What Are You Planting This Spring?

[Kooch]

Once it's warm enough, I'll plant buckwheat into a new plot I had cleared, and pumpkins right up the middle of the old one, after I spray them both.

 

[b116757]

Growing up in northern Wisconsin we often planted a lot of the small sweet pie pumpkins to feed the deer. Few things as comical as a deer kicking off a piece of frozen pumpkin then eating it’s pumpkin popsicle treat as you try not to laugh out loud.

 

[H20fwler]

Where did you find the Franklin’s I would like to order a couple of them to try everyplace I’ve found them are sold out.

They were out of my nursery bed, all of the fruit trees I planted this spring were except for the Fire Crackers. I had a bunch of stuff grafted from the last two years. Planted a few things myself, gave most to a couple of buddies that are just getting into wildlife trees.

 

[Chainsaw]

From my local NRCS
25- 2 gallon white cedar
8- 2 gallon black hills spruce
3- 2 gallon meyers spruce
25- 1 gallon white pine

From University of Idaho
5- common wild apple
5-burr oak gamble
5-concolor fir
5-Douglass fir
5-grand fir
5-western hemlock
5 western larch
5-frasier fir

All of the above will be in cages with weed mats.


Then I will go down the road and pull out approximately 200 balsam fir and white spruce to transplant into my land. I might do another 100-200 on some private land down the road that I have permission to hunt. I am thinking of heading north this weekend to start making cages and trying to do all the transplant

I got 20 hours of work in Friday and Saturday. I carried in 7 rolls of wire and 140 little post to their new home. Then I cleared 70 spots for new trees, cages and weed mats. Took 3 tanks through the chainsaw and a few hours on my hands and knees with the silky eliminating all the competition for 8+ hours of sun for my new trees. Got a few extra brush piles now. Then I made and formed all 70 cages. Now I just need to show up in a few weeks and plant the trees, put the weed mat down and stake the cages in and then things should be in God's hands.


Also came up with a quick way to measure my cages instead of dinking around with a tape measure. This greatly speeded up the process for me. I could make 10 cages from a 100 foot roll in about 15 mins from start to finish. Deer raised hell with my uncaged norways this winter. They tore half of them apart even with bud caps on them.


When that was all finished my brother and I went down the road and ripped out about 75 volunteer white spruce from the road ditch and planted them in our area. No ticks for me, no mosquitoes, but I damn near heat stroked myself anyways.

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Buck that is a lot accomplished in two days, good for you guys.. I too used the measuring stick to speed up the wire measuring, just like cutting firewood. I have been using Channel Lock type wire cutters and it is taking me a lot longer to cut up and form cages than you, are you using a different way to cut the wire? Thanks.

 

[Knehrke]

Hey Chainsaw - I'll chime in that long handled bolt cutters save on the back when cutting up a roll of welded wire for cages.

My planting this Spring is going to be the least I've done in many years. This morning I will be picking up six maple for scarlet and orange fall colors, at the wife's request, and replacing trees in cages that didn't make it. Most of my time lately has been spend maintaining what we've put in over the past six years as well as dropping as many of our ash that I can, if they are anywhere near a trail. Poison ivy seems to love dead ash, and I don't want to deal with them falling across trails, covered in vines. Chances are that by next year they are going to fell unpredictably anyway, given that they're a year past defoliation now.

I'm hoping to see some flowers on our Franklin this year, I believe they're fifth leaf on B118. We will see.

 

[BuckSutherland]

Buck that is a lot accomplished in two days, good for you guys.. I too used the measuring stick to speed up the wire measuring, just like cutting firewood. I have been using Channel Lock type wire cutters and it is taking me a lot longer to cut up and form cages than you, are you using a different way to cut the wire? Thanks.

This is the exact snips I use.

I unroll the cage (the whole roll at once if I need that many in an area). I throw the board down and make two snips at 10' and then I slide the board down and make another two snips at the next 10' and then keep repeating. After its all measured I just go back every ten feet where I already cut and pick the cage up and snip at my waist level instead of bending over or doing it on the ground. I'm using 14 gauge wire so it doesn't take much to cut, but I have made a few dozen cages with 12 gauge wire as well. It goes very fast and I'm blowing right through these things with this snips. I use my right hand to run the snips and my left hand to pick up and hold the cage up so I dont have to bend over so far.

 

[Chainsaw]

Thanks BuckSutherland, I'll try it out on my next cutting day. Snipping at waist level makes a lot of sense.

 

[williams111]

If I have a bunch of cages to cut I unroll up to 5 rolls at a time and put something heavy on each end. Then use a small set of bolt cutters to cut all 5 at one time. Seems a lot faster for me and easier. Then there are already 5 cages bundled together as well. I struggle getting them all bundled together if I cut one cage at a time since I typically cut them at home to maximize efficiency when I do get time to plant.

