Some of you old timers on the PBF may recall
my WHIP project from some years ago. Well, we had very limited success due to the hungry deer population. I knew it was a substantial risk going in, but never dreamed they would be
that bad. Even the Norway Spruce we planted got browsed over every year, presumably after snowfall. They always nip off the soft green buds that will be next years branches. Fortunately, though, quite a few of those same Norway spruce continue to struggle and are growing. The bushes? Well, not so good. I don't have anywhere near an accurate count, but feel confident to guess that we lost at least 75% of the bushes....maybe more.
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So, we have decided to try something on a smaller scale. We always kept a small nursery at our principal home, usually never more than about 50 trees or so. In fact, quite a few of those home nursery Norway Spruce that got planted as seedlings about 5 years ago were transplanted to LNP a year ago in an area of the outer pond perimeter that is very close to the neighbor's property line. Anyway, last winter I called the state nursery and ordered some more stock. We decided that planting the nursery right at the place where they will ultimately wind up would simplify things.
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We marked out a 30' x 40' area right on the building site so we can keep an eye on it. It is also an area that will get good sun all year. I pulled the old 8HP 36" pull-behind roto tiller out of the shed at home, took it to LNP, and put it back to work behind our garden tractor. The clay on the building site is as hard as a rock, so we wanted to break it up a bit. Ha!...the roto tiller cut down about 4" and just bounced atop the hardpan clay. So, from there it was shovel work. At this point I really wished I had purchased that planting spud, but the all steel shovel with a sharpened cutting edge worked really well.
The fence poles are #4 grade 60 rebar. The fencing is plain old chicken wire. One row of 48" high, about 6" space, then another row of 24" high chicken wire. We may have to go back and beef up the corners with thicker rebar...or not...TBD.
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It took about 1-1/2 days of mostly manual labor, but we laid in 100 Norway spruce, 100 Chokecherry, and 100 Hazelnut trees. Everything fit at 24" on centers. Dski will be in charge of carefully spraying weeds and grass between rows (I hope).
