Bulk pines planting

I've snipped off half the new growth on the "candles" (as they're called) on a dwarf pine at my home. It works to make pines more dense. At camp - too many to do that to.
 
For you guys who've done bulk plantings - do you use mechanized tree planters??
 
Planted over 100 2' tall white pines five or six years ago along road with no protection, I would say 75% got browsed to death, rubbed to death or were in a forty yard long wet spot. Two years ago started caging the survivors.

What they looked like almost exactly two years ago when caged

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How they look today

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The power of a simple cage.... Try a 4x4 weed mat and some mulch to murder some of that grass on a few for an experiment and watch what happens..... I would expect the ones in those pictures to double in size in one growing season. That grass is holding you back significantly. You could mulch 4 trees in about half an hour for $20 and it will give you some very valuable feedback. I'd be out mulching everything valuable to me in my woods if it wasnt buried with 2 feet of snow.



When these little guys hit 5-6 years old for me I expect them all to be 10-12+ feet tall. I've suppressed their weeds and caged from the beginning and likely have one of the shortest growing seasons of anyone on HT.



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For you guys who've done bulk plantings - do you use mechanized tree planters??

My neighbor just planted about 5000 this way last spring. That is, with a tow behind planter and two grandkids on it.
I’m expecting a complete failure. But I’ve been dead wrong in the past.


Just once :emoji_stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:
 
My neighbor just planted about 5000 this way last spring. That is, with a tow behind planter and two grandkids on it.
I’m expecting a complete failure. But I’ve been dead wrong in the past.
You don't think the grandkids did a good job?? Or the machine didn't do as it should have??

As for grass & weed competition, I've sprayed cleth & gly around evergreens - carefully - to cut competition. It works really well when the trees get the most nutrition instead of the grass & weeds. Quick and doesn't cost much to do a lot of trees. They grow faster with no comp.
 
^^^^

Here is some further illustration of what removing all the existing competition can do for the plants you are trying to grow. A few years ago (2018) the coop guy had some real trouble steering the spray and ran over a bunch of my soybeans on some curves in my ag production fields. It left me with almost no survivors in those places, but the beans that did survive..... WOW is all I can say!! I have never seen so many pods on one plant. I had 10-12 stragglers that survived across a couple hundred feet, and they MAJORLY pumped out the pods. A few of them were pushing 300 pods per plant. Most guys would do cartwheels getting 55-60 pods per plant. The stems were quadruple the normal size of my other plants. It set off light bells for what needed to happen in the woods 200 miles away.

REDUCING COMPETITION IS EVERYTHING IN THE PLANT WORLD. I steer away from chemical applications in my woods. Weed mat and mulch is as close as it gets to naturally eliminating the competition. The pictures dont do these plants any justice. They were that impressive.


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You don't think the grandkids did a good job?? Or the machine didn't do as it should have??

No I think the deer will pull them all up. Every seedling I ever planted got pulled out of the ground and spit on the ground.
 
No I think the deer will pull them all up. Every seedling I ever planted got pulled out of the ground and spit on the ground.
Ouch. Cages / fencing and planted in stages?? I wonder why deer would just yank and spit. If they ate them it would at least seem to make sense. What'd you do to piss off your deer, Bill??
 
Ouch. Cages / fencing and planted in stages?? I wonder why deer would just yank and spit. If they ate them it would at least seem to make sense. What'd you do to piss off your deer, Bill??
Those deer are fighting back. They've been shot, oppressed, and shot for too long... stickin it to the man.
 
Ouch. Cages / fencing and planted in stages?? I wonder why deer would just yank and spit. If they ate them it would at least seem to make sense. What'd you do to piss off your deer, Bill??
If it was shortly after planting, before the roots were established, maybe they were just trying to eat them. They could just be trying to pull off a bite, but the seeding pulls out easier than breaking the stem.
The deer might have been going down the line muttering about all these trees are defective and don't bite like they should.
 
If it was shortly after planting, before the roots were established, maybe they were just trying to eat them. They could just be trying to pull off a bite, but the seeding pulls out easier than breaking the stem.
The deer might have been going down the line muttering about all these trees are defective and don't bite like they should.

This was my suspicion. It was within a week or two of planting. They pulled every last one and by the time I noticed they had dried out in the sun. And we’re talking 500 of them not just a couple. Not one survived. To boot they were Norway spruce, supposedly deer resistant.
 
Here are some photos of the first trees I started caging in 2019. These white pines were the size of a pop bottle (ABP from Itasca) at the time of planting 38-39 months ago. Today they are about 6 feet tall, look healthy, and 100% of those planted that year have survived and not been disturbed by a deer yet. Getting great growth with cage, weed mat, mulch.



