Habitat Happening: Live Blog!

[SD51555]

Finally!

It's tree planting time. I plan to chronicle the project as it happens over the next few days. We got work to do:

250 RO Dogwood
100 White Spruce
100 Norway Spruce
25 Black Spruce
25 Siberian Crab
12 Bur Oak
6 Ussurian Pear
6 Serviceberry
6 American Mountainash

I took a short tour of the Itasca Greenhouse facility. Snapped a few pics. I'll share those later.

I am impressed with the size of the trees I got. The dogwoods are over 3 feet tall!

 

[SD51555]

Headed back into town to get pea gravel, some dirt, more stakes, and some groceries. Hoping to get all the tubes trees done yet today. Pretty wet in Cass County.

 

[bueller]

If you guys keep posting pictures of them plugs I'm going to have to seriously consider why I continue to plant bareroot seedlings with huge root masses :confused:

 

[SD51555]

True stuff. Got the dirt and pea gravel.

 

[wiscwhip]

How are the survival rates compared to bareroots? Just curious, because you can plant many more plugs for the same money in less time, it seems like a no-brainer if the survival of the plugs is even close to the bareroots.

 

[wiscwhip]

I planted 5 plugs in the front of the driveway of the old man's place back in like 6th grade. 4 survived, but they were in a spot that could be watered. I can't even remember if they were white or red pines?

 

[Bill]

Looks good!

My problem with plugs was the deer. When they tried to nip the tree they popped the whole plug out. Darn deer....

 

[SD51555]

Mountain ash and 6 of the Siberian crab done...

 

[Deer Kar]

How tall are your tubes and is that black plastic or more likely fiber?

 

[SD51555]

Those are 6' Plantra tubes. The mats are like a blue tarp type fabric. I think they're rated for 3-5 years.

They're not plastic. They're Plantra weed mats.

 

[SD51555]

Day 1 total:

We got 30 of the tubes trees planted:

12 Siberian crab
6 Ussurian Pear
6 American mountainash
6 Serviceberry

12 Bur oak in tubes tomorrow then it's on to the KBC bar and the 475 plugs we got left to plant before the rain. Here's the last 6 serviceberries we planted today. Couldn't take a pic of the pears. Too many tubes from last year in the shot.

 

[SD51555]

Bur oak hill is done (12).

Went with tubex tubes because these are slightly visible from the road.

 

[SD51555]

Yep. I ordered mine in January or February.

 

[SD51555]

Well we got it all done. We had to take the chainsaw out to get some sunlight in a few spots. I let my buddy run the saw. He ran it like an engineer (made it way more complicated than required), but it got the job done.

As we were riding out, the rain started falling. Happy to see that.

Let's not do this again till next year. I'm sore.

 

[huntall]

looks good!

 

[Riggsgwp->]

Looks good! I bet you're glad to be done with that.

 

[Deer Kar]

Looks great.

 

[tooln]

Looks good. I hope you have a high survival rate. Do you use root gel at all?

 

[SD51555]

It hurts so good. Tomorrow we just have to do about an hour of trail cam work. Then it's all in place. Feels sore and great all at the same time.

 

[SD51555]

Looks good. I hope you have a high survival rate. Do you use root gel at all?

We used a root gel from Itasca. It had more to it than that, but I can't articulate that right now. Maybe a stimulant/inoculant?