Sounds great!!! Hope your endeavor works! I thought about starting one over here in Kenai (AK), but don't even have the land at this point. Lots of people have Birch trees that they make syrup from. The first 2 or 3 days of sap are all that has a good flavor, though.

I don't really care if they make syrup or not. A tree has to be 8" in diameter before you can tap it. I'm unlikely to live that long. I want more color and variety in the bush.

I suggest seeking seed only from trees that colour up unusually early in each area. I am growing a sugar maple in my Edmonton suburb backyard, from seed I collected in Barrie, Ontario, in I think the fall of 1992. The tree (pictures below) is about 5 metres tall now, but is more of a tall shrub than a tree. Tough winters prune it back a bit, in one particularly tough winter maybe 10 or more years ago, it killed all the way back to about a half-metre tall. In most winters, losing half the past season's growth is not uncommon. Having no winter-kill is rare (but does happen). All in all, after almost 20 years, the sugar maple makes a nice tall bush in the backyard.

The problem for getting those bright maple colours like they get in Eastern Canada is that my bush/tree doesn't want to colour up until around mid-October or later. So most years the tree has summer-green leaves when they are hit with a hard frost in late September or early October, and the leaves then just turn brown and shrivel up. The long mild fall in 2011 allowed it to develop some decent colour, though my bush/tree is obviously more of yellow-orange than some of the brilliant orange-reds that other sugar maples get. The photos below were taken October 22 of this year.

I think there are some commercial sugar maple varieties that are supposed to colour up in late September, but if you want to try growing your own maples from seeds (maybe creating your own variety?) then I suggest looking for seeds from trees that colour up unusually early.

My sugar maple bush/tree, on October 22, 2011:

Close up of the leaves, same date:

Barrie is close to the lake, and has a MUCH longer growing season than we do. Zone 5? 6? Definitely want to get a zone 3 seed source.

That said, even my Jeffries sugar maples held on to their leaves long after the poplar had given up.

Nice photos Don! I look forward to more selections being introduced to the prairies, though I'd also like to do as Sherwood and grow plenty out from seed.

T

We have tapped a sugar bush for about 30 years and live near a park full of maple trees. There are some years that the trees are full of color and some that they are drab. Some of this is breed of tree but there are a number of factors that impact this including rainfall, temperatures ( fall, winter and spring) early versus late frost, and, certainly, things we haven't figured out yet. We find that you can go into the woods in the early spring, pull the young (2-5 feet tall) trees up and plant them, you likely have a good a survival rate and have several years of growth already on them.

Our camp has been very rustic with carved spiles. I will recommend you plant some sumac on your land, it has beautiful red leaves in the fall and red heads of berries that can be used to make a really tasty drink. The pithy center makes it an ideal wood for making spiles.

Unfortunately,.. we're not sugar maple country here!
There are some hardier seedlings out there.

How's everybody's maple doing?
Nice showing, Don!

I'm thinking of grafting sugar maple onto the rock hardy Manitoba Maple,..this might push it's hardiness up a notch.

Any experience?

Interesting revisit of a thread from more than 2 years ago.

Since then my bush/tree sugar maple is pretty much the same, just a bit taller. The past few winters, with deep snow and very few nights below -30C have been kind to it, so winterkill has been minor. It colours up very late, it peaked in 2013 around October 24, or about 2 days later than in 2011, with the same yellow-orange foliage both years. If there is a hard freeze before it turns colour, the leaves just turn brown and dead, so it needs a long mild fall. My sugar maple has never flowered, so has never set seed.

The "Unity Sugar Maple", the hardy variety released for the prairies from seed collected in Morden, Manitoba, is the variety I think Sherwood_botsford has from Jeffries (since Jeffries released that culitvar). I only know of one confirmed planting of this variety near me (at Millcreek Nursery), and that tree colours up about two weeks before my backyard sugar maple. I don't think that particular tree produces seed either.

Grafting sugar maple onto another variety of maple like Manitoba Maple would be interesting. Not sure how well it work, but that's what makes it interesting.

For completeness, the best sugar maple I know of in Edmonton, near the University. This one reaches peak colour about 4 days ahead of my backyard maple, but that's probably more because of its warmer location well inside the city instead of out here in the suburbs. It produces a lot of seed, though I don't know if it's fertile seed or not since the other two mature sugar maples that were once within a hundred feet or so of it were removed at least 10 years ago. Here's a photo from October 20, 2013.

Above: This guy is planted in the edge of my poplar forest.

This year's row of little guys, below.

Stained glass window shot.

All of these are "Lord Selkirk" a name from Jeffires, in Manitoba.

