conversion of weeviled white pine plantation

[JimMartin9999]

I have a 25 year old, 9 acre white pine plantation (8X10 spacing) in  south central NY, badly weeviled.  I have been advised that this is a good time to convert it to hardwoods.  It is on a medium slope, western aspect.  The rows were put in up and down hill, i.e. west to east.
I am looking for any advise you pros have on how to go about this.   I plan to  buy some seedlings, and  some seeds, too, and will put them in before falling  every other row on top of them so as to decrease   deer brousing them.

[WDH]

At 25 years old, there may be a market for the white pine as pulpwood.  Are they large enough to sell as pulpwood if there is a market?

[sawguy21]

I am not a pro in this field but after seeing the devastation inflicted here by the mountain pine beetle, I have a question. Would you reduce the risk of future infestations by planting several species and allowing a healthy understory to develop rather than a monoculture plantation style?

[jon12345]

I'd recommend looking in other hardwood areas near your white pines and see how badly the deer browse on the tree species you plan on putting in.  If the deer don't browse them too hard you might not have to worry about leaving the felled pines for protection.  Opening up the area would also deter rodents from chewing on your seedlings by exposing them to hawks and owls. 

[JimMartin9999]

We have a deer problem and no market for pulpwood that  I know of.   That is why I am going to leave them where they fall .I´m in south central NY near Corning.
I am trying to find out how many seelings and seeds I should plant per felled tree, and any other hits you can come up with.  I am thinking of some kind of hardwood mix but may put in some larch because nothing seems to bother them here.  And who knows , maybe in fifty years there will be a market for them.

[Tarm]

Are you sure you want to do this? If you start over you throw away 25 years of growth. At a 8X10 spacing there are 550 trees per acre. You could cull out three quarters of them and still have enough stems to be stocked for sawtimber. Some aggressive corrective pruning and timely thinning could salvage this plantation.

[Phorester]

JIM, who advised the conversion from white pine to hardwood? 

Check your soil types with a Forester or Extension Agent.  If they are suitable for hardwood and not pine, convert.  if they will grow pine better, try to work with what you have, through culling out the weeviled ones, etc.

All research we have done on white pine in Virginia points to wider spacing is better.  We've found that a 40 year old eastern white pine stand needs a 30 to 40 foot spacing between trees.  So you might have more than enough un-weeviled ones to work with.

But check the soils first.  (Maybe this has already been done)

[ID4ster]

What county are you in? Steuben or one to the east? I've heard that there is an outfit that will come in and mechanically remove trees and convert them to chips. I'd have to contact the forester over in Bath that told me about that outfit. Depending upon how weeviled the trees are you may want to do some pruning to save some of the trees and then either PC thin the rest or convert them to chips if that is an option. We had the same problem on a piece of property that we own near Addison. An old field came into WP in the early '70's and has grown up since then with lots of the trees being heavily weeviled. Some of them can be salvaged for lumber and some are too multiple topped to do anything but make firewood out of. What I'll do is to cut some of them out and open up areas within that clump of trees that are big enough to plant Red oak, Black Cherry and Hard maple into. I'll plant the hardwoods at a density that will force them to grow up straight or else will mix some hemlock in with them to act as trainers for the hardwoods. If you do not want to mess with the hardwoods then plant the Larch. Make sure that you open up the stand though since larch is very shade intolerent. Plant at an 8'x10' or 10'x10' spacing and you should be alright. Actually I'd like to try some western red cedar in those plantings but I can't find a good seed source for them right now.

[JimMartin9999]

I am in SE Steuben Co., Lindley Township. I have Kanona, Hornell and Mardin soils.  To me the soil is clay with a lot of rocks.  Mid-way up the hill. West aspect, so a bit on the dry side.   The Steuben Soil Survey recommends planting of white pine but the weevil damage is horrendous.
I even tried  spraying two or three times twenty years ago; it just caused the forks to be higher on the trees.  By the way, I am having the same problem with Norway spruce five miles  up the road; no  problem with larch at all.
The white pines are BADLY weeviled, but  I will keep any that have a chance of becoming a 17 foot log. 
And here is a technical question: if the fork is low enough, and there are two  good stems over it, I guess I could  leave the pine and just wait twice as long.  Comments?
It was mentioned that I could do some "aggressive pruning.  Uh, what does that mean?
I have a lot of faith in my consulting forester, but prefer not to mention  him by name.
He recommended putting in 25  red oak seedlings per acre and 50 seeds. I was thinking of red oak, black cherry,  and sugar maple. And maybe black walnut on any  promising deeper soil which I may and may not find.  I was told the larch would probably start budding before I could get them in the soil this year, in May, so should not plant any this year.
I would greatly appreciate hearing about anyone willing to come out and chip half my plantation (a half of 9 acres=4.5) but I doubt  that would be profitable for anyone.  Besides, I do like the idea of falling the pine on top of the seedlings.  Lots of deer near us.

[Phorester]

What we recommend in my part of VA is to spray the trees for weevils until they are 17 feet tall.  That way you get the bottom 16 foot log (the most valuable) and 1 foot for a stump.  Sounds like you're already thinking that way.

When thinning we don't recommend leaving any forked trees unless it's the only white pine at that particular spot and you need one there for proper spacing.  But if there is a better tree at all there, such as a hardwood of a valuable species, leave the hardwood and take out all the weeviled white pine at that spot. Sometimes in a thinning, at a particular spot where you need a tree, you can only choose the best of the worst.  In that case I'd leave a forked tree only to accomplish the proper white pine spacing and consider yourself lucky if you can sell it when the time comes.

If all you have to choose from in a spot where you need to leave a white pine is forked trees, then choose the one with the lowest fork.

If it looks hopeless, in other words there are just too many weeviled pines to work with,  consider clearcutting and starting all over.  Maybe that's what your Forester has in mind. If you go back with white pine, spray the new forest you plant for weevils through the years. In other words start over and see that it's done right the second time.

White pine weevils do attack Norway spruce.  They don't attack larch.

[ID4ster]

Well you're right about one thing. 4.5 acres of chipping isn't going to get an operater in there to do the job. If you're foresters initials are BM than he'll know the operator that does the chipping and would have told you by this time if that was a viable option. He was the one that told me about that operator a few years back. As for the forked trees we'll be doing some of that on our field of WP but you do run the risk of the forks becoming further weeviled and then you simply have admit defeat and cut the tree down. That's what will happen to a bunch of ours that are too multiple topped to do anything with. They'll be cut down for nutrient recycling and LOD for the soil. That west aspect is a bear since that precludes you from using any hemlock as a trainer tree for the hardwoods. Hemlock in that area only grows on north aspects. Have you got any larch on your property now? Larch loves the water and so I'm wondering how it'll do on that drier aspect. If you're going to put in the red oak seedlings and seeds (acorns?) make sure that you put them in an area that gets enough light. Red oak do well in a clearcut in that area or at least 70-80% canopy removal and that includes any of the understory trees like witch hazel, striped maple and ironwood. As for the larch were you planning on planting bare root or tube stock? In any case get the seedlings in March or April and keep them frozen or in a very cold refrigerator and they won't break bud until you plant them out in May if that is the soonest that you can plant them. Otherwise plant them in mid-April and you'll be fine. You've had a excessive amount of rain back there this past year so your soil moisture is good even if you can't plant them until May. It may be as Phorester says that you might want to clearcut and start over again and plant into a hardwood regime with a popple overstory to train the trees or even to protect the newly planted WP from weevils.