UH-OH

Uh-oh is right...

I was checking out one of my saplings this morning when my mom pointed out to me that its leaves were curling.

Immediately concerned, I started to look more closely at it until another thing was brought to my attention.


From what I could make out, it seems as though this sapling may have caught the chestnut blight.  On its little trunk (which is no more that half an inch thick) there is a small streak of that oh-so-familiar rust color.  At first I was a bit confused.  I was convinced that only more mature trees could contract the blight, but I never ruled it out as something that could happen to my saplings.

And of course it happened.

   The blight isn't very visible and the wound is still relatively small, but I still wanted to take action to slow the process as much as possible.

I was then sent to this page.

That's when I got the idea to use the Soil Compress Method.
I took two plastic cups, soil, water, and Gorilla tape and went to making my structure.


I cut the bottoms off of the cups, cut slits in side so that they would go onto the sapling, and then I taped them in place.  I then filled the structure with tightly packed soil and moistened it with water.
The whole thing itself is pretty sturdy, and can also function as a support for the tree.

Hopefully this will work to slow the blight from killing the sapling.  I can hope that it will do something, but in the meantime I will keep watch.

   On another note, my seedlings aren't looking too good.  I'm pretty sure most, if not all of them, have sustained too much damage from the sun.  It's pretty upsetting.  However, I'm going to grow more seeds over the winter inside my house.  Hopefully those will survive longer.

Talk to you all again soon!