Simazine or oust for white pine seedlings?

Northbound

5 year old buck +
Last year I planted 3000 white pine seedlings, used turnips as a cover crop. Thinking it would aerate the ground after they roto and keep grass at bay. Good results, 95% of trees are alive and growing.
Previous planting I have sprayed around trees with gly, works but takes a lot of time. Came across a article today recommending Simazine and or oust in spring. Anyone try this? Sure would be faster to spray with boom if it won't harm trees.
 
Simazine is pre emergent and you could spray over trees in the spring and fall. I always like to be safe and spray when the trees are not actively growing. Clethedim is another good one but, is for grasses only however, is very safe on trees. Oust is very potent and works great in spruce plantings however, I don't know about pines. I have used Oust in the fall over spruce with great results. I have also heard Stinger 3L is good over spruce and pines.
 
If you can wait till fall, over spray with .5 -.75 litre of RU, once the trees have gone dormant. I've sprayed White and Red pine, Spruce and White Cedar with no ill effects.
 
I'd leave them alone, if they made it through the first summer you should be in good shape. I've had good luck with pine survival without spraying or mowing.
 
Survival and thriving are two different things. Trees I was diligent in spraying around for the first 2-3 years are noticeably taller ten years later. Like almost double. YMMV in your neck of the woods.
 
Survival and thriving are two different things. Trees I was diligent in spraying around for the first 2-3 years are noticeably taller ten years later. Like almost double. YMMV in your neck of the woods.
What height did you see after 10 years in the sprayed versus in sprayed areas? That's interesting. im guessing my 10 year old red and white pines average 15' or so. I planted my trees in crop lands sprayed with roundup the prior year, so they had a good start with minimal competition initially so I'm sure that helped. I had hundreds of pines die when herbicide drifted from an adjacent field, so I steer clear of sprays on my trees.
 
Planting was in former pasture but never planted in row crops, too rocky. Very thick sod. Did RU strips a few weeks before initial planting. I think a big part of the difference was that trees struggling with heavy grass competition could not get a good growth spurt getting out of browsing from high deer numbers.
 
Yeah I'm sure they would live if left alone but hoping that less competition would boost growth. Plus if weeds and grasses are under control I could fertilize without fear of choking out the Pines with tall grass growth.

How's this sound? I'll try the simazine this spring. Fertilize early summer if weeds are minimal. Spray gly in fall and then seed a low growing clover for future ground cover/ N fixation. Spay cleth next season and forget until it's time to thin trees. I planted 3 foot spacing, 3 foot between rows. Basically as tight as I could with a 3pt tree Planter. I anticipated less first year survival and deer browsing. So far it looks like I'll have to many trees. I do have a 32" tree spade on skid steer so I can hopefully move 'extra' trees to other areas or even sell some in a few years if needed. WP I planted years ago was lucky to have 35% survival even when mowing around monthly, I'm still shocked how great this recent planting is doing for itself.
 
I always say, plant at least twice as many trees as you figure you need. If more survive it's much easier to take some out rather than be frustrated by failure rates. Conifers are pretty resilient and safe to spray when not in a growing phase. They will be much better off with good weed control and I would go 6 years on the herbicides. I'd skip the gly in the fall and use OustXP.
 
So.. how do you tell when w.p. is safe to spray? Any reason not to stay simazine with oust together both spring and fall? Going into third season wound a low clover (i.e. strawberry clover) be beneficial for N fixing ability or not worth the hassle & moisture competition?
 
I planted 11K red and 3K white pines on my land. I did plantings in three different years over a 15 year period. All trees were the biggest ones that could be transplanted with a machine, 2 year seedlings, 2 year transplants (2S+2T). I used 6 foot by 6 foot spacing for my plantings. For the first few years I was able to mow between the rows with my Kubota and 5 foot brush hog. I had better than 95% survival rate for all plantings. My theory is to get the biggest and oldest trees to start with for your transplanting and then use a decent spacing of 6'x6' or even 7'x7' to give them room to grow. My land in Portage county Wisconsin is very well suited for pine trees as it is in a area of the state known as the "Central Sands".
These tactics worked for me on my land in my part of Wisconsin. I can readily see that different types of soil in other states might require any of the methods in the above thread
 
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