Aerial Seeding

[Gary_C]

I am still cutting on a job on state land and this week my peace and quiet was disturbed by a helicopter landing on my landing. Seems the DNR had a contractor seeding some pine on selected sites in that state forest. Here are a few pictures I took.





The two DNR Foresters approach the cab.
The white pods just behind the cab are the seeders and the seed is in the white 5 gal pails on the ground.





And away he goes to another site.




After they finished, the chopper came back and they plugged a memory stick into the computer in the chopper and they downloaded a map history of his routes on an overlay of each site. It recorded all his paths with a red overlay for seeding time and how many acres he had seeded, both inside the boundary and outside. Gave the acreage for each. That is the record for paying the contractor and they said it costs about $8 per acre just for the contractor, plus the seed costs.

In the past, before they had this mapping software, they have put just a little jack pine in with the seed or placed white sheets on the ground in scattered spots and go back and look for seed. With the jack pine, it would be years before they knew for sure what had been seeded.

Very interesting operation. A week or so ago, the DNR also had some seeding crews out doing some hand seeding. They use various immigrants for these seeding jobs, this year it was Mexicans and I would see them go by each morning and evening in their van with a porta potty on a trailer behind.  :D

This same day, it was raining in the morning so I drove out to a DNR timber sale. On the way out of the woods, I saw a big brown or black bear loping across the road about 50 yards in front of me. One of the foresters said the bear was probably trying to run out his "wad" that he had accumulated over the winter.  :D

I don't think it was the reason for the seeding, but Pine stumpage sold at the sale for as much as $106 per cord.  

[mad murdock]

Nice shots of the operation.  I know the operator, (helicopter world is small, you get to know everybody around the world.)  The company I work for has 3 helicopters of that type (Bell 47 G with the Soloy Turbine modification).  They are one of the largest operators of that type of aircraft in North America, and a good operator.  The company I work for pioneered aerial seeding, one of the founders did seeding in the '50's on the Tillamook Burn in Oregon using a helicopter, (I think it was the first time a helicopter was used in forest ops). 

[thecfarm]

Interesting seeding with the helicopter. The price of the stumpage caught my attention. Seems to be a lot to pay,just for stumpage,but I'm not in your area.

[Norm]

Cool stuff Gary. 

They are using an ag cat to seed the ditches along a new stretch of 4 lane on highway 30 south of us. We were heading over to Ames and saw him sitting on the new 2 lane section that did not have shoulders on it yet. Looked in the rear view window to see him take off on the new concrete and I'm sure he lands on it too. All of us that fly know how narrow that would be to do but even worse to do in a tail dragger.

[Bro. Noble]

Gary,  that brings back some memories of aerial seeding.  During the late 60's, you could buy timber/ brush land in the Ozarks for as little as $15/ acre that I was aware of.   Someone got the bright idea of spraying this low quality hardwood timber by air,  burning the next fall and seeding fescue by air.  This worked well and the practice was used on thousands of acres over the next 5 or 10 years.  A lot of the land was too steep to brush hog so eventually went back to brush,  but some ended up in productive pasture.  One thing it did do was raise the price of rough land to where it was hard to buy land for less than $100/ acre. :D :D

The helicopters were small Bell helicopters coming from a company in Wisconsin.  The pilots were Viet Nam vets and could really 'cut the mustard' with those choppers.  I was an extension ag. agent at the time and spent quite a lot of time flying with one pilot that I became friends with.  I'm still a little queezy :D :D

[Raider Bill]

So what are they throwing from the chopper? Seeds or seedlings?

[Gary_C]

It's seeds Bill. I think they look like small pieces of rock. They may be coated with something so they do not blow away in the wind.

[Raider Bill]

Tree seeds! What will they think of next! :D

WDH told me that he thought my property had been aerial seeded due to the steepness and that there was no rhyme nor reason how the trees grew. To date I've been thinking some guy was sitting on a chopper skid throwing out seedlings : ;D

[Sprucegum]

  :D He'd hafta be a Dang good thrower to get the roots to land first every time, like trying to get your toast to land butter side up - and there's food for thought 

[Raider Bill]

Well now I thought of that too ;)
I figured they'd have some kind of wrap on the end with a weight protecting the roots which would be biodegradable and keep them moist.. ;D


There's no stopping how I think.......

