Establishing a New Pine Plantation

[customsawyer]

WDH will you please hurry as a pic is worth a thousand words and I type slow. ;D

[WDH]

OK, here are a couple of pics.  The trees are exactly one year old.





Some of the larger trees are 3 feet tall.





They are very happy trees  :D.

[SwampDonkey]

I'll say, would take 4 years to get a 3 foot red pine here.  Nice field of trees. ;D ;)

[Magicman]

I see the trees smiling also.  They are getting what they need.  What spacing is that?

[WDH]

12 foot rows, 6 feet between trees which is 605 trees/acre.  A lot the forest industry has gone to 14 foot rows to save on site prep and planting cost.  A 14 x 6 spacing is 518 trees/acre.

[SwampDonkey]

Yeah we can't do that here, too wide. The spruce and fir would be cow shades for 40 years. ;)

[Magicman]

Some of mine is planted 12' rows, with 10' spacing for about 360 trees per acre.  The theory being that the first thinning will be at 18 years and should all be chip 'n saw.  We'll see.

[ljmathias]

Those seem like pretty wide spacings for initial planting- it was my understanding that planting closer (8-10' rows, 6' between trees) led to straighter trunks and more self-pruning; then thinning at two intervals opened things up as the trees sprouted straight up.  Maybe depends on the species?

Lj

[WDH]

It depends on what you are growing as far as the target product.  The close spacing grows more smaller trees that remain pulpwood class trees for a longer period.  A wider spacing produces larger trees earlier that grow into small sawlogs faster.  Since the value of sawlogs is much higher than pulpwood, I want the trees to grow larger faster.  It is an economic decision.  If you plant the closer spacing, the acre will only support so many trees, so there is more mortality as the trees compete with each other.  It costs more to plant more trees and there is no real gain in the end product.  12 foot spacing grows trees that reach first thinning age sooner than 10 foot spacing.  Thinning earlier promotes faster growth that jump starts the trees to grow to sawlog size faster.  My Company has years of research that shows this effect. 

[SwampDonkey]

It works for pine, which is full well what this thread is about. But it doesn't work for spruce, fir and tolerant hardwood. You end up with bushy trees for species that need to be self pruned as it grows and needs to be thinned a couple or 3 times along the way to remove pulp and some studwood (softwood) and firewood (hardwood) over an 80 + year time horizon. You can't go in and prune fir and spruce like you can pine, they don't heal up fast enough and you get rot. We can't burn in these fir-spruce stands either, it would go up like a torch, too tight a spacing. Balsam fir will likely have to be cut out of the stand before the spruce ends the rotation, problem is many sites have too much fir to do that, so everything is taken. Exception would be plantation, and I've seen many of those that have become 80 % fir.  :  Balsam fir, a glorified weed. :D

[customsawyer]

It is a good thing them trees are doing well so they can stay above the water. ;D

[WDH]

I suspect that the ripped furrow gives the water a way to drain deeper than it would otherwise given the plow pan (restricted layer) that is present in most fields, and assuredly so in this field.

I am trying to decide whether to spray for grass again this spring or to let them go as is.  On my Company's land, there is only one grass control spray, but then again, we don't plant many old hay fields either.  My brother is in the Ag chemical business, so we might look at a broadcast spray with a crop duster.  Or, I may not do anything at all.

[Magicman]

Could/would you also fertilize if you sprayed?

[WDH]

The trees look really good for 1 year, and the color is a healthy green.  Many of the young plantations that you see at this time of the year have a yellowish cast to them.  Given the cost of fertilizer, I am not leaning to fertilize them this year given their current condition.

[SwampDonkey]

Fertilizer from what I've found out was only cost effective later on in the tree development, near the end of the rotation. The effects were only expressed for up to 3 years. Spacing, as in pre-commercial thinning, had effects expressed for 25 years at various densities. Available nitrogen from fertilizer doesn't stick around long for trees to get maximum benefit. In heavy rains, the nitrate component was quickly lost.

[WDH]

Fertilization after the first thinning, about age 12 in this case, would provide the best response.  That is a ways off, so hopefully I will be around to wrestle with that decision.

[customsawyer]

WDH I was thinking you might post a pic of those little babies before it turns green and we can't see them. ;D

[Don K]

Yes!! Inquiring minds want to know.

Don

[customsawyer]

Alright Danny here is another plea for a pic of my little babies.

[WDH]

Your babies are happy this spring.  The tallest are a little over 5 feet, but the average is more like 4 feet tall.  Some trees have new growth this year approaching 2 feet already.

Ever who site prepped and planted this stand must have known what they were doing!  That would be you, Jake  8).

[Don K]

Looks good Danny. Thanks for the pic.

Don

[stonebroke]

Boy, You southerners can really grow pine trees. Up here in the frozen north that is probably a decade's worth of growth. Looks great.

Stonebroke

[SwampDonkey]

It would probably be close to 7 years at least for 5 foot pine. They (red pine) were always interplanted on pasture where white spruce where already established so they would catch up eventually to the spruce. Tamarack will grow almost 3 feet a year even in wet.

[customsawyer]

Glad you got that pic up there I thought I was going to have to drive over and take a look myself. You might have liked that as I could have brought those white oak logs to ya. ;D
They are looking very good must be that good dirt.

[WDH]

It would be hard to carry more than a couple of those white oak logs on the motorcycle  :D.