Planting trees on new acreage

[Colin52]

I've got a little over eighty acres, and trying to plant for future house builds for my kids, useful wood species, and some fun "project" kind of woods.  Currently, the place has had most of the timber larger than say, 12 inches removed.  Lots of the medium range stuff.  Much of what I have is hickory, some white oak, a few reds.  Theres a wide mix of very small stuff from persimmon to redbud, dogwood and wild cherry.  

I'm planning for lots of suitable pine species, osage orange, and black locust, but I figure I'm missing some.  I have a lot of different agriculture, silvopasture, and orchards planned out, but purely from a woodworker and builder perspective, what should I add?

[sawguy21]

You don't say where you are but I am guessing southeast by those species. How do you plan to control invasive growth until the new trees get established?

[mike_belben]

Poplar, walnut, sweetgum, red maple. 

[Colin52]

I should have mentioned southeast missouri.  I have a herd of goats that do a great job of eating brush, and a bunch of kids that are happy to help with loppers, brush axes, etc.  I can see it being a job that isnt ever quite done pretty easily, but I should be able to get at least the faster growing pines and such enough of a head start.

[Tacotodd]

Just like mowing the grass; only a temporary reprieve.

If your wife likes to go out on the place and barefoot, DON'T do the sweet gum, because you'll never hear the end of it. But they do grow well, to the point of never needing planted. They just find a way to do that on their own.

[kantuckid]

You need to get a state forester on the property. In KY, in fact very close to our place is one of the state tree farm operations @ Grassy Creek, KY. They sell trees cheaply and suitable for the area. Goats will not be kind to young plantings! In the past I got cost sharing on trees I planted. Ask about the Tree Farm Program too. Check and see but my guess is that people like Amazon billionaires get the carbon credits? Lately I've noticed a KY state forestry pu truck parked at the local Soil Conservation office, which never used to be seen there. I know that often the people who get soil conservation $$$'s are those who "know" or are on the local board. One guy, an adult AG teacher I worked with got a new cattle barn as he had a river that ran through his place and he was the chairman too, go figure huh? 
Species is partly your choice, partly mother nature. They also may have a planter to borrow. Clearing out what's there now may be required as well. Machine & back labor both are involved.  ;D 

[aigheadish]

I'm jealous of this idea and thinking about starting an orchard in my miniscule, by comparison, 2.5 acre back hay field. We have a guy that keeps bee hives back there and I'd love to give them some apple, peach, and cherry trees to pollenate. I wish I had 80 acres...

[btulloh]

If you plant two acres of fruit trees it'll feel like 80 acres if you take care of them properly.  :D  

Nice having those bees. Go for it.

[tacks Y]

I cleared an area and bought red pine (my retirement log home) what a waste. I think the deer pulled most out or ate off. It was good hunting for a few years. All this to say check to see what will do well.

[firefighter ontheside]

You may know you can get trees from Missouri Dept of Cons at a pretty good price.  They have loblolly, shortleaf, white pine, red pine and norway spruce I believe.  I have planted red and white.  All of the red died, but I think it was the drought of a while back that did them in finally.  Many of the white pine are doing well.  I have lots of shortleaf and loblolly that were planted many years ago.  

The yellow pines will do well and be good for building projects of the future.  I would certainly plant some walnut, if you think someone will do woodworking in the future.  In the shorter term, they will give you some nuts.  Speaking of the goats, they will eat everything as you know.  You will need to protect anything you plant.  My goats when let out, will eat every flower and they do like eating the pines.  Take a look at the catalog from MDC and see what you like.

[kantuckid]

Had a neighbor some years back who owned a holler a couple miles from us and they ran milk goats on it all. I remember him saying they ate the briars of all types and much more but seems there were a couple of items they left alone, but I now forget (20+ yrs later) what they were? 
I found the easiest mistake to make planting was J-rooting the seedlings, much care must be taken during planting. These recent years have taken a toll on my pine plantings! I've lost hundreds of young pines as 100 year rains combined with follow-up ice then snow toppling them like dominos. Also lost many nice large oaks on upper slopes where thin soils will not hold a large tree during these weather events we've had. I've seen a hickory tree 24" in dia sheared ~ 15' up the trunk by oaks falling like dominoes! I still have trees I've yet to find time or weather to clean up. I've got most of the poplars but one and a large oak which needs my m-tronic sicko saw to handle. It's still waiting on a fix. 
I still say get a forester first step.  