[WDH]

Raider,

I apologize for such a poorly delivered insight!  Bowaters did a good bit of aerial seeding in your area, but they were throwing out seeds not seedlings . 

The procedure in the South has basically had very mixed results.  It is a very uncommon practice anymore. 

[sawguy21]

That is an interesting seeder set up on the helicopter. I used to maintain larger units that were carried under the a/c by a j hook. The pilot would set down, have the electrical line disconnected then back up to release the seeder and hook up to a full one. The spreader was run by an 11 hp Briggs and Stratton.
The seed was coated with a concoction to help it stick to the ground and germinate. The stuff was murder on aluminum seeder parts.

[Clark]

Great stories and pictures Gary.  I assume they are seeding jack pine and for $8/acre!  Incredible!

What part of the state was this is in?

Clark

[Gary_C]

Clark, this is in the Chengwatana SF east of Pine City. One of the guys there was Doug from Sandstone and the other was from Orr, MN.

I don't think they were seeding jack pine but don't know for sure. I think it was red and white pine. Haven't seen much jack pine in that area and that stand right there behind the landing is red pine.

[BaldBob]

Back in the 80's, aerial seeding of cut over land was standard practice in the Pacific Northwest. By the mid to late 70's almost no one in the region was still using the practice. The reasons that the practice was mostly abandoned in the area were:
1. Often 80% or more of the seed ended up in the bellies of birds and rodents.
2. A significant % of the seed never landed on mineral soil where it could germinate.
3. By the early 70's most of the large landowners, who had formerly been the major users of the practice, were engaged in tree improvement programs. The seed from even the first generation of improved stock was too valuable to randomly spread on the regeneration area and have much of it go to waste.

[SwampDonkey]

My previous post disappeared somehow. :D

We don't aerial seed in NB, just plant. But, I think they do in northern Ontario as one fellow signed on the forum here a few months ago and was asking about thinning those aerial seeded jack pine sites. Here in NB, unless the ground is tramped and scoured by harvesting equipment (resulting is raspberry and pin cherry on yards and trails) the harvest site has a 95 % probability of being stocked (60 %+  is target) naturally. They will plant trees on them roadside raspberry patches and trails and many times where they have no need to. I have to go in and cut some out. ;)

Gary, that sure is high stumpage. That's almost the price of red pine pulp. Some people like to work for nothing I suppose. I saw this philosophy one time when a chainsaw crew was cutting jack pine (plantation) no bigger than 5 inch on the but. There is a lot of limbing with that plantation stuff. :D

[Bill Johnson]

Aerial seeding used to be common in the northwestern ontario but not so much in northeastern.  Typically we'd seed 20,000 seed per acre for jackpine and around double that for spruce.

Areas that were seeded typically had about 60%-80% mineral soil expsoure in site prepared furrows.  We usually did it in March on the crust and used traps so we could calculate the numbers of seed/acre being dropped to make sure we got the right coverage.

After some of the larger fires around Red Lake in the 70's they did some summer seeding just to help stablize the sites that stuff came back so thick it was difficult to walk through.

After Red 14 in 1980 lots of the burnt areas were seeded with clover to provide nutrients to promote re-growth.

Typically we used 2 piper aircraft with a bromh seeder attachement but did use helicopters once in while with a seeder slung underneath.

In a typical spring we'd seed thousands of acres over the course of a week or two.

Aerial seeding is starting to be used a little more in the northeast, the forest company here usually does at least one or two projects a year.

[Raider Bill]

Raider,

I apologize for such a poorly delivered insight!  Bowaters did a good bit of aerial seeding in your area, but they were throwing out seeds not seedlings . 

The procedure in the South has basically had very mixed results.  It is a very uncommon practice anymore. 

Not to worry Danny, What I don't know I make up! ;D