Habitat Happening: Live Blog!

Nice plugs, i love me some plugs from Itasca!

Looking forward to the pics of their operation.
 
Lauras lane in Plainfield sells 3/0 bareroots for 23 cents each. Are plugs near that price?

Yes they are very similar price (depends on species and size) and they are 1 million times easier to plant than a bareroot. Bareroots are also a lot more sensitive in the fact that you can't let them sit around very long, they should be planted immediately once you have them in hand. Plugs you can keep in the containers for a year or more, just keep them watered.
 
Flexibility! Survivability! (from itasac's website)

  1. Roots planted in soil plug, essentially undisturbed, so there's no planting check (reduced growth).
  2. Longer planting season - essentially from Spring frost out to early Fall, most sites, most years.
  3. Seedlings may be held in the container by the customer until it is convenient to plant, provided they are kept watered.
  4. Seedlings are usually shipped in the container and are well protected, there is little chance of damage or mortality due to shipping.
  5. Survival rates are high, as the containerized seedlings handle poor planting techniques, rough sites, and dry weather conditions better.
  6. Flexibility of having durable planting stock that can be planted into the Summer for planting on sites not ready in the Spring.
 
Lauras lane in Plainfield sells 3/0 bareroots for 23 cents each. Are plugs near that price?

500+ of combined species for 4a is .25 at Itasca
 
On top of that, they give ya extra trees too. In each of our flats there were some cells that didn't produce a tree, so they put more in each one. We never officially counted, but I bet we got an extra 5-10% more trees than what we bought. I ordered 250 RO Dogwoods, and I could swear we planted over 300 just by counting cells we put into each bucket times the number of buckets.

We'd plant a hundred and figure we only had 150 left, and it seemed like we hadn't even put a dent in the dogwoods.
 
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Looks good. I hope you have a high survival rate. Do you use root gel at all?
We used a root stimluant/water gel that Itasca provided. The owner told me that this was the last year they were carrying it. I can't remember why. But yes, we did dip in a water gel.

Then we got a good rain overnight. Not sure how much, but the ground is holding water on the surface everywhere.

I'm gonna sneak out this afternoon and seed some oats down on trails where we ripped them up with the four wheeler. Looks like another good rain coming today.
 
On top of that, they give ya extra trees too. In each of our flats there were some cells that didn't produce a tree, so they put more in each one. We never officially counted, but I bet we got an extra 5-10% more trees than what we bought. I ordered 250 RO Dogwoods, and I could sweat we planted over 300 just by counting cells we put into each bucket times the number of buckets.

We'd plant a hundred and figure we only had 150 left, and it seemed like we hadn't even put a dent in the dogwoods.

Thanks for sharing! I am picking mine up from Itasca Greenhouse tomorrow morning. It looks like planting will be wet for me this weekend.

If I don't get a few extra trees I will be disappointed ;).
 
Looks great and thanks for the information.
 
Update time. I planted these trees in the spring.

The dogwood are doing well. They deer took 8-12 inches off of each one. There is still plenty left, and from what I understand, they should be fine. So glad I got all that planted.

Bur oak plug
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Spruce 4a plug. It's either white or black.
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Looking good!
 
Winter Update: These spruce were planted this spring. If you recall from the first page of this thread, here's what they looked like when I got them. They were just stems with a few little spurs coming off them.
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Here's what they look like after their first season in the ground.
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I can't believe I missed this thread until now... Holy smokes those things are BIG! I got totally robbed on my norways. :(

At least I've got everything coming from Itasca next year. :D Now I'm all excited about my plugs.

Thanks for sharing!
 
Dusting off the old thread...

Can't wait to pick up my stuff and get to work this weekend. Sending a warning ahead of the photo dump that's coming this weekend.
 
More trees going in, huh? Nice! I'm looking forward to the pics.
 
What kinds of trees are you planting this year, SD ??
 
Spruces:
198 black
198 white
198 Norway
16 white pine
20 manchurian crab

Cancelled the chokeberry and jack pine due to timing issue.
 
Here we go! First some thoughts...

*If you have an order for Norway or White Spruce with Itasca, you better call ahead to confirm they have them. I was told when I arrived that their whites and norways had a bad winter and I wasn't going to get any. I ended up opting for an extra 198 black and skipped the last 198, so I've only got 396 spruce plugs for this year.

Black Spruce
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The rye/radish plot. We had a large basswood limb break off and dump into the plot. We're working to get that cleaned up this weekend.
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The rye has started coming back, and the deer are already feeding in it.
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We were walking around and found a large patch of these trees. They seem like a softwood tree, but i've never seen these kinds of blooms before. Anyone ID this thing? Should I kill it?
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It looks like we also suffered a major die off among our spruces planted last spring. I would venture to guess 19 out of 20 look like this or worse. We found very few that were ok. The black spruce seemed to handle winter better. Wish I had planted more of them. Nursery said it was due to lack of snow. Who'da thunk a good winter for deer was gonna whack our spruce plantings?
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We found two wolf kills on our place. Here's one of them.
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The siberian crab apples are already pushing out leaves. I opened up a few tubes to check to see if they needed to be pruned.
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Here's one of my cranberry in a 6' tube. I learned from my first go around that I need to keep these pruned. Here's the before.
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After
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Don't be fooled by this. I have a strong feeling every deer for 2 miles in every direction is out in this field. This was near our place.
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Too bad the light wasn't a little better. This was a good sized critter.
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That's it for today. More to come tomorrow.
 
I'm guessing red maple on the tree budding out. I don't target any maples here...largely due to the aesthetic effect. I like to see the foliage in the fall...but most importantly...so does my wife.

On the spruces not doing well...yep...I can relate. I'd guess around 50% of all of the evergreens I planted last year suffered winter burn. Closer to 100% of my balsam firs. They all looked great going into winter...now..they look like crap.
I never thought to look for leaves. I'll go back and see what's laying there.
 
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