4wanderingeyes
5 year old buck +
I have had deer pluck out white pine and spit them out. They just grab it and pull, maybe eat the top couple inches.
Bulk pines planting
- Thread starter roymunson
- Start date
will girdled eastern white pine seedlings send up a new leader?
I planted 25 in the spring, and I've lost most of them through the year. I pulled a dead one for a closer look and the bark was gone around the base. Each has a 4' cage, plastic mesh for rabbits and weed mat. There are a lot of mice on the property, so I think the mice are getting under the rabbit mesh?
The state sells trees in the fall too, so I'll order some more. I'm trying to decide if it's worth letting the dead ones sit a while to see if they send up another leader, or do I go ahead and rip & replace them.
I planted 25 in the spring, and I've lost most of them through the year. I pulled a dead one for a closer look and the bark was gone around the base. Each has a 4' cage, plastic mesh for rabbits and weed mat. There are a lot of mice on the property, so I think the mice are getting under the rabbit mesh?
The state sells trees in the fall too, so I'll order some more. I'm trying to decide if it's worth letting the dead ones sit a while to see if they send up another leader, or do I go ahead and rip & replace them.
Wild Thing
5 year old buck +
I don't plant conifers any more but for quite a few years I was planting 500-1,000 per year - mostly Norway Spruce but some Red Pine as well. Initially, I planted bare root seedlings but eventually converted to planting plugs and never looked back. The last few years I was getting fairly decent sized plugs for .54 cents each (500+).
The boxes would often be pretty beat up from shipping but the trees were always in great shape inside.
I would take them out of the boxes and put them in plastic containers like a Jet Sled and/or a Rubbermaid trailer and put maybe 1/2" of water in the bottom and store them in the barn until I was ready to plant them.
Planting day I would put them in pails with water in the bottom
A buddy of mine is a good welder so I had him make up a planting bar for me which was the same size as the plugs...
One step on the planting bar and a perfect hole is made...
Drop the plug into the hole...
and step down around it to pack it down. Done. I don't have time to mulch and cage 1,000 trees per year. Once planted they are on their own. I had probably a 95% success rate like this.
I opened up this plot but then found it was way too rocky for me. Had I continued to use it as a food plot I would have been picking rocks out of it for 20 years....so I converted it to Norways and Switchgrass. Hard to believe the roots could even get down through the rocks and gravel here but they do.
This 1/2 acre area was a staging area for the giant wood chipper that the loggers used to chip the tops during a timber harvest. It had to be big enough for the chipper and the semi trucks that came in to load them. I sold 1,200 tons of tops for $1/ton. Didn't make much money but I didn't have any fire hazard from all of those tops that year. Other timber sales I have left the tops where they lay. Anyway, I planted 450 Norways here. Don't have any recent pics but many of these trees put on 2 -2 1/2 feet of growth this year and are finally above the weeds. They will really start taking off now and this should be a great bedding area in a few more years.
The only weed control I have done is spraying over the top of them with Clethodim to kill grasses.
The boxes would often be pretty beat up from shipping but the trees were always in great shape inside.
I would take them out of the boxes and put them in plastic containers like a Jet Sled and/or a Rubbermaid trailer and put maybe 1/2" of water in the bottom and store them in the barn until I was ready to plant them.
Planting day I would put them in pails with water in the bottom
A buddy of mine is a good welder so I had him make up a planting bar for me which was the same size as the plugs...
One step on the planting bar and a perfect hole is made...
Drop the plug into the hole...
and step down around it to pack it down. Done. I don't have time to mulch and cage 1,000 trees per year. Once planted they are on their own. I had probably a 95% success rate like this.
I opened up this plot but then found it was way too rocky for me. Had I continued to use it as a food plot I would have been picking rocks out of it for 20 years....so I converted it to Norways and Switchgrass. Hard to believe the roots could even get down through the rocks and gravel here but they do.
This 1/2 acre area was a staging area for the giant wood chipper that the loggers used to chip the tops during a timber harvest. It had to be big enough for the chipper and the semi trucks that came in to load them. I sold 1,200 tons of tops for $1/ton. Didn't make much money but I didn't have any fire hazard from all of those tops that year. Other timber sales I have left the tops where they lay. Anyway, I planted 450 Norways here. Don't have any recent pics but many of these trees put on 2 -2 1/2 feet of growth this year and are finally above the weeds. They will really start taking off now and this should be a great bedding area in a few more years.
The only weed control I have done is spraying over the top of them with Clethodim to kill grasses.
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Wild Thing
5 year old buck +
I lost the photos when my computer crashed last year but I am willing to bet a dollar to a dime that skunks are what are pulling up your freshly planted conifers. I never had any issues with that and never had any issues at all when I planted plugs with the homemade plug planter, but when I started using an auger on a drill to open the holes, critters started uprooting them. A skunk will see that fresh dirt from the auger drilling around your seedling and think that somebody else buried some goodies there....so they dig it up. They also dug up some of my freshly planted oak seedlings. Once I figured out it was skunks, I set some traps out and caught them. 4 or 5 skunks later the digging problem went away.
Wild Thing
5 year old buck +
Yes - Itasca and also from the original owners of North Central Reforestation. I had great product and service from both of them.
NCR retired and sold out to some crooks. They kept my deposit and never sent me my trees. Would not answer my emails or phone calls. I filed complaints with the A G offices in both Michigan and MN but never got my money back. They went out of business shortly thereafter.
Itasca is good.
BuckSutherland
5 year old buck +
I have planted 42 potted white cedars on my land so far. They have been strategically placed in bedding clumps and along travel corridors.