[SwampDonkey]

Look around the neigboring land as you drive by and see what is doing well. And talk to folks that have an idea of soils that each tree does well on and figure out your soils.


Up this way I've never seen soils used to determine planting of trees. They stick in spruce mostly here and they grow on wet edges to dry knolls. We have a very basic soil classification in forestry up here in New Brunswick and we have a soils guidebook. It was printed in the 80's and I don't think I've seen one in years. I do own one here somewhere. There are lots and lots of gaps in the data and very biased toward spruce in that data. Not much about hardwoods. It was something done in a bit of a hurry. The people involved had knowledge enough but government doesn't put much money into it, far less now then back then. Mostly what we go by is key indicator plants, they will tell us a lot about what the soil is like. Don't need to make it complicated. They don't even do soil tests here in New Brunswick anymore for Ag, it's got to be sent to be tested in Ontario. Dad found that they didn't know how to test it anyway. He wrote them off 30 years ago. :D

[kantuckid]

In the USA at least where I've lived- in KS & KY, the Ag Extension Offices and Soil Conservation people have the soil books which detail all lands here.  Other than at the turn of the century for wind breaks I've never heard of planting Osage Orange? Most people think of them as a weed tree. 
I just looked at the KY Div. of Forestry-"trees for sale" and they do list black locust and several oaks among 51 varieties grown and sold, that I don't even really know the species. No Osage Orange. Has an info page for the entire list. 

[firefighter ontheside]

Had a neighbor some years back who owned a holler a couple miles from us and they ran milk goats on it all. I remember him saying they ate the briars of all types and much more but seems there were a couple of items they left alone, but I now forget (20+ yrs later) what they were? 

Was it nightshade?
Boxwood is poisonous to goats and indeed they will not touch my boxwood hedge.  Most things that they shouldn't eat, they will avoid on their own.

[kantuckid]

My memories not that long. :D It was a casual conversation at that. 
 I don't think boxwood grows near me as anything other than an ornamental? Nightshade I've heard of but know but not seen around here other than tomatoes, potatoes, etc..

 I considered goats on our place to control certain waste areas but they actually are not such a carefree livestock as my ignorance told me so I passed on them. I got that notion driving past this trailer park where the owner had a cable line that ran around a area perimeter steep slope and tethered goats to keep it tamed down.  

[SwampDonkey]

The blue book is for my region of New Brunswick, the red one is for coastal British Columbia. These are forestry soils guide books. Never seen one for agriculture up here except a map with descriptions and interpretations, but not field books of any kind. They would have maps of the sample plots and findings and interpretations for crop suitability. But no field guides for Ag.

Soils of the Woodstock - Florenceville Area, Carleton County - Volume 4

[kantuckid]

Someone with more knowledge than myself will step in here. I have seen the USA soil books for my region and they are extremely detailed. They use grid maps and show the soil types via colorations and often used in agricultural planning. On a mostly forested small acreage such as ours it is not of much use. What tillable land I have had tobacco raised on it for as long as it was inhabited. Our main garden attempts to exist where those mules plowed next to an old log cabin for many years.
 It's sure a far cry from my KS garden spot which had top soil down far beyond a plows reach.  

[mike_belben]

It's sure a far cry from my KS garden spot which had top soil down far beyond a plows reach.  

Yeah ill say.  Youre lucky if theres enough hard clay to bury a dog before you hit rock in much of southern appalachia.

[SwampDonkey]

Probably why we have forestry ones up here is because of genetic testing across different forest soils. Where the potato belt is here in NB there isn't much more than 2 or 3 soil types and mostly just podzols of various depths, basically called Ap layer since it's been plowed annually for over 100 years. Some with more humous than others depending on drainage of the fields. Clay loam and silty loam on old flood plains and benches, with mainly sandy clay loam on these rolling hills. Any depth below 12" is beyond spud rooting depth anyway, spuds are always hilled. Corn doesn't go beyond 12", if that deep. The deeper you go the rockier (and bigger rocks) and more clay and gravel. Out in no mans land where no one farms, a lot of sand and rock with about 2" of Ae or Ah if your lucky and 4" of B layer then course glacial sand and rocks bigger than a pickup. Down in the C layer, well not much use for crops down in there plus may or may not be full of water. ;D Of course that excludes the cedar swamps and bogs which is a lot of the and base to. Where you have northern white cedar up this way you have calcareous bedrock and lime. ;D

[kantuckid]

It's sure a far cry from my KS garden spot which had top soil down far beyond a plows reach.  

