Micro update - more germinations

In this batch there are 2013, 2020 and a few seeds collected from King Canyon in 2022. All seeds continue to germinate splendidly. Seeds were placed on wet coffee filters on Dec 6, 2023. After 10 days 13 seeds germinated and today after 15 days, another 15, for a total of 28:

Some of the seeds from last week cleared the soil and now have 4-5 green leaves standing vertically. About half were able to shed the light brown casing they were in. The other half was helped by gently pulling on them with two fingers. To have less manual casing removal it really helps placing newly germinated seed white root AND the casing in soil, forming a loop. As the seed tries to push up, casing has a much better chance of staying  behind in the soil:

Winter 2023/24 Update

 Long overdue update.

Last winter was bad for sequoias at this Iowa farm. All sequoias taller than 2 feet got destroyed. Shorter ones that fit under foam cones did pretty well but have not grown much during last growing season. 

A couple of them were cut down at about 1 foot height and eventually re-sprouted fresh shoots:

These new shoots grew fine, but the trees definitely look more like a bush than a tree. Essentially, any foliage that stays above mulch or snow cover during winter, dies. That's even with all tree being wrapped with burlap and plastic. I decided to try to use an extreme covering technique for 2023-24 winter. First I tie the branches tightly in one bunch:

Then I build cylindrical enclosure to hold wood chips:

And finally fill it up (and then some) with the chips:

All the chips would need to be removed in the spring. Having chips/mulch around tree base during growing season is certainly not a good idea since the feeder roots start to grow into it. 

The long term game here is trying to keep them alive as soon as practically possible, hoping that the root system expands wide enough to support water pumping during winter months. 

Additionally, a few sequoias were planted on a south side of the hill (rather than on top of the hill) with the idea that wind will have less effect on the trees. For this winter these 2 ft trees will still be covered with the foam cones:

And as always - more sequoia seeds were germinated and are going into containers: