Anyone planting trees for future timber value (walnut/oak)?

[Redonthehead]

My FIL has had a couple of walnut sales from his farms. nice money! Best to hire a forester and let him take care of bidding. High bids can easily be twice the low bid.

in 2003 we planted 23? acres to walnut mixed with ash to promote the walnut to grow straight and tall. We are behind on trimming and thinning. With Thousand Cankers Disease on the way it may be a waste of time.

The Web Soil Survey has an overlay to find suitable areas of proper soils to plant walnut.

 

[j-bird]

Okay good deal, do any of you recommend or had good experience with a trusted source in the Indiana or surrounding state area? I want to incorporate a few plantings of it.

Come to my place and you can have all the hedge balls you want! If I have any seedlings or saplings your welcome to them for transplanting as well. I don't see them on the first thru the dept of forestry. I have not seen the deer attraction to hedge as other have mentioned......at least not on my place.

 

[MoBuckChaser]

Come to my place and you can have all the hedge balls you want! If I have any seedlings or saplings your welcome to them for transplanting as well. I don't see them on the first thru the dept of forestry. I have not seen the deer attraction to hedge as other have mentioned......at least not on my place.

With no acorns this year, there ain't one hedge ball left in NW MO!

 

[Catscratch]

Come to my place and you can have all the hedge balls you want! If I have any seedlings or saplings your welcome to them for transplanting as well. I don't see them on the first thru the dept of forestry. I have not seen the deer attraction to hedge as other have mentioned......at least not on my place.

For us it's the leafs and twigs that they go after. Cattle love the leafs too. Always a browse line...
The balls are mostly squirrel food but I have watched some younger deer eat them.

 

[j-bird]

We seem to have taken this off the rails a bit. I have lots of hedge, big ones, and I see little use from a wildlife perspective of them. That may be because of my lower deer numbers, but who knows. I have even considered cutting them down. The ones I have are like giant shrubs. They grow from a large but very short stump and then explode into almost a weeping willow type form without a straight branch to be found. Anyone wanting some......come and get them. I never imagined anyone would actually want them.

 

[tynimiller]

Come to my place and you can have all the hedge balls you want! If I have any seedlings or saplings your welcome to them for transplanting as well. I don't see them on the first thru the dept of forestry. I have not seen the deer attraction to hedge as other have mentioned......at least not on my place.

I enjoy hedges for multiple reasons, sure deer can brows them but I like you see other more preferred ones. I'd like some as I want to someday build a Osage bow from a tree I planted, simmered hedge is a great cover scent, squirrel hunting and timber value for a rather easy to grow and care for tree. I might just take you up on that J-Bird if around Decatur some weekend!

 

[j-bird]

I enjoy hedges for multiple reasons, sure deer can brows them but I like you see other more preferred ones. I'd like some as I want to someday build a Osage bow from a tree I planted, simmered hedge is a great cover scent, squirrel hunting and timber value for a rather easy to grow and care for tree. I might just take you up on that J-Bird if around Decatur some weekend!

Just let me know......I tend to shoot first and ask questions later!:D This is sort of odd.....I really consider them rather worthless. They just never really got in the way and that's the only reason I haven't cut them all. One man's trash I guess......

 

[Catscratch]

Just let me know......I tend to shoot first and ask questions later!:D This is sort of odd.....I really consider them rather worthless. They just never really got in the way and that's the only reason I haven't cut them all. One man's trash I guess......

I'm the same way with turnips. Damn near can't get deer to eat them, but others rave about how good of a plot they make. Wasted plot space for me if it's covered in them.

 

[H20fwler]

Just curious if anyone has set aside acres for future timber harvests? I have a few walnut and oak planted in areas that could provide future harvest, but I have not dedicated acre/acres to it....For me this would be for the kids!

Thanks

Both my properties have woods on them, one eight acres of woods one fourteen. It's all mostly mixed hardwoods lots of nice red and white oaks, walnuts and hickories, they were select logged about fifteen years ago. I will select harvest timber on them sometime in the next ten years to open the canopy up and make some money.

Timber cruisers here are looking for good walnut and white oak all the time, I get at least three cards a year in the mail from them wanting to buy trees. On younger trees I trim low branches in winter planning on my boys making some money off them in their lifetimes. I would never cut an oak or walnut on my place for firewood even if they look crooked or branched funny, they have a big value to wildlife so do the trees with holes in them. I've got a few huge red and white oaks that look they are hundreds of years old to me they remind me of the trees in Harry Potter movies, the turkeys love roosting in them.
For firewood I cut maple or locust along the edge of the woods.

 

[buckdeer1]

I have never seen a deer eat a hedge ball,Pack rats and squirrels .You can buy bareroot seedlings from Kansas forestry.I have noticed on my farm and the surrounding farms that it seems something has changed and cottonwoods and walnuts are not regenerating.

 

[Turkish]

In SW MS, timber is the crop that the land is used for. My lease is 400 acres of nearly solid hardwood sawtimber. Water and cherrybark oak, and of course sweetgum, are the most prevalent species. It's owned by a company that is a large hardwood lumber producer. They thin our woods roughly every 8 years. I'd guess they harvest $1-$2000 per acre worth of timber at every thinning, once a tract has been managed for many years. I have also planted oaks at land I own. Foresters I've talked to say those first generation trees will be of poor quality and value when ready for harvest.

 

[Mortenson]

To the original poster, yes I would definitely plant some harvest trees on the proper site. Hard to ignore the thought of selling some $1,000 trees someday. Ours were conceived by my grandpa, planted by my dad, mostly taken care of by me, and hopefully will be sold by my kids/grandkids. I snapped these pics of our walnuts a few winters ago. Some are crooked, but we have probably at least two thinnings ahead of us. My biggest regret is waiting about 5 years too long before finally buying a Stihl extension saw. The biggest trees sorta grew away from us, but I think most of those can still make 8'+ logs.

 

[MoBuckChaser]

To the original poster, yes I would definitely plant some harvest trees on the proper site. Hard to ignore the thought of selling some $1,000 trees someday. Ours were conceived by my grandpa, planted by my dad, mostly taken care of by me, and hopefully will be sold by my kids/grandkids. I snapped these pics of our walnuts a few winters ago. Some are crooked, but we have probably at least two thinnings ahead of us. My biggest regret is waiting about 5 years too long before finally buying a Stihl extension saw. The biggest trees sorta grew away from us, but I think most of those can still make 8'+ logs.

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Very nice stand of trees. No big deal if you dont have veneer trees either.

 

[Reagan]

I had to go way back to the early days of this site to find this pic.

Our deer love to eat hedge leaves. When the fruit is big, the branches bend down and the deer strip them.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[H20fwler]

We get the hedge in fence rows and along the edge of woods.
They make great fence posts when dry, we had some posts at our farm growing up that my Dad said had been in the ground 100 years.
Very tough to pound a fence staple into, almost need to pre drill.

I've heard them called;

Osage Orange
Hedge Apple
Iron Wood
Monkey Ball
BoDoc

Here are a duck and goose call I made years ago out of the bottom of one of the old fence posts from our old farm.

 

[Catscratch]

I had to go way back to the early days of this site to find this pic.

Our deer love to eat hedge leaves. When the fruit is big, the branches bend down and the deer strip them.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Great pic, and the exact reason I don't mind spreading and nurturing hedge around my place!

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[Catscratch]

We get the hedge in fence rows and along the edge of woods.
They make great fence posts when dry, we had some posts at our farm growing up that my Dad said had been in the ground 100 years.
Very tough to pound a fence staple into, almost need to pre drill.

I've heard them called;

Osage Orange
Hedge Apple
Iron Wood
Monkey Ball
BoDoc

Here are a duck and goose call I made years ago out of the bottom of one of the old fence posts from our old farm.

Beautiful calls.


Sent from my SM-N910V using Tapatalk

 

[H20fwler]

Thanks

 

[rocksnstumps]

To those that want to help out those grandkids with a few bucks down the road, some advice on thinning or maybe not...

https://robboholleranforester.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/sw-growing-for-grade.pdf

 

[DLH]

I've seen some walnut logs from California on the internet that were grafted walnuts for nut production. I think they grafted English onto their native. A long time later ~100 years they cut them and sawed for lumber the dark walnut of the understock and light English walnut of the top was a great transition at the graft union. Some of the coolest stuff I've seen.