Yeah ill say.  Youre lucky if theres enough hard clay to bury a dog before you hit rock in much of southern appalachia.

When we were raising our three sons we had:  three black labs, one border collie, one Australian Shepherd and yours truly had the pleasure of burying them all on this place-not easy done. My remote cabin site the ground below the few inches of nice black forest duff and soil is hard red clay that reminds me of a red dirt Army base such as they all seem to be located upon? 
The man who I hired to build the first road into our place had previously been the head foreman over the limestone rock quarry a couple miles down the road. The road required blasting to get through the yellow limestone layer. Behind our home is a white limestone cliff that plays out down on the property edge. He said you probably have more value in limestone here than the price you paid for the land. We've been "collecting" rocks since 1978... I popped one outa my garden plot that took my forks to fetch out! Don't know how it failed to trip the plow? 
This place is somewhere between a goat farm and a rock garden? 

[firefighter ontheside]

Same here, but our land is red clay filled with quartz and tiff rock.  Too bad the quartz isn't diamonds.  We unearth quartz the size of small cars.  I guess technically, what we call quartz is actually barite crystal, also known as tiff.

[SwampDonkey]

A little bit of this under there someplace, but could also just be something dropped off as the glacier retreated. ;D Mineral form of magnesium sulphate, not metabolic like in your magnesium supplements. :D Picked it up behind the house in the potato field when hand picking rocks one spring.



I knocked the precipitated sulphur off the outside, yep stunk like bad eggs. :D I was told only one mine here in NB that digs it up. It's actually has a metallic lustre to it, not really shown in the photo.

[SwampDonkey]

No diamonds, but garnet stones. 8) In Prince Rupert, BC the shore line was a path of garnet schist.



At university they had a big slab of the stuff in a glassed in case in the geology department. Some of the stones are a fair bit bigger than in this one, some are very tiny, but visible to. I have a piece with a lot of hornblende so it is black as coal, tiny garnets in it that look like dimples.

[Colin52]

You need to get a state forester on the property. In KY, in fact very close to our place is one of the state tree farm operations @ Grassy Creek, KY. They sell trees cheaply and suitable for the area. Goats will not be kind to young plantings! In the past I got cost sharing on trees I planted. Ask about the Tree Farm Program too. Check and see but my guess is that people like Amazon billionaires get the carbon credits? Lately I've noticed a KY state forestry pu truck parked at the local Soil Conservation office, which never used to be seen there. I know that often the people who get soil conservation $$$'s are those who "know" or are on the local board. One guy, an adult AG teacher I worked with got a new cattle barn as he had a river that ran through his place and he was the chairman too, go figure huh?
Species is partly your choice, partly mother nature. They also may have a planter to borrow. Clearing out what's there now may be required as well. Machine & back labor both are involved.  ;D

Thanks, I didn't know they had stuff like that.  

[Colin52]

Thank you all for the great advice!  I'm building the goat pen now.  Plan is to fell and use goats to help clean up in sections, but when I plant the trees I won't have the goats in.  Hoping the faster growing species can outpace the brush, for the other trees that are worth the time and need the care, I have a few truckloads of hog panels, hardware cloth, chicken and barbed wire so I can fashion little guards as needed.  Will be a multi year project, but I want to make this a special place for generations of little Colins to grow up in.  I'm putting in rows of stone steps down to the waterfalls, redoing about a mile of fence line, and building two bridges over creeks.  Some days it sounds like a lot more land than I'll ever need to use, but the way it was laid out I have a whole naturally defined "area" to myself, with creeks and ravine/valley's as my borders, though I own a little past both sides for privacy.  I want to run willows along the creeks, but not sure if that will make it a tangled mess or a charming canopy.  

I hate having the feeling of a million projects piled up and stretching out years, so I'm trying to set my mind on being grateful I get to do it, and learn to enjoy the process.  

There's a small but charming cabin on it, so I at least don't have to rush to get a roof over our heads before it gets cold again.