Habitat Talk Poll: How Many Trees Will You Plant In '15

[SD51555]

You guys ever wonder how many trees the whole lot of us plant in total for a year? Let's try to find out. I set up the poll to allow for multiple selections, so you can choose multiple to get to your total. Please round off to the nearest 100. This is not scientific, I just wonder what our collective impact is on the whitetail landscape in one year.

 

[SD51555]

You can choose 1000 and 500. The poll allows for multiple choices. I shouldn't have put the "+" on it. My fault. I'll add 500 to it when it's done.

 

[j-bird]

Tree planting just isn't something I have jumped into in any scale at this point. I have a few areas I need to do, but for some reason I always seem to find something else to do. If a person was to just go nuts is it better to go bare root or plugs? The biggest issue I have is all the weed control needed.

 

[Riggsgwp->]

I've planted over 10,000 bare root seedlings with decent success and very little weed control. I seem to lose more trees from our severe winters than I do from weed competition but thick grass will choke them out. I'm switching to plug plantings this year due to easier planting and hopefully slightly better success rates.

 

[Jim Timber]

Plugs!

Bare root gets you bigger trees, but higher chances of mortality and harder to transplant.

 

[SD51555]

Plugs hands down. I had a chance to look over my spruce planting from this spring. I only found one dead one out of 300, and I am already seeing branches form on a lot of them. That being said, we also had the best growing conditions possible for plugs in my area.

 

[Jim Timber]

I found a plug I planted in 2012 that was half removed from it's hole and it was still alive. The top had died back, but the bottom was very much still in the game.

 

[biglakeba$$]

I voted 100+. I am going to try some plugs, but not sure how many yet. It wont be much.
We have planted nearly 10,000 bareroots over the last 7 years. Slowly but surely spotty success here and there is showing.
We did 1500 this spring and the summer rains did the job. I am certain I have 90% survival going into fall. FINALLY. In the past 5 years we have done a couple nearly total replants due to summer loss from drought.
The one HUGE mistake we made was trying to plant the "Fruiting Shrub Packet" from the Badoura nursery. We planted 1000 of these one spring... I am pretty certain that zero are alive today... Ugh. What a waste of time on those. They were so small. I dont think anything we stuck in the ground was over 12". Not sure if the drought got them or just the grass competition. Such a bummer. I had really high hopes of this massive berry smorgasbord. Whooops!
Fruiting Shrub packet (8"–18")
100 each of highbush cranberry, juneberry,
chokeberry, plum, and crabapple

I just wish I could find the magic dust to make these things grow twice as fast.....

 

[sandbur]

Mark-I have not had luck with those bare root packets from our DNR either.

I have always had poor success with any thing except conifers and apples.

 

[Natty Bumppo]

I voted 100 or less, as I always plant a few apples here and there. I also want to try some Dunstans this year for the first time.

What I will be focusing on though is removing trees! My land needs some serious TSI.

 

[Jim Timber]

I'm with ya Natty. I need to do some reconstructive surgery on my canopy for sure, but I'm also planting 650 conifers at the same time. :D

 

[tooln]

I did 1300 1 year ago & 200 this, all Norway spruce and maybe a hand full of apple trees next year.

 

[huntall]

I have planted about 4 thousand trees in the past few years, and now about to fill up my planting areas. I will be planting less than 100 this year. Even less in the future.

 

[Bowsnbucks]

I've planted about 800 Norway and white spruce, 4 dozen apples and crabs, 3 pear, 3 dozen Washington hawthorn, 2 dozen Fraser fir, 1 dozen witch hazel, 1 dozen aspen, 2 hackberry at my camp over the past 18 years or so. This spring, we'll plant another 15 apple & crab trees, 100 Norway spruce, 6 serviceberry trees, 1 dozen hawthorn & maybe a few Chinese chestnuts.

 

[bwoods11]

500 this year I think

Best price on plugs, is to order 500

 

[chummer]

To anyone new to planting I recommend dogwoods. This was my second year planting trees and the only thing I have had good success with is silky dogwood. They haven't been through a winter yet but I have high hopes. They were bare root from MDC and were small single stem bare root. No matter where I put them they put on a few new stems and 3-4' of growth. I think I have 100 more coming for next year. The deer love browsing them too.

 

[MNAaron]

Planted 3400 last year and another 4000 this spring. I am going to try and transplant a bunch of 1-3 ft tall conifers as well. Give them a head start hopefully.

 

[West Branch]

I hope to put in about 500 with a mix of white spruce, Norway spruce, and balsam fir on my 40 in the spring. Some may be replacements in the road screen I started this year. Otherwise they are all going in pockets in the woods. My only conifers are a couple spruce trees in the yard by the cabin, definitely need a lot more!