Itasca Greenhouse plug planting tool

[NWWI]

I bought the plug planting tool that Itasca Greenhouse used to sell years ago. It's not beneficial to order through them anymore seeing as they are not dealing in smaller quantities. I'm going to try North Central Reforestation.
I can't remember what size plug the special tool was made for. It was custom made and worked great. I want to order the same sized plugs through NCR. Does anyone remember what size it was?

 

[Buckly]

The tool was made for size 4A plugs. Although if you wanted a little bigger like #6, Forestry suppliers sells several size plug dibble bars.

 

[KDdid]

I bought the plug planting tool that Itasca Greenhouse used to sell years ago. It's not beneficial to order through them anymore seeing as they are not dealing in smaller quantities. I'm going to try North Central Reforestation.

So what’s their minimum order size now? I was thinking about buying some spruce through them (and tamarack if they had any).


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[NWWI]

So what’s their minimum order size now? I was thinking about buying some spruce through them (and tamarack if they had any).


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Minimum order is $150, but I don't believe that they are shipping them in the styrofoam containers any more.

 

[Wild Thing]

I bought the plug planting tool that Itasca Greenhouse used to sell years ago. It's not beneficial to order through them anymore seeing as they are not dealing in smaller quantities. I'm going to try North Central Reforestation.
I can't remember what size plug the special tool was made for. It was custom made and worked great. I want to order the same sized plugs through NCR. Does anyone remember what size it was?

If you can weld or have a welder buddy you can make your own plug planting tool. This one was made for the Styro 10 sized plugs and works great:




We have also planted a lot of plugs using an auger on an 18V drill:



They all work - some just a little better than others:

 

[Wild Thing]

One drawback to using the auger that we have not experienced using the plug planting tool is that skunks seem to think that something good is buried there when they see the loose dirt - so they tend to dig up your new conifer plantings:






They are not bashful about digging up freshly planted oak seedlings either:



So it helps if you can trap out the skunks prior to planting. The first 20 years we owned our property I only saw 2 skunks. The past 2 years we have seen many of them. Once I trapped 4 or 5 of them and the loose dirt settled in after a few rainfalls I didn't have any further problems with them digging them up.

 

[bueller]

Interesting Wildthing, I've seen others on here mention some of their plugs getting pulled out of the ground and deer were assumed to be the offenders.

 

[Wild Thing]

We have planted thousands of seedlings and plugs over the years. We generally have a high to very high deer density yet we never experienced a dug up plug until we started using the auger to plant them and this just happened to coincide with the skunk population boom in our area. I set my traps where I was having problems with my seedlings and plugs being dug up and skunks is what I caught.

Note the skunk in the background: