Kicking off the Bigtrees Tree Farm seedling planting project

[bigtrees]

Just wanted to provide an update:

Trees are growing nicely according to my folks who are local to the area. Starting to get some new bud growth and generally appear to be "happy".

Prior to planting, they got a ton of rain as well as a decent snowyear so the ground was soaking wet. Very good for the trees. Since then it has been a bit dry. They did get an inch of rain over the weekend, but no week long soaking weather. Usually June is their rainy month, so I am hoping for some good soaking rains before the July and August heatwaves come.

Haven't heard about seedling mortality yet, so I think they are surviving nice. July/August will be the difficult month.

[Wudman]

In the southeast US,  August is the month that makes or breaks the deal.  Once I put a tree in the ground, I generally will not look at it until first frost.  If you look at them through the summer months you will think that everything out there is dead.  You will see brown tops, but the buds will hang in there.  When weather is more cooperative, they will look better.  In Virginia, pine tip moth is going to work them over for the first couple of years as well.  I've been playing this game for 30 years, but didn't realize how much stuff likes to chew on pines until I built my house in the middle of a pine plantation.  Best of luck to you.

Wudman 

[bigtrees]

Wanted to give everyone an update:

My dad just checked on the tree planting, and all of the work of hauling in dirt, as well as multiple glysophate treatements to knock back the weeds, plus a good amount of June moisture, has all worked. We have lost between 3 and 5 trees out of the 250 planted. August is normally dry as well but they should be pretty dormant. We usually get water in later August.

I am not going to say that we are out of the woods yet but I think we are fixing for a 90% or better 1 year survival rate. That is nothing to snicker at.

Yes, this was a more expensive project but the high survival rate is a good sign of success.