Don’t forget your camera to capture the moment. Take your drill (with bit attached), hammer, spiles, hooks, buckets, and lids. The weather conditions are ideal and you are headed out to the yard to tap your first tree. With a mixture of 1 part unscented household bleach (such as Clorox® Regular-Bleach) to 20 parts clean water, use a brush or cloth to scrub your supplies. Using these guidelines, a healthy tree will support multiple taps:Ĭlean spiles bucket, and lids prior to use each season. If you have a limited number of maples available, you can tap a particular tree two or tree times, depending upon its size. Additionally, select trees with the greatest exposure to sunlight. That tree on the edge of your driveway healing from a direct car hit is not an ideal candidate for tapping. Select trees that are mature (at least 12 inches in diameter) and healthy. The recommended order in selecting your maple trees to yield a higher sugar content is: Sugar, Black, Red, Silver. Now is the time to pull out that yard map where you have identified your maple trees, including the type of maple tree. The sap generally flows for 4 to 6 weeks, with the best sap produced early on in the sap-flowing season. This is basically a transfer of the sap from the tree above the ground and the root system below the ground. The rising temperature creates pressure in the tree generating the sap flow. Sap flows when daytime temperatures rise above freezing (32 degrees Fahrenheit / 0 Celsius) and nighttime temperatures fall below freezing. The exact time of year depends upon where you live and weather conditions. Generally the sap starts to flow between mid-February and mid-March. Fruit matures in spring.Tap Tree Tap Maple Trees at Home – Tapping Trees When To Tap Maple Trees One of two seeds present is often poorly developed or aborted. V-shaped, double-winged fruit 1 1/2 - 2 inches long, with widely divergent wings. Similar to red maple but bruised or scraped bark has a very fetid or foul odor. Considerable red is seen in bark pattern as scales develop. Silvery gray on young trees breaking into long thin scaly plates that give the trunks of older trees a very shaggy appearance. Fruit matures in spring.ĥ-7 inches wide deeply clefted 5-lobed with the sides of the terminal lobe diverging toward the tip light green upper surface and a silvery white underside leaf margin with fine teeth (but not the inner edges of the sinuses). V-shaped, double-winged fruit about 1/2 - 1 inch long. Slender, shiny, usually reddish in color terminal buds 1/8 - 1/4 inch long, blunt, red odorless if bark bruised or scraped. Young trees up to 4-8 inches with a smooth light gray bark, developing into gray or black ridges and ultimately narrow scaly plates. Mature leaves have a whitish appearing underside. Similar to sugar maple with, perhaps, a slightly larger seed.Ģ-6 inches wide 3lobed (occasionally weakly 5-lobed) sharply V-shaped sinuses small sharp teeth along margin. Similar to sugar maple but twig surface with small warty growths (lenticels, which are not raised much above the bark surface in sugar maple) and often more hairy buds. Similar to sugar maple but usually darker and more deeply grooved or furrowed. Similar to sugar maple but usually 3-lobed (sometimes five) often appears to be drooping often with a thicker leaf and lear stem (petiole) than sugar maple usually with two winglike or leaflike growths at the base of the petiole (stipules). Horseshoe-shaped double-winged fruit with parallel or slightly divergent wings. Older trees developing furrows and ultimately long, irregular, thick vertical plates that appear to peal from the trunk in a vertical direction.Ī somewhat shiny, brownish, slender, relatively smooth twig with 1/4 - 3/8 inch long sharply pointed terminal bud. Young trees up to 4-8 inches with smooth gray bark. Speciesģ-5 inches wide 5lobed (rarely 3-lobed) bright green upper surface and a paler green lower surface leaf margin without fine teeth (compare with red and silver maple). Identifying Characteristics of Sugar, Black, Red and Silver Maple. Southeast United States Coastal Plain & Piedmont Northeast United States & Southeast Canada Northeast United States & Southern Canada Maple species native to the United States. (Chapter 3 North American Maple Syrup Producers Manual) A fourth maple species, silver maple (Acer saccharinum), is sometimes tapped, particularly in roadside operations, and is often confused with red maple. While most of these species are probably tapped to some extent, at least by hobbyists, sugar and black maple, along with red maple (Acer rubrum), provide most of the commercial sap. There are thirteen native maple species in North America (Table 3-1).
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