Tree Planting Layout for OCD-Types

[Treeflea24]

Are there any other weird birds out there that think about what your new tree planting is going to look like in aerial and satellite imagery, and waste time and mental and physical energy making sure its going to look "right" from 10,000 feet? Then waste more time and energy posting about it?
In case there are, heres the 'alternative method' that I used to plant a couple hundred trees last fall, and the aerial imagery to show the results:



I guess its not that revolutionary, but rather than planting the trees in simple perpendicular and equally spaced rows and columns - this is called square packing, and is the same as the arrangement in a full twelve pack of cans of beer, I used a different layout that places each tree equidistant from each of its neighbors. Its called hexagonal packing, or triangular packing, and its the arrangement you get once you remove one or more of the beers from the twelve pack and the cans settle to their natural state, nestling into the unused spaces between cans.

It gives a slightly higher trees/acres density. Square packing gives a ~78.5% efficiency, and hex packing gives ~90.7%. I planted at 10' spacing, so rather than the 435 trees/acre of square packing, hex packing places about 503 trees in the same space.

I think it looks cool from the aerial, rather that aligning parallel in two directions 90° apart, it aligns parallel in 3 directions, 60° apart. But that wasnt the main reason that I did it.

The main reason was because I would be planting in and around existing trees and patches of plants that I didnt want to clear, and couldnt work through while doing my layout, and I wanted to trees on either side of whatever obstructions to still align with each other, colinear and parallel. The specifics of my method allowed for this.

The Method: Get two rigid pieces of material that are both the length of whatever spacing you want (10'L, 1" PVC tubes in my case). Stick a flag into the ground wherever you want to start. Use your PVC pipe to space a second flag 10' away - this will establish the directions of all of your rows. After that chose any two flags, bump your spacing tubes up to each of them and bring them together to place your next flag. If you are consistent you will have a nearly perfect grid that can work around obstructions and create colinear rows on either side of the obstruction, without using a line of sight. Gluing a small magnet into the end of each tube helps to give consistent contact to the steel wire of the flag. Also a wife and a child to hold the opposite ends of the sticks against flags really speeds things up.

 No measurements are required. No eyeball judgments. No measuring right triangles to get things perpendicular or square. Just bump the sticks to flags and keep on going.

The actual 'row spacing' is less than the tree spacing, (87% of the tree spacing) so keep that in mind if you want a certain width for equipment and access.

I tried a similar method before this with strings, ropes, chains, etc, and it gives the same results, but requires a lot of back-and-forth that you can avoid by using the sticks method.

Let me know your thoughts, and how crazy I am for laying out my trees this way.

[ljohnsaw]

Nice simple solution.  Pretty neat.  When I first saw the picture, I thought, "man, most of those trees died!".

[Treeflea24]

When I first saw the picture, I thought, "man, most of those trees died!".

Here's the photo I should have put at the end, rather than the flags:

[beenthere]

How do you plan to keep it like that? 

The grass and weeds will grow. just curious... 

Planted 3+ acres with 800 black walnut seedlings back in '71 on 10' x 10' spacing.. straight rows along and across the field (like checked corn). Kept it disked and weed free for the first 15 years. After that, just kept it mowed with a brush hog. 

In '98, planted 3000 trees (1200 red oak, 1200 Norway spruce, 600 white pine) in rows. Trees in rows planted 6' apart, with softwood every other tree between the red oak. Thought was to have the softwood cause the red oak to grow up and not out. Worked, except for the softwoods grew much too fast and the design (plan) did not turn out so great. 35-40 foot spruce that are difficult to remove just to release the red oaks. Pic after four years.



 

[Treeflea24]

How do you plan to keep it like that?

Hmm, I guess I hadnt planned to keep it like this, in terms of weeds and surrounding plants. I was going to let most of it grow back to the grasses, goldenrod, & teasel that was there before I brush hogged it. My hope is that the weed mats will get the seedlings through the first few years of weed competition until they are able to get out of the tops of the tubes. Is that a flawed plan? I will probably layout and mow a couple trails that run through the area for access.
Nice photo - If that were at my property, those two ungulates would have their mouths full of tree parts from those unprotected oaks, or sharpening their antlers on them, depending on the season. There'd probably be more than two of them too, we have a deer problem here...
The softwood-every-other to train the hardwoods up - I had read about that and I actually did that in a smaller area last year with white pine and white oak every-other. Im glad you mentioned your experience with it. With that in mind, would it make sense to top those softwoods once they get 8-10' tall? Once that top leader is gone, they stop growing upwards, right? Then they could still do their job of forcing the oaks up to form a canopy over them, and theyd be easier to thin when that day comes. Think that'd work?
What does the 50 year old black walnut planting look like nowadays? Would love to see a photo of that, can you still see the rows and patterns?

[beenthere]

Your weed mats should work, and hope they do. 
The deer did munch on the oaks and seemed to treat the rows like a salad bar. But a couple years of bagging the terminal buds in paper popcorn bags did the trick to save the terminal growth. 


 

Yes to the idea that I should have taken control of the "out-of-control" spruce and white pine when they were smaller and easier to handle. But I didn't. Digging out the roots with tractor forks at first, but then had to cut them off. This is that field this morning with the spruce/pine removed in part.


 

And a trail cam pic at the walnut field. Nothing spectacular for tree growth, but the small ones are yielding to the larger trees and have good height growth. Just not great form.


 

Just brush hog the walnut field once or twice a year. 

[Treeflea24]

  

Pretty cool when you put them side-by-side! 24 year span, right? Thats a beautiful view from your deck.
This provides some inspiration (and also tempered expectations on timing) for impatient folks like me who are just getting started on their plantings.