Planting white pine seedlings - to cut roots or not

mjeselskis · April 26, 2013, 08:45:00 PM

Planting 700 5-10" white pine bare root seedlings tomorrow. Instructions say to cut the long roots back to about 9" long? Is that right? Why not leave them long?

Planning on planting on a 7x7 grid, hope it all comes out good. Lots of holes to make

mjeselskis · April 26, 2013, 08:49:17 PM

Meant to post in 'Ask the Forester', but still interested in any opinions

WDH · April 26, 2013, 09:00:48 PM

Long roots are easier to "J" root, which is bad. You want the roots exactly vertical all the way down in the planting slit/hole. Pushing the roots down to the point where the end of the root forms a "J" will result in poor growth performance.

Tmac47 · April 28, 2013, 12:22:35 AM

Not particularly on topic, but J-rooting is one of the reasons container seedlings are superior to bare root seedlings.

Last spring I planted about 60k bare root seedlings with my family and it's incredibly easy to J-root them, especially when you get in a rhythm and are just slingin em' into the dirt.

Container seedlings have a nice dirt root-ball on the end, which protects it from J rooting during planting among other things.

SwampDonkey · April 28, 2013, 06:16:21 AM

We planted a lot of red pine bare root in the late 80's, early 90's and J rooting was always a concern and drying out as some planters were not all that careful in keeping the roots moist. But those seedlings were some nice. I've had to replant behind someone else because they let the trees dry out, mine had 95% + survival I planted to fill in. If your gonna do it, do it right. :

Today's container red pine are very tiny and survival a big concern. They actually should be grown another season I think

mjeselskis · April 28, 2013, 07:35:01 AM

Thanks for the advice. We got over 700 planted yesterday, I can't imagine planting 60k. It took us the whole day to get 700 planted. We started out with just a bulldozer track shovel to make the hole but then went to a 3" auger on a drill. We were very careful to not J root them as we planted them, and it was much easier with a 3" round hole over the slit that the shovel made. I did cut the roots so we had about 8" in the ground. The trees looked great, supposedly they were 3 years old, but some were over a foot and very filled out. The nursery dug them the day before I picked them up and it looks like they took care to keep them moist.

Now I just need to keep them watered and keep the deer out

Tmac47 · April 30, 2013, 09:39:24 AM

Quote from: mjeselskis on April 28, 2013, 07:35:01 AM
Thanks for the advice. We got over 700 planted yesterday, I can't imagine planting 60k.

We had a planter on the back of a tractor and I got my roommate and cousin to come help. Hand planting is really slow, unless you do it professionally and those guys are MACHINES!

SwampDonkey · April 30, 2013, 11:31:53 AM

Hand planting bare root is a lot slower than hand planting container seedlings. With container seedlings you can plant 1500+ trees a day if your actually working. I've planted a good many trees. ;D

Bogue Chitto · April 30, 2013, 12:34:25 PM

Planted these 18 years ago with a tractor and planter. Makes a nice plantation if you do it yourself. We had someone plant for us also and had to replant because of "j rooting".

WDH · April 30, 2013, 04:39:56 PM

Bogue,

That is a beautiful plantation.

curdog · April 30, 2013, 06:41:17 PM

I've never used any containerized seedlings just bare root and the tree planters that have planted for me can average 2-2.5 bags per person (1000 trees) a day on most cutovers. Do most planters in other parts of the country use hoedads for planting or something else? We did plant one hardwood tract this year with a shovel, but besides the machine planting it was all done with a hoedad.

SwampDonkey · April 30, 2013, 06:53:10 PM

It's mostly containerized up here with potiputki so you don't have to bend down all the time and so you don't injure your hand and wrist from jabbing a dibble or shovel all day. Hurts after a while hitting on rocks. They sometimes use planters on old fields, they would be Christmas tree planters. On industrial land up here it's all hand planting. It's actually faster to plant on cutovers than fields. Fields tend to get too dry and hard by June, whereas cutover land tends to stay moist and soft and the planting season is longer. So you can plant a bunch more trees on cutover land per day in softer ground on a clean site or scarified site.