Planted 13,200 Trees in three days April the 13th thru the 15th.

Truckload ready to go.


Preperation underway


Let er happen!!!!

Dang I thought I was doing good having planted 75 in last week. Wish I had that fancy contraption. All I had was an auger and rock bar. What kind of trees did you plant?

Pretty impressive.

Mostly Oaks (White,Black and Scarlet) a mix of others along with some pines. All done with the assistance of the state through some cost share programs.

What are you spraying while you plant?

About a 2 foot swath of Roundup.

Nice rig, I had never seen this done.

BTW, the view in the first pic is gorgeous.

I'll be interested to see what survival rates are. This is the time of year to plant. I sure hope you don't have many deer... Any oak not protected is made quick work of in most areas around here.

I've got 280 to plant on a clients property. He's going to help. Since they will be planted in an area that has trees, it's all manual shovel/insert tree/cover back up work.

Got 100 planted on Sunday with his and his boy's help.

Then 200 Arborvatie at my place for a living fence/windbreak.

R&R can you tell me what division of the state you got your trees from. The devision I used to get mine from said they only had White Pines to sell. I was told just last week.

Here in Indiana the state used to have maybe a couple of dozen varieties of trees for sale at very reasonable prices and also included some 4 year transplants.

I planted by hand, thousands of trees including Autumn Olive, Silk Leaf Dogwood, Yellow Popular, Black Walnut but the trees I really like after seeing them grow for a dozen years are Norway Spruce. Deer took a heavy toll on the trees when they were small.

CJB, I have already had conversations with the state wildlife biologist concerning depredation tags. They want to protect there investment as much as I do. Just a moniter and see kinda thing.

esshup, Iv'e done a many hundreds of trees by hand but I wasnt willing to tackle this one. LOL

John, This whole process was a couple of years in the making. I was wanting to get them in the ground last spring through the NRCS but I was to far down on the list for funding. So through a Private forrester he hooked me up with someone from the Muskatituck Wildlife Refuge for the funding. The trees were purchased at the state nursery. And they had to be ordered and paid for by Oct. of the previous year.I'd be glad to share all of the info if your interested just let me know and I'll PM you. This also let me put all but a couple of acres in classified forest and pay a dollar a year in property taxes.

I should of atleast included a picture including the pond. Gotta look real close for trees.

John: You planted Autumn Olive? I work hard to get rid of them in my 77 acres of CRP hardwood forest. The state forestry people lend assistance in getting rid of them. This spring we have been cutting them off and wiping Tordon on the stumps to kill them off.

Nice rig..I watched a youtube video recently with a rig like this where they were planting thousands of spruces. Very efficient, but I wonder what the survivability is as well if not hand setting for proper depth and watching for J-root, etc.

I'm picking up 300 trees from IN state nursery today. 100 gray dogwood saplings (low cover). 100 Washington Hawthorns (mid size tree) and 100 3yr old Norway Spruce to ring most of my entire 5 acre property. I'm going for a solid living fence. 300 trees for a little over $100, you cant beat it!

Of course I know what I'll be doing for the next several days!

DD, It seems to do a pretty descent job. Of course got a lot to do with operator placement. It opens up about a 2 to 3" wide gap more than 12 'deep. If I get a 50% survival rate I'll be tickled. Just the savings in property taxes will pay for my part in a year and a half. Dont work to hard.

I have planted at least a hundred trees seedlings on my property every year for the last seven years. I've found using a rock bar I get about a 80% survival rate with some supplemental watering during dry periods. The deer in the fall sure do a number on them during the rut rubbing them. I would like to see the survival rate also. Do you have a link to that YouTube video?

I'll see your 13,200 and raise you 20,000. We planted about 33,000 trees in late March on my farm in Kentucky. Front rows shrubby stuff (plum, dogwood, redbud, serviceberry, etc.) and back rows hardwoods (red and white oak, hickory, black walnut). The crew I hired used a machine much like the one in the picture. Took them about 2 weeks given the terrain and the rockiness of my soil.

Everything's starting to leaf out now. Hoping the deer don't eat everything!

Awesome!

DCobb That is Awsome!!!! Good luck. Did you get any funding from the state? Anywhere near Lexington? Iv'e been working there for the past 2 1/2 years.

DCobb, that's great. Roughly, how tall are they?

R&R, if it comes to that, "have gun will travel". I know that the shooter has to be listed on the permit. I'm one of the shooters on the depredation permit on the 3200 acre farm that we do wildlife improvements on that is just South of South Bend.

Muzzleloader works out to 400 Yds., head/neck shots (if the deer is calm and not moving) are easily done to 150.



This one, well, if I do my part, it will group under 3/4" at 300 yds and as the gunsmith said when I asked him how far could I hunt with it "I've sen you shoot, and lets just say that if you can see it, you can kill it."
7mm bullet, it's still moving 1400 fps and has 900 fpe at 2,000 yds.


300 yds. Group would have been better if I would have read the wind better.....

Scott, I'll just leave my 7mm Savage on the porch for you. I showed her this pic, and the love is gone.

Nice shooting.

I'll bet your 7mm runs out of gas way before this one too!

Thanks.

