Best way to thin small pine trees?

[Magicman]

Very correct Don.  The closed pine canopy is what self prunes the pines and kills the underbrush.  If you manually thin too early, the pines will be limby instead of growing tall and producing quality trees, plus you give the the briers and underbrush sunlight which promotes further growth.  Some things are better left to nature.  It knows best.

[sjfarkas]

I would think that waiting a couple more years and going in with a mulcher would be the most cost effective.  After mulching then do the hand work.  VT has the right idea with mechanical first.

[SwampDonkey]

There still is time for height growth for sure in that natural stand. But, a 12 foot red pine up here is almost 6" on the but. We thin and leave trees tighter up north that is why we go in  little sooner. And the hardwood and shrubs that are worrisome are cut, so they are not left unless there is a hole in the canopy. So there is no out growing the leave trees. They will also be weeker in low light and eventually die after a few years. They will not grow from stump and outgrow the softwood as long as the softwood is 10 feet minimum and 6 foot spacing. I find that 6 foot is a little tight though, if looking back after 10 years post thinning. Even though some softwood species have not pruned much by then. Fir and spruce up here will hang onto the lower limbs a lot longer than hardwoods and pine. Limbs will be right to the ground even after 15 years in thicket. You can't even see the ground with a brush saw in hand, impossible.  :D

[WDH]

I was reading a book on important wildlife food plants (I think this was for Southern forests), and one of the very best overall native plant for wildlife benefits is the genus Rubus, which is the blackberry family.  So all those briar patches and tangles that are so hard to navigate through at this early age of an up-and-coming forest is really steak and potatoes for the birds, bees, and the critters.  That makes them a very good thing.

[Rocky_Ranger]

That looks like loblolly and a pretty good stand of it - pre-commercial thinning won't pay for itself with these southern species.  If you want to improve growth, find a woods bush hog and do it mechanically, but it won't cash flow for such an operation.  Wait, watch, do a cool burn (and I do mean cool since it is loblolly) in the winter to raise the canopy base and thin out some of the excess.  That'd do more than anything to start adding some resiliency to your stand 

[SwampDonkey]

Raspberry and blackberry don't grow under canopy unless it pure aspen in the north. The yards and trails will grow'm though. Our wild raspberry flower most of the summer and will have fruit for a longer stretch than cultivated ones, but the fruit is small, extra sweet and sparse. Birds would be the primary users and bears to. The bears will flatten a raspberry patch. The wild canes can grow over 8 feet tall. They will usually only establish on the bare patches, if there is advanced regen they will not establish much unless it is sparse. I have some wild blackberry on a winter road, but they don't do anything, no berries and are kind of stunted. I guess because the surface was bladed when they scarified in order to get trees into the centre of the block. I had raspberry under my aspen trees after the cut, but they are dying out now because the softwoods, that were planted and regenerated, shade them now.

Rocky, the economics of it isn't all that great here either if you go from thinning to clearcut. The economics is better if a selection is used because you recover more wood over a comparable rotation destined to be clearcut. Different studies show you can get 30-60% more volume from multiple entries in that 80 years. Plus you still have your woods left and can continue making entries a lot sooner. Don't have the extra cost in establishment. Of course this works mainly for long lived shade tolerant species. They are commercial thinning 30-40 year old previously PCT'd softwoods on the better sites. But most of the sites we PCT will be clearcut. What bothers me is low crown royalty rates, then the government pays for the silviculture. I think if the license gets free silviculture of crown they should have to match silviculture on their freehold out of their pockets. The old argument that they could loose their license from reallocation and shuffles doesn't fly any longer. They control it long term now. The only shuffle is when a mill sinks and the land is reallocated to the ones still standing. The same would happen if it were their freehold, they would be taken as assets and sold. This also occurs on crown licenses, a couple licenses were sold during the down turn. They've lobbied the government so hard that you'd wonder how they could fail. :D

[VT_Forestry]

VT_ what is your stems per acre down to now?  1500?  That 40,000 per acre is pretty much the same as a good regen count on aspen suckers up in the north.  I can see any kind of pine stagnating soon and needs to be pre-commercially thinned with those numbers.

We are shooting for a target of 550 TPA, basically an 8x10 spacing.  The shredder makes an average row width of 10ft, so we try and space 8ft down each side.  In a perfect world, that's how it goes anyway   Some of these areas are a little thicker than that, probably anywhere from 600-750 TPA....still a world of difference better than 25,000+. 

Unfortunately, because our property is so close to homes/roads/airports, we can't really use fire as a tool to manage our loblolly.  If we could, we'd really cut down a lot on our hand work.  Shred and burn would be enough to free these trees up, but with burning off the table, I'm running a brushcutter from January to late March (we quit cutting before fusiform rust "blooms" to lessen our exposure to infection).  I still might push for a limited small-scale burn to see how it works and just how smokey it gets.  I have a feeling if I smoke out an international airport or the Yorktown Naval Weapons Station I might be in some trouble

[WDH]

Yes, you would have to run and hide if the smoke did not cover you up  ;D.

[VT_Forestry]

Yes, you would have to run and hide if the smoke did not cover you up  ;D.

In school the professors called that a CLM - a Career Limiting Move  :D

[Rocky_Ranger]

I have several of those pending currently (CLM's) :D