Will these survive?

[BuckSutherland]

Was up to the hunting shack over the weekend. I pulled a few spruce trees from the road ditch and planted them in the yard. I just grabbed onto them and pulled them out and took whatever came with. Some of them had a good chunk of roots come with and others not so much. We transplanted them into saturated ground. What are the chances this works? Just a little experiment that we wanted to try. Didnt cost a thing to try it. We usually have high rainfall through the year.


Also cut some dogwood branches off a few nice bushes. Any chance that is gonna work? I just pushed them into the moist dirt about a foot deep. I could get millions of dogwood cuttings within 2 miles of the shack and never have to leave the road.


I have pretty low expecations for the dog wood cutting, but much higher hopes for the spruce.

 

[H20fwler]

It sure could, we did the same with some little fir trees from Michigan two years ago and half of them made it. I haven't done a lot of cutting plantings but if you dip in root hormone and push them down pretty deep chances of survival go way up.

 

[Ben.MN/WI]

The spruce will live, but the dogwood likely will not.

Most of my large scale visual screen plantings are over a decade old and doing great, so I no longer buy thousands of trees from the DNR. If there are any gaps that need to be filled in I just grab a few 5 gallon buckets and pull some volunteer spruce out of my swamp and move them to a new location. They seem to survive as well as the regular seedlings purchased from the DNR.

 

[BuckSutherland]

I called the local power company up there and left a message for their head forester. Down the road from us they have 1,000s of spruce, pine and fir growing right underneath the powerlines in a two miles strech of road ditch. They just mowed them 3 years ago. They range in height from 6 inches to 5 feet tall. It would be a great place for me to get trees for transplant. If he gives me a permit and this works I suspect I am done buying trees. They are in better shape and bigger than the stuff I have been buying. Probably try to focus on getting trees that are 16-18" tall. Their needles are sharp so I dont think deer will browse them, and the stems are fairly thick already.

 

[Ben.MN/WI]

Who owns the land under the powerline? On my place the private landowner still owns the land but the power company does the brush hogging or tree trimming as necessary.

Those 3 year old trees would be perfect for transplanting. I've found that those 18" trees are about perfect since larger trees tend to stay stunted for a while after transplanting. Trees 18" and under seem to bounce back quicker.

 

[BuckSutherland]

There are a couple different owners. It’s all public land. Some is county, some township, a little state and maybe a little federal. When they were cleaning it up a few years ago I stopped and asked them about a couple logs they had cut up and shoved into the woods and they said I could have all that I wanted.

Hopefully they let me take some. Really some. Great looking trees that are just gonna get mowed within a few years.

 

[Ben.MN/WI]

I wouldn't wait for the power company to get back to you. Grab a few 5 gallon buckets and fill them up with seedlings before the brush hog comes through. You are doing them a favor by reducing the number of trees they will brush hog later this summer.

 

[cavey]

If that ground is damp and stays damp those red osiers will likely root and take off, they are the easiest plants to cut and most forgiving. 2 buds out and 3 buds in and your good to go.

 

[BuckSutherland]

I wouldn't wait for the power company to get back to you. Grab a few 5 gallon buckets and fill them up with seedlings before the brush hog comes through. You are doing them a favor by reducing the number of trees they will brush hog later this summer.

Guy from the power company called back. Said go ahead, but that I should check with land owners. Some of it owned by the township, some owned by county and some Federal. I called the Feds and the lady told me I could get a $20 permit to take all the down wood that I want. She wasnt sure about transplanting any small trees, but didnt think it was a problem being they mow it. Should find out tomorrow for sure. Probably shouldnt even ask cause nobody is gonna miss the damn things.

If they give me the green light and its gonna rain this weekend I will probably go up and do it in the rain since I cant be in the field.

 

[sandbur]

When I was a young fellar, I knew a guy that pulled white cedar out of road edges and they were planted with their roots right down in the water. Over half survived and some were 4 or 5 foot tall. I knew the guy quite well in fact! ;)

I have pulled small spruce in early spring and planted them with good success. I hope to try a few next week and just plug them in.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[chummer]

I have pulled dozens of spruce during hunting season and moved them. I have also done it in the spring. Pretty much 100% success rate. Very low success with dogwood and ninebark. I even used rooting hormone and have only had a couple survive but it can be done.

 

[BuckSutherland]

I just got word they approved my permit. I’m gonna go up this weekend and transplant 100+ of those spruce trees. Good to see you guys have had success doing this. I will probably never buy a spruce tree again.