 

[Buckly]

This is the best thing for cutting cages in my opinion. Fast and easy. No hand cramps or back aches. Lol

 

[b116757]

Products | KNIPEX Tools

KNIPEX pliers and tools: everything a tradesman's heart desiresThe KNIPEX range includes hand tools for various occasions. Of course, the main focus is still on pliers. Nevertheless, it is sometimes useful to have the right screwdriver or knife for the respective work area in the tool...

www.knipex.com

I like to keep a pair of these around very handy when working with wire but a little $$$

 

[b116757]

Picked up 5lbs each of
Chicory
Buckwheat
Ladino white clover

I’m going to broadcast the Chicory and Buckwheat between my oaks the ladino is for a small woods plot I’ve been expanding a bit releasing mature oaks.
Anybody planted Birdsfoot Trefoil? How do the deer like it. I’ve read up on it some for cattle pasture ground but have no idea if deer like it or not.

 

[Tree Spud]

I'll one up all you guys, this handheld bolt cutter has a compound cutting action and spring open design. The anvil style cutting jaws cut cleanly. This is easy enough for my wife to cut cages.

 

[H20fwler]

I'll one up all you guys, this handheld bolt cutter has a compound cutting action and spring open design. The anvil style cutting jaws cut cleanly. This is easy enough for my wife to cut cages.

View attachment 34222

Will that work easy with remesh?

 

[Tree Spud]

Will that work easy with remesh?

That size will not, I use a actual bolt cutter for remesh. For remesh you will need a 2 handed one with longer arms to get leverage.

 

[Mortenson]

Products | KNIPEX Tools

KNIPEX pliers and tools: everything a tradesman's heart desiresThe KNIPEX range includes hand tools for various occasions. Of course, the main focus is still on pliers. Nevertheless, it is sometimes useful to have the right screwdriver or knife for the respective work area in the tool...

www.knipex.com

I like to keep a pair of these around very handy when working with wire but a little $$$

Knipex tools are pricey but they are sure nice! I've been getting my dad a few various items for holidays whereas I do my own shopping usually at harbor freight. Definitely get long handled bolt cutters for remesh.

 

[b116757]

I'll one up all you guys, this handheld bolt cutter has a compound cutting action and spring open design. The anvil style cutting jaws cut cleanly. This is easy enough for my wife to cut cages.

View attachment 34222

I see a new tool in my near future with literally miles of fence a pocket sized mechanical advantage bolt cutter needs to be in the tool box

 

[Knehrke]

This is the best thing for cutting cages in my opinion. Fast and easy. No hand cramps or back aches. Lol

View attachment 34221

Exactly what I use. I like the idea of unrolling multiple rolls on top of each other, and snipping them all at once.

 

[b116757]

This morning we stretched 5 strands of barbed wire to fence off my 3.5 acre new this spring tree planting to keep the cattle out. Planted about 100 or so acorns this afternoon most had radicals just starting already. These got planted mostly along a creek and among some over grown pasture with mixed Hedge, Honey locust and maybe a bit of Siberian elm.
I had some

Sawtooth oak
NRO
Shumard oak
Pin oak

I’ll try and make it back out in the area latter this spring and tube at least some of them. We have very few oaks on the property, there are only a handful of pin oaks total so I’m trying to get some mast trees started in various locations. Tomorrow weather permitting I’m firing up my Cat 951 track loader and clearing some new food plots in areas we don’t run cattle. I also have an area with a very old very large pear tree that I’m going to clear out around. For those that hadn’t guessed this is a operating cattle ranch so it’s always a balancing act trying to manage for deer and cattle sometimes they coincide nicely like we drilled in maybe 60 acres of forage oats about three weeks ago that should make both fat a happy. We will turn the cattle out on it in June but the deer get free reign until then.

 

[Derek Reese 29]

Figured I would try to add to these lists
2-Keiffer pears
1 Beurre D'Anjo Pear
1 Potomac Pear
3-Chickasaw plums
10-hybrid willows
2 Chestnut crabs
1 Dolgo Crab
3 drop tine crabs
1 Hewe's Crab
2 Kerr Crabs
2 redfield crabs
1 Wickson crab
2 Liberty Apples
2 Arkansas Black Apples
1 Goldrush Apple
1 Galarina Apple
2 Chesnut crabs
2 Wild Apples

Got A few of these in the ground already...the rest are going in this week or next.

 

[b116757]

Ran crawler for 5-6 hours yesterday clearing out around a pear tree and small pie cherry grove also cleared a lot of other stuff in the area a fair amount of trivet that I wish was gone that stuff is almost a nuisance. Then planted acorns for an hour or so and scoured the ground for morels no luck on the mushrooms but I did find a nice mature pin oak I’ll release the canopy on possibly next weekend. Broadcast 5 lbs of Buckwheat, 5 lbs of Chicory and about 2 lbs of Ladino clover between my new deer orchard tree rows will need to pick up some other seed for that area latter in the year probably September timeframe. I’ll probably disc up everything and plant winter oats or winter wheat with maybe some red clover as a cover crop.