-10 1 gallon pots 2020
-20 2 gallon pots 2021
-12 2 gallon pots 2022
-100% caged, 100% survived, 100% are thriving inside the cage
-Growth has been fantastic and they look awesome
-Amazing drought tolerance
Here is one of the white cedars (2 gallon pot) I planted on my land May of 2021.
Here is the same tree last Saturday only 16 months after I planted it. I should have been planting white cedar, and pines this whole time and the hell with spruce and fir. They grow like shit in my clay compared to pine and white cedar.
-10 1 gallon pots 2020
-20 2 gallon pots 2021
-12 2 gallon pots 2022
-100% caged, 100% survived, 100% are thriving inside the cage
-Growth has been fantastic and they look awesome
-Amazing drought tolerance
Here is one of the white cedars (2 gallon pot) I planted on my land May of 2021.
Here is the same tree last Saturday only 16 months after I planted it. I should have been planting white cedar, and pines this whole time and the hell with spruce and fir. They grow like shit in my clay compared to pine and white cedar.
Wild Thing
5 year old buck +
Looking good Buck Sutherland. I am sure I would need caging to grow either white cedar or hemlock here.
Here are some pics I took recently of my Norway Spruce and Red Pine plantings:
This is new growth from this year...and a dry year at that. We only got 1.2" of rain for the entire month of July...
Here are some Norways and Red Pine from an earlier planting...
The red pine do seem to grow faster - especially if they get some sunlight...
but once the Norways get above the weed vegetation height they seem to grow very well also...
Yes - bucks do rub some of them, and some have died after rubbing, but a lot of them have survived after rubbing as well.
These trees were just planted with no mulch, caging, watering or other maintenance. My soil is a clay/loam. We have planted thousands of them like this. In fact, one year when I was out of town, my wife planted 1,000 of these all by herself and another year I planted 1,000 all by myself.
We have had years, especially when we were winter feeding deer, when they browsed off all of the new growth over winter and the trees had to start over again the next year. Since we quit winter feeding several years ago we have had much better success. Still, overall I would say we have had about a 95% survival rate.
tlzkaasen
5 year old buck +
I have a new threat to my younger trees along a granted easment.. DOG PISS! The vacationing neighbors have been letting their dogs piss on my BHS and Norway Spruce. Killed about 5..No other spots have I lost ANY trees. I'm caging soon and will make a HUGE eyesore as they drive up the easement (my wife asked me not to, but I'm so ticked). Funny thing was - I asked them to not let their dogs pee on the new trees.. It got worse.. Damn dog walkers.
@tlzkaasen if you used fiberglass rods to mount the cages, and put them slightly above the grass, a solar fence charger would help to retrain the dogs.
tlzkaasen
5 year old buck +
I just saw this when I walked the road.. I'm beyond irritated, but thats what you get when you try to be nice.
4wanderingeyes
5 year old buck +
I planted 25 white cedars this year, and 50 spruce. I didn’t cage any of the spruce. All of mine are alive and doing well. Mine were 2-0 bare roots. I wanted potted, but they wouldn’t ship them. I planted about 500 ROD, I didn’t cage them either, I will probably regret that. I haven’t been out to check on the ROD, mostly because the damn ferns are 5 feet tall. I planted 50 choke cherry, and 50 American plum, I did cage them. I can see the Plums from a trail, and they are doing well, the choke cherry, I can see a couple cages, but can’t see if anything is in them or not. I will check them out when we get our first frost in like a month. Next year if the ROD survived, I will plant more. If not, I will just focus on more white cedars, white pine, and spruce trees. I am also cutting down a lot of mature poplar and maple trees, hopefully I will get a bunch of suckering, and stump sprouts as well.
BuckSutherland
5 year old buck +
^^^Bareroots?? And did you mulch the weed mat? I think they kinda become an oven if you dont cover them with about a bag worth of mulch.
PatinPA
5 year old buck +
Bareroot. I gathered sticks rocks nearby and put them on the mats. Most of the places were shaded. 90% of my property is on the shade side of the hill. I don't think getting baked by the sun would be a problem but it could've been.
BuckSutherland
5 year old buck +
Approximately 40 months ago I planted these ABP white pines from Itasca Greenhouse.
They have done exceptionally well for me in just a little more then 3 years.
They have done exceptionally well for me in just a little more then 3 years.
4wanderingeyes
5 year old buck +
Damn! Have you been fertilizing at all?
BuckSutherland
5 year old buck +
^^^ I injected a few ounces of triple 19 under the weed mat this year. First time they have been fertilized. They took off the day I planted them and never looked back. I will finally be giving up on some cannan fir trees next spring and replacing them with these ABPs.
tlzkaasen
5 year old buck +
ABP was the size of the white pines from Itasca? I might do a comparison of some Itasca Norway Spruce to the MDC Norway's which I ordered because of the price and quality. I have another 200 to plant next spring from MDC. I probably have 80% survivors after a dry summer and dog walkers who allow their dogs to piss on trees that are on a pass through road to some log cabins.. 100% loss down that stretch, but 20 yards in - 100% surviving,
BuckSutherland
5 year old buck +
Yes, ABP from Itasca. Itasca plugs have good survivability. I would plan on losing some norways from Itasca the first winter, and maybe a few more 2nd and third winter. Seems the biggest threat to them is immediate deer browse and then winter kill in my area. Here is a picture of some Itasca ABP norway spruce that I planted in 2019. The surviving ones are now 2-4 feet tall. They are ready to break out next season.
The best ones I have now are averaging about 4 feet tall and looking ready to finally breakout.