I have 2 Unity and last year put in a Lord Selkirk, after two seasons the unity trees are starting to put on some growth, they are in exposed locations so the wind rips the leaves up if they have not had a chance to mature. I had to top them from 9' whips to about 6' because of the wind also, that sucked. I could not get smaller trees which would have been much better.

One of the downsides of nursery trees: They are grown crowded together, and so tend to be tall and thin. Mind you this can keep the tops from being taken by hoof rats.

Lately I've been alternating conifer/deciduous in my pot arrays. The deciduous have more room to spread their tops, the conifers more room for longer branches. Makes taking inventory messier.

Lord Selkirk isn't actually a variety. Jeffries grows hoards of seedlings for grafting. About 1/3 of the grafts don't take. Rather than regraft them, they just sell the root stock as Lord Selkirk. So you aren't getting a cloned tree.

That might be for the good, never know if it may turn out to be a better tree, last fall this tree had better color but in a different spot and first season here.

The four varieties Unity, Northern Flare, Lord Selkirk and Inferno are all hardy to Edmonton. I have planted with perfect sucess the Unity and seen it thrive at Millcreek Nursery and in many front yards. No dieback in 10 years at least. Lord Selkirk and Inferno are supposed to be even more hardy than Unity. I would say Edmonton is now becoming Sugar Maple country. I have many pictures of fully grown 40ft tall sugar maples in the city as well. You just need a good seed source as these trees grow native to areas that can see -40 in Minnesota and Quebec.

PL: Are any of the big sugar maples you know of bearing seed yet. I'm looking for a few pounds of seed.

Try these guys...http://www.heritageseedlings.com/page_118_40/acer-saccharum

Tried Heritage Seedlings. They don't have a zone 3 seed source.

How old does the tree need to be to produce seed? We are in zone 2a and my son has a Sugar maple he tried on a whim. It is on it's 4th year.

Don't know for sure. Amur maples begin when they are about 10 feet tall. My tallest sugar maple is about that, and didn't bloom this year at all. Sugars are slow growing. My estimate is 12 years or so and 15 feet. But that's a guess.

Almost all of the cultivars that you buy from nurseries are going to be seedless. If you get a "wild" seedling then you can get seed. It may never produce seed though if its not happy with the climate. Trees in colder areas may just get by for hardiness but can't reseed. I have a crimson sunset maple which flowered and produced seed last year but didn't this year due to a terrible start to April. We didn't see good temps till Mid April. Lots of maples like to start flowering at the end of March and so the temps need to stay relatively decent from that point on. My red maple started flowering in Mid March and it even handled a -20c night with the flowers completely out. Silver maples are the same way and will flower very early but cold doesn't seem to bother them.

Oh and I forgot to add that some trees only seed every couple years or so.

Unbelievably though, I picked up a seedling of my Crimson Sunset maple growing a couple feet away from it. Crazy that it is considered a zone 4 tree, I am currently in zone 3 central/east ab and I have it going on its 3rd winter and its seeding itself. I think those are all good signs.

http://www.jfschmidt.com/introductions/crimsonsunset/

Hotwings tatarian maple is definitely seedfull.

Lady Slipper amur maple is definitely seedy.

Ok. The seeds are the ornamental feature. Hardly counts.

Hmm. Autumn Spire red maple is nominally seedless. It's normally grafted onto silver maple root stock to gain tolerance to alkali soils.

The sugar maple that Jeffries distributes as "Lord Selkirk" is seed run. Eventually half of them should produce seed. Unity, and Inferno are grafted. Their catalog doesn't say if they are seedless or not.

Sugar maples are mostly dioecious, but there are lots of exceptions, and reported cases when trees were male when young, and later had female flowers at the top.

Maples in generally are complex, with trees that change sexes from year to year, start life as one sex, change to the other, have perfect flowers one year, and only male or only female the next year, or some of each in different parts of the tree.

Talk about gender identity issues!

USDA plants database says that minimum age for sugar maple seed is 30 years, reaching a peak 60 years later. I may have to wait for bit.

Thanks for the info. Forgot to mention the amur and tatarian maples...lol. I have never seen seeds on any of the definitely older than 30 year sugar maples in the city. But as you said, I could have just missed it. I do know that alot of trees sold in nurseries are seedless because that is a quality that people want. Take for example the male version of the manitoba maple. The seeded version populates madly all over the place and all the time.

Ohh and my small town has a nice growing sugar maple in the front of town hall. It grows quickly, is very dense and I'm guessing its a unity. Unforunately it never changes color early enough typically and has its leaves burned off before we get to see color.

This morning may have been another one of those days. My brand new katsura tree has burned leaves because of the -4 this morning and my Crimson Sunset Maple started loses its leaves prematurely before changing color. Too bad...