i think they may be the commone English oak but not too sure. The leaves look quite a bit smaller than the other oaks i see around toowoomba. there are planty of seedlings and young potential yamadori underneather them all I tried to get my hand in the photo for size reference.

I have a few questions for members

How much root ball should i endeavour to get when collecting the seedlings?
How hardy are these oaks in general?
I was considering collecting them, bare rooting and soaking in seasol for a few hours then planting into a 50:50 mix of diatomite and bonsai mix.

Any advice would be appreciated. Also would love to see any other oaks that members have on their tables and benches.

Cheers

Stew

If you're going to remove the seedlings, try get as much of the root ball as possible, but my favorite thing to do is to take the acorns and plant them, in a short year or two they can grow surprisingly fast. Good luck!
Coocarch

Look like English oak to me and they collect well

Grab as much root as practical, and then pot up. this time of your I would not bare root. Just pot up into your Mix and all should be good

Ken

Yes they're definately English oaks (long petiole holding the fruit)
Treat oaks like pines basiclly. that is: not repotting too often and go easy on the P.
I find they are difficult to get them to do what you want

Thanks very much for the replies everyone

Coocarch - i'm too impatient for that! I want to get my hands on them now.... If only i can arrange to have to go to work in that direction again

Thanks for the advice Ken and treeman - I'll do just that. I may be able to get a forest style going if i get a range of trees.

Do they bare root well at any other time of year? I can see myself getting quite a few of these and potting them up to give out to the members of my local bonsai club - or swap for something

If i collect a larger tree with a good girth (rather than a seedling of a few years old), do they take to a trunk chop and so back bud easily? Newbie oakman here

cheers

Stew

A few weeks ago I collected 20+ self-sown oak seedlings (before our chickens moved in to dig them up). The tree looks similar to the one you listed, but I can't be sure it's exactly the same. I got them out with a couple handfuls worth of surrounding root/dirt where possible, however...;

On many of them, I was unable to avoid bare-rooting, and they came with only one or three noticeable roots. Only two have died (which I am sure were bare-rooted), the rest are powering on with noticeable new growth. I have thus far used no special treatments or care, and they went into a standard garden mix of dirt I use for most things. (please note, it has been quite wet and not very hot around here recently)

They responded well enough, so I grabbed about 20 more a couple of days ago.

So basically I guess this just confirms what has been said previously. If you haven't already (as it's been some time since this was posted), I would grab whatever seedlings you can with a decent little dirtball.