 

[BuckSutherland]

Got some trees planted this weekend. The BIG ones got 10 gallons of water on Saturday and 5 gallons of water on Sunday, and then it snowed/rained up there. I planted them close to some water on the property. The smaller trees got put into several areas of the property. Will be interesting to see what type of survival rates I get. I had 13 friends stop by for coffee early Sunday morning. Could only get 6 of them to hold still. Over 100 deer in the field across from the property on Saturday evening. About 30 of them came through my land after I quit planting trees Saturday evening. I'm sore as hell. Got my trails all cleaned up from dead fall too.

 

[sandbur]

Got some trees planted this weekend. The BIG ones got 10 gallons of water on Saturday and 5 gallons of water on Sunday, and then it snowed/rained up there. I planted them close to some water on the property. The smaller trees got put into several areas of the property. Will be interesting to see what type of survival rates I get. I had 13 friends stop by for coffee early Sunday morning. Could only get 6 of them to hold still. Over 100 deer in the field across from the property on Saturday evening. About 30 of them came through my land after I quit planting trees Saturday evening. I'm sore as hell. Got my trails all cleaned up from dead fall too. View attachment 23911View attachment 23912View attachment 23913View attachment 23914View attachment 23915View attachment 23916View attachment 23917View attachment 23918

Hopefully you will have some success with those trees. Are you hitting any frost yet?

Great to see those deer. You should be beyond the cwd zone for a bit longer than me. I heard they are going to run a 15 mile area and I suspect our zone will be split.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[BuckSutherland]

No frost. I dug several holes to 18” and never hit any. Snow was too deep to have much frost.

Drove around for 45 mins at sunset on Saturday night. Deer numbers were solid. If I don’t get one this year I only have myself to blame. Fields were very busy Saturday night. Deer look pretty healthy too. I would sure think they will leave my area as hunters choice. I would be fine with that.

Still have to get 100 Norway, 50 cannan fir, 20 white pine and 15 swamp white oak from Itasca greenhouse and get those planted. I have 500 feet of rolled wire to protect some trees.

 

[ruskbucks]

Those spruce look like white spruce. They tolerate wet areas way better than blue spruce. That method of transplanting works just fine. I do it all the time with balsams and scotch pine into my road screen. The only problem I see are those aspen trees. I have a area in my screen with some mature aspen I cant cut down because of the power lines. The young aspen at this end shoot up so thick that they choke out my pines and spruce. I cut them out every couple year but the just come back. I went with transplanting balsams there because they are more shade tolerant.

 

[BuckSutherland]

I'm not sure what I all grabbed. It was an assortment. I thought a few looked very much like mini norways. My brother thought there were some black spruce in there. I know I grabbed a few fir trees. I hope I got a bunch of white spruce. I grabbed about 22 pine trees all together and 120 or so spruce and fir trees (mostly spruce). I'm just not great at identifying them. I did the pine fully knowing they are most likely gonna rub the hell out of them during the rut. A great way for them to waste time on the property.

Our property was select cut in 2011, so there are good open areas. I cut down a bunch of those junk trees when I was done planting with my silky saw. Almost all of them should see a good 6+ hours of sun per day. Majority will be closer to 12 hours. I planted them in open clumps were I want the deer to bed and I also used the trees along travel corridors to steer the deer. They like to follow scattered spruce for their travel corridors by me.

I dont plan to bud cap these trees like I will with the ones from Itasca greenhouse. The needles on these were quite sharp already.

 

[Ben.MN/WI]

Your spruce trees look like white spruce for the most part. But a couple of the yellowish ones might be either black spruce trees or white spruce that were growing in a bad spot. Either way they should do fine. I transplanted some black spruce from my wetland and moved them to a dry upland site and they did great.

I think your white pine and red pines will get eaten and rubbed by the deer, so dropping some aspens around them are a good idea.

I made a quick trip up to my cabin on Sunday to plant some mountain ash trees and I pulled a couple dozen volunteer white spruce that were the same size as yours. The soil was really wet, so they pulled up easily and looked great. Free trees are my favorite kind.

 

[BuckSutherland]

Good info Ben. I’m really happy to hear that you think most of them are whites. They have been kinda hard to get from itasca greenhouse in the size I want. I think 2 guys could plant 300-400 trees in one 8 hour day if you weren’t afraid to work at it. Especially if you took trees that averaged about 18” tall. I was planting them at a pretty good pace.

I’m gonna cage or stack brush around those pines this year. Pretty sure the spruce will be just fine. Eventually I will let the deer at them. I planted them as an attractant. Most bucks I have seen shot yo there have conifer sap caked to there foreheads, including my 2 big ones. Wife’s cousin shot a nice 8 pt last year that had a forehead caked with sap as well.

 

[sandbur]

I pulled these today and planted with the plug planting tool. I fear some will be J rooted and wish I had a dibble bar or even a shovel along.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk