Spruce Seedlings arrived......time for planting!

[Jason_AliceMae Farms]

I wanted to start a thread to document the Norway spruce planting that I have mentioned.  The seedlings have arrived and the planting will take place this weekend.

Here is my first picture to start showing the progress.....just the seedlings still boxed up ready to get into the ground.  The rows will be 10 feet apart and the trees will be between 8 and 10 feet apart within the row.



 

[treefarm]

Ahhh-my back aches just looking at those boxes! We had, at one point, about 6000 Christmas trees in the ground, on land we cleared ourselves, @ 5ac. of reclaimed field, and another 3 ac. of abandoned power line ROW, over here in NH. And all hand planted. I didn't realize you were planting Norway Spruce-beautiful trees, one of my favorites. What's the goal? Ornamental? Pulp? Saw logs? Hope the planting goes well & good luck!!! Tom

[thecfarm]

How many trees you planting? Going to have a planter? or what ever it's called. Pictures coming of the operation.

[Jason_AliceMae Farms]

I went with the Norway spruce after talking it over with the forester but I also like Norway spruce.  I have others on the property and I also would love to visit the Black Forest in Germany some day since it has a lot of Norway Spruce but if I never get there I might as well make my own little Black Forest.

I will be planting 2000 seedlings (1000 two year old plugs and 1000 three year old plugs).  I don't have a mechanical planter, I have a sub-soiler for the tractor that I am going to use to rip a trough in the ground but the trees will all be put in one at a time bending over each time (I already have a sore back thinking about it).  Hopefully I will be able to keep the rows straight enough to make mowing easier for the next few years.

The majority are being planted for pulp and saw logs but I have a little half acre patch that I might grow ornamental trees.

I will get the pictures posted once the work is done and I recover from the upcoming weekend, haha.

[BaldBob]

I wanted to start a thread to document the Norway spruce planting that I have mentioned.  The seedlings have arrived and the planting will take place this weekend.

Unless you commonly get dependable fall rains, have good soil moisture, are set up to irrigate,or get a snow cover over the seedlings within about 3 weeks of planting, this doesn't seem like a good time to be planting.  My experience supervising the planting of millions of  seedlings elsewhere, says you will have poor survival unless you have at least one of those listed conditions.  Although plugs tend to fare better than bare root if planted under conditions when the soil temps are over 40 deg. F but there is little soil moisture, the best survival we experienced was achieved if planting occurred as soon after the snow left as possible.
However, I am not that familiar with planting practices in the Northeast and maybe you will be OK.

[beenthere]

Jason
I too wondered about the fall planting. Hope that goes well.

For that spacing, is there a predictable window of time when the trees will start self-pruning?

The spruce I planted 15 yrs ago were about 10-12' within a row, but the rows about 10' apart. Every other tree was a red oak and all trees planted about every 6' more or less. In 15 years, the spruce have grown tall and are about 10" on the stump. But no self pruning of the lower branches has occurred yet.  The intermixed red oak seem to be doing very well and now I'm thinning out a lot of the spruce to release the oak.

I too, ripped a trench with sub-soiler tooth and planted in that trench with a planting bar. Worked well and the rows were as straight as I drove the tractor, so mowing, as well as spraying for competition was easy.
The only drawback I could see with the subsoiler may have been the moles that liked the easy going (but not sure I lost any trees from their presence).
It's a toss-up if the trench robbed moisture from the tree roots or if it collected more moisture when it rained.

[Jason_AliceMae Farms]

I was unsure the best time to plant when I had first decided that I will be planting this year.  The decision to plant in the fall was based on the input I received from the forester and other DEC resources that I had talked to.  They have seen good survival rates planting now and very comparable if I was going to plant early in the Spring.

The temperatures are starting to drop some and we are expecting to get some light rain both Sunday and Monday so I am happy with that.  We will start to see increased rainfall and where I am planting the soil is fairly moist almost all year round but if things do start looking like they will be too dry the ponds are located right next to the field so irrigation is also possible.  I truly do appreciate all of the input and suggestions from you all and I look forward to learning more from all of you.  I look forward to tracking the progress of the seedlings and learning some more tips and tricks from the board.

[SwampDonkey]

You'll probably do fine with containerized. The ground won't freeze hard for a few weeks. And in fact, we used to winter seedlings in the containers out in the yard and they would even take root in October up here, down through the container bottoms. That being said, we do all our planting up this way in the spring time. The best results we had on old fields was scarifying with a 2 furrow plow and planting near the hinge, not in the ditch and not on the flopped over sod. Gave a couple years of almost weed free around the trees. Just light grass by the second year. Spraying before hand was about the worst, released all manner of nasty weeds.

[curdog]

The planting won't be too bad, but definitely an honest days work. Are you planting about 3-4 acres?
When I plant open fields, I spray a 3 foot band of herbicide over the pines( loblolly) when they're going in the ground. I mix in oust in with accord ( or an equivalent). The accord kills all that is green at the time, and the oust is a pre- emergent. By the end of the summer some nettles and a little thistle may pop up in the sprayed areas, but it keeps the grass away from the trees long enough for them to get the crowns over the grass. In my area I wouldn't consider planting fields without herbicide, or some form of site prep. I have furrowed a few fields with a front mounted plow on a dozer , and I like using herbicide a lot better.
Good luck with your planting, and I'd be interested in seeking some pictures of planted spruce trees.

[SwampDonkey]

We get bedstraw as one of the weeds released after a spray and trees are doomed in that. Just like a 2 foot layer of straw covering a field. A field with goldenrod and strawberries we found best to leave alone and just plant. Spraying over top of spruce would be just like burning the spruce with fire. Herbicide use for forestry up here only allows certain products. Some jurisdictions have an outright ban on it. Spruce need to harden off and can't be sprayed until August. And by that time the weeds are gone to seed and about dead for the year anyway, so herbicide must be done before planting of spruce. In NB, Spruce plantations on industrial and crown lands are sprayed in August to kill raspberry, deciduous shrubs and trees. Raspberry will grow 7 feet tall a year, that is why many kill zones along roads are void of planted trees, the raspberry killed them. Same for the trails on many sites.

[Jason_AliceMae Farms]

Planting went well.......definitely an honest couple of days work but it was/is rewarding.  I am slow getting pictures up but I hope to have some up this week and then I will take some more pictures next weekend too.

Nice cool days and moist soil with some light showers the 2 days following the trees going in.  I did not do any herbicide treatments due to some $$ constraints as well as reading a few places that stated what you did SwampDonkey.  The field had mostly gone to goldenrod so I had just been keeping it mowed in preparation for the planting.  We will see how thing progress without doing any treatments.

I did not get a picture (I know the rules here are no picture it did not happen, ha-ha) but on the second morning walking out to the field I walked up on a young buck that stood there looking at me for about a minute and then finally snorted some and ran off.

[Jason_AliceMae Farms]

Some pictures as promised.



 



 



 



 



 

I will take some more next weekend to try and show more of the field and looking down the rows.  The spacing for the most part was about 8 feet between trees within the rows but I had a few hundred left over trees at that spacing so I went back in and planted them randomly throughout.

[thecfarm]

It also would be interesting to take a yearly picture and keep us posted. Just use the FF bookmark. Swampdonkey has one from years back. It's interesting to show the growth.

[Jason_AliceMae Farms]

I definitely plan on documenting the progress.  I took measurements of a few of them and plan to put a pill bottle with those trees to track the growth.  The thread that Swampdonkey has is what inspired me to start my own thread, while I was still lurking here I really enjoyed reading that thread.

I have some pictures of the tractors at work too but I don't have them with me.  I am lucky enough to have a 30HP Deere and Kubota to help around the farm but I am always envious of you guys with the sawmills!  I am considering one of the smaller Hud-Son mills in the coming years to get my feet wet and to be ready in a few years when these little ones are ready for the mil 

[SwampDonkey]

The bears like them pill bottles. :D :D  :

[Jason_AliceMae Farms]

I'll just have to have a few well placed picnic baskets around the field to keep the bears out of the trees   :D

I have some orange snowplow markers that I plan on using to keep track of the trees that I am monitoring and to hold the pill bottles.