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Here are some photos of the first trees I started caging in 2019. These white pines were the size of a pop bottle (ABP from Itasca) at the time of planting 38-39 months ago. Today they are about 6 feet tall, look healthy, and 100% of those planted that year have survived and not been disturbed by a deer yet. Getting great growth with cage, weed mat, mulch.



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Buck, what height x width cages do you use? Those 4 feet high by 36" wide? is my guess
 
I have planted close to 100 white spruce seedling from the state nursery sale. they're not caged, they get a nibble here n there, but not a single one has been killed or seriously eaten by a deer. I do have medium to high deer density. A case of EHD came through last sept, but I still have 5 or 6 does in my backyard all night.

Weed mat / mulching........ As per NYSDEC the #1 reason their trees die is accidental mowing. Not only the mats keep weeds away, theyre easier to identify if you do mow.

For me, the #1 reason my spruces have died is drought. I have a row of 25 that came pretty dry 2 years ago, about 80% of them didn't take. I filled in last year, about 50% of them took. This year I had about 6 or 7 empty places, I mulched them about 3ft diameter with about 2/3 a bag of mulch. I also been more mindful about keeping them watered. A week after I mulched them this summer, you could see a difference.

I planted 25 antonovka trees from SLN. I mulched a few in may, other were not mulched because I got tied up with another project. Those 3 or 4 trees were noticeably better than the other 8 or 9 remaining ones I have in their permanent homes. I potted a few for friends. I have 8 in a small nursery site to be transplanted this fall. they're weed matted and mulched, they look awesome. the nursery site has spruce and crabapple cuttings, so I water them almost daily. Apple trees get miracle grow once a week and get watered if they haven't had a drink from mother nature in 4 or 5 days.

Roy Munson,

If you're still watching this thread. Get about 25 trees and give it a shot. Spruce may or may not get browsed. Red Cedar gets lightly browsed at my NY home, but rarely gets killed by browsing. NYS calls it a starvation food. Dont try any white cedars without caging. they absolutely love that stuff.

Red dogwood can be an option for you too. Deer enjoy it, but it grows. It enjoy wetter spots more.

If you can plant a spot of a dozen white pines and cage them, in a few years the deer will love bedding in it. Hunting PA public land, approach a pine tree very slowly, often there's a buck laying under it. Hard to stalk close enough for a flintlock though... They often just run away....
 
Buck, what height x width cages do you use? Those 4 feet high by 36" wide? is my guess


Yes, I use 4' wire. I cut ten feet off the roll and make a cage and approximately 38" wide when its done.
 
Yes, I use 4' wire. I cut ten feet off the roll and make a cage and approximately 38" wide when its done.
Thanks Buck. I think I'll grab another 100' roll and cage my favorite 10 out of the several 100 Norway Spruce I planted. I do need to have a hard stop (time and money) at some point with my 2022 habitat improvements. I also need some end of summer bag mulch to mulch these spruce and some others up.

My wife said at the end of last summer.: "You'll never be complete nor satisfied with the lofty goals you have for the property in your lifetime." I'm only 51 and in pretty good shape, but she might be correct.
 
My wife said at the end of last summer.: "You'll never be complete nor satisfied with the lofty goals you have for the property in your lifetime." I'm only 51 and in pretty good shape, but she might be correct.

I've found out quick a big part needs to be about the journey and not just the results.
 
I have been watching this thread from a distance for quite some time now with nothing to add to it.

I did plant 400 Norway spruce and 100 white cedars back at the end of January. The spruce was one-year plugs, the cedars were two years. I believe now, I can add how my personal experience has been in a relatively high deer density, and well managed setting.

After the first month, I noticed almost all of the trees were still in the ground and none had been browsed. This had me pretty excited. I did notice a few had been just plucked out of the ground. After previous experiences with bulk plantings, paired with an auger bit on my drill, I have come to the conclusion that some kind of small mammal is interested in all that dirt you just dug up. I had the same thing happen with my miscanthus rhizomes. Dug the hole, found the plant lying next to it.

Months 3 and 4; I started to see some small growth on the spruce. I was pretty stoked about this and very minimal browsing. The cedars did get destroyed. I do not think there are any left.

Recently, I noticed almost all the spruce look well. Some plantings on some farms are approaching the 12–18-inch range. One planting in an open row dividing two of our ag fields fell kind of short. I am not entirely sure why. It did seem a tad bit on the wetter end compared to the other planting locations. This area might be better well served as a dogwood planting area. Cedars do not exist at this point.

My main goal was to increase thermal bedding. I believe it is our biggest downfall on our farms. If it is time to order again in December, and my current spruces keep doing as well as they are, I will likely order another 500. I would love to plant some cedars; however, I will be caging them 100%.
 
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