I can't remember if you reload, but this one is pushing a 175g SMK at 3490 fps when booted by 109/110g of WC872 powder and that's not even a compressed load. Amount of powder depends on ambient temp. 110g in 85°F (in the shade) is going a wee bit faster than 3550 fps and it's just barely starting to show signs of high pressure, but it's more accurate around 3490 fps.

6" rocks at 1150 yds aren't safe.

Scott, I haven't started reloading yet, but it's coming soon. I use Hornady Superformance in all my rifles, and 7mm has been very easy to find. I can't get one brick of 22LR, but I can get a case of 7mm. I guess 7mm isn't an "apocalypse approved" caliber.

Go figure.

As for the tree planting -- that is fantastic.

As a 4-H kid, I hand-planted a lot of trees, and I assisted in a heck of a lot of tractor-planted trees. It was over half-century ago, but I believe our small region did a million trees a year.

Being as old as I am, I'm now culling a lot more trees than I plant. Just in the last couple of days, the power company cut several cord of trees in my 1/3-mile driveway. If they hadn't sprayed the stumps with orange paint, I'd never have even known they cut these 8-12 inch DBH trees.

Like ponds, woodlands require a lot of culling and management to keep them viable.

My favorite trees are.

Scotch Pine, Great fast grower and quick wind break.
Blue spruce, Nice colour and good wind break.
And the Colorado fir, Quick grower like the pine with blue needles.

It all takes time and I like the fast growers. It helps to spend the big dollars on the potted hardwoods $75-$125 each if you want any shade out of them in your life time.

Planting wips really takes time and culturing. Well done and I commend the work it takes.

Cheers Don.

Ken, well said. A lot of people don't realize that.

R&R I started planting trees bought from the state nurseries in the late 70's. Most of my pond and farm friends were then planting Autumn Olive for the birds. I planted 200 on the outside of a mature woods I live in, and 100 Norway Spruce inside the woods. Over the years the Autumn Olive all died out and only 2 Blue Spruce survived and were stunted. I transplanted them about 10 years ago in an open area and they are growing just fine. I planted White Pine at the front of my property as a screening, maybe 8 or 10 feet apart in the 70's and now they look terrible as they are very tall, thinning and look scraggy. I'm not a fan of White Pine planted close together. I have observed that White Pine and Norway Spruce planted 20 feet apart seem to do much better for me. Also the dreaded Saw Fly larva was a problem for the pines. My big plantings were in my pond area where I made a woods from scratch. I’m just doing filling in plantings now so I will get what I need at Walmart since I don’t want the states White Pine. Thanks for offering to help.
John

esshup, If I get any I'll definately give you a call. Sounds like you could set "Anywhere" on my property and be "In Range"

Catmandoo, Agreed 100%

Dono, Good choices on the trees.

"There are only two good days to plant trees......TODAY......and TWENTY YEARS AGO"

took me a few, but I found it again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEm42QS0N8c

search tree planting machine and it will pull up several.

No funding from the state, but I did get support from the NRCS/DOA under an EPIC contract. Nice deal.

The farm is in north-east Washington County near the Bluegrass Parkway, so not too far from Lexington.

I bought them mostly from the KY and MO State Nurseries. I bought enough that I got a good discount, which I used to step up to 2-year trees where available. So the trees ranged from a few inches (little Roughleaf Dogwoods) to 3 feet (2-year Oaks).

If planting 1-2 year old trees the old fashioned way (by hand with a shovel) does anybody have a recommendation of what kind of shovel or is something else better? Some of these hardwood trees are up to 1" dia.

I also have 200 Arborvitae trees to plant this coming week that are 24"-30" tall (roots not included).

You can plant a future forest quick with that thing.

If you have nice soft ground a rock bar works great. Planted many seedlings with mine.

Scott, I borrowed Brian's dibble bar, and it was a breeze to plant trees. I'm not sure how it would work for 2-3' tall trees, but if the roots are confined and straight, it may be worth a shot.

I planted 50 Loblolly Pines up to 2' tall almost as fast as I could walk.

When I do larger trees we use our ice auger for ice fishing. A post hole auger one or two man would do the trick too.

I like to drill the hole deeper then needed to break up the hard pan. Mix in bonemeal with the dirt that came out of the hole as I fill it back in. Four man operation one drilling holes, one filling holes, one placing tree, one dumping a pail of water on. Do about 10 have a beer and so on. Six of us did 100 potted Blue spruce this way did not loose one. Never watered them again that season.

These are the ones I have tree spaded around my new pond. Biggest is now 16 feet an moved them with a 70" spade. Planted a row behind my shop on the north side. Never thought they would get so be so fast and had to move them from the shop. If I left them five more years they would have to be fire wood.

Cheers Don.

Thanks guys. Got all those things mentioned. We'll see how it goes. Sandy soil, one man crew. Living fence and living windbreak. 690 feet......

esshup, Good fences make good neighbors????

I agree! Metal fence would have to be slightly more than 1,000 feet long, thru the woods and property should be surveyed before placing it. There is a 300' long fence in place already, it just needs to be extended. The trees will be a visual blocking fence in a couple of years. I'm not 100% sure that the existing fence is on my property or not. Nobody within a mile of me on my side of the street has had their property surveyed that I know of within the past 25 years.

I had my land surveyed and the US forest service was claiming over 100 feet of my land.

That was considerate of them!