We all love cutting those trees up, but does anyone plant new trees? I'm not a tree hugger by any means, but every year the wife and I plant at least 20 trees on our property. This past spring it was ten Tulip trees and ten Black Locust. It has nothing to do with replacing what we take or anything like that, although I do like to think that someday, someone will use our trees for firewood or some other resource. We have 3 acres, about one of those acres is wooded. The most prolific trees we have are White Ash, followed by Honey Locust, although the Locust are bigger than the Ash. The Ash are beginning to die from EAB, so it's good that we got a head start on it. Some of the other trees we've planted are, Pecan, Bur Oak, Northern Red Oak, Red Bud, Sugar Maple, Black Walnut, Hazelnut, fruiting Cherry, Pear and a few others that I can't think of at the moment. Next spring, we'll be planting Shagbark Hickory and Sassafras. Just curious whether anyone else did this and it seemed like a good idea for a thread.
We don't have the area like you do, but we are always planting trees in our yard, mom's yard or the park. I really think we were put here to be good stewards of this earth and planting trees is a good way of doing that.
I have tried to help some of what come a up naturally to survive by protecting them from the animals. In 17 years I have managed to keep one red maple, one cherry and one red oak. The chipmunks get most every oak soon after it germinates and the deer will eat everything that isn't protected. I have 2 more cherry trees coming up in my kids jungle gym. I might be able to save one of them.
I have been planting a lot this fall. Red maples, CA bay/OR Myrtle, Norway maples, pears, yellow cedars, and dogwood. I had them in the deer fenced area and wait to plat them when the leaves turn color. Next year I will have to deer net the smaller ones to protect them until they are over 12 ft.
Don't even get me started on the Deer. Up to last year, I couldn't figure out why our trees weren't growing, then it dawned on me when I saw the spring buds missing at the ends of the branches. In the spring, I spray them with a mixture of egg, water and red pepper and that seems to keep them away. The tulip trees I planted this past spring are all in pots planted in the ground until they get to a safe height. Last week, I put bird netting around all of the small trees and I still have to wrap the trunks on the medium trees to keep the Bucks off the trunks.
Well, I have been at war with the deer here for years. At my ex's place I spent nights in my several acre pinot noir vineyard with an AR-15. Here I put in an 8 foot fenced area around my blue and cane berries, and I keep my smaller potted trees in there. They eat everything except bamboo, iris, conifers, and junipers. So I grow a lot of bamboo, iris, conifers, and junipers. Oh, and garlic The larger trees have a deer hair cut about 5 feet off the ground. I had the blueberries exposed, as 'they say' that the deer do not eat them. Huh! I put fencing around them two years ago as they seemed to be struggling, and WHAM! The crop went up ten fold! This was from one day picking this summer...
We planted a few this year on our place. Just bought it this summer, I plan to keep planting more as we go. I love having trees around. I need to take a few down that are dead and plan to replace them with as big of trees as I can find. Not sure what species yet though. Planted mulberry and Chinese maple so far.
I plant trees every spring, and this year planted some firewood varieties for the first time. Black locust, hickory, chestnut, oak and so on. I don't have high hopes for most of them in my climate, not to mention my sheep and cows, but I try. Planted a total of around 50 this past spring, and hope to continue to do that. Good thread!
Black locust actually does really well here in the wet PNW. I have found some abandoned towns here in the Cascades and the only thing left are stands of Black Locust. Honey locust gets a fungus here in the PNW, and this is the one area in the US that it does not grow well. The deer generally eat the oaks to death, so there are not many young ones here any more. I re-planted several thousand trees after logging my land in Southern Oregon, including: red alder, coastal redwood, giant sequoia, 6 types of local willows, OR ash, CA Bay Laurel/OR Myrtle, OR white oak, CA black oak, golden chinkapin, bigleaf maple, Doug fir, grand fir, red cedar, and madrone. I used tree tubes to some benefit, though they were worthless with the elk that went through there in winter. Some of the trees were planted in a CREP/CRP land fenced and leased to the gov't along the streams for steelhead habitat, and the rest were replanted under a forestry plan (OR law requires replanting a year after logging). We also cut out a lot of 120-150 foot conifers to restore a 5 acre old growth oak stand there. Some oaks were 6 ft. DBH, and 120 feet tall. They were there only because the Indians burned that area for centuries prior to keep the conifers from overgrowing the oaks. .
We can get seedlings reasonably from the cooperative extension each spring. We get white pine, white spruce and pin oak. We plant them mainly around the perimeter of our property for privacy.
I planted some evergreens along the road but the well meaning guy with the town's new brushhog on a stick got them. Thought I was smart planting them out of the range of the old sickle bar. Tried again with some transplanted pines from a field a friend was clearing. They've done better and there is now a 5' double row firewood wall to block the road until they fill in.
I have planted trees on the farm. Loblolly pine in a few acres of marginal field and some CREP plantings of hardwoods. I will be doing another Loblolly planting after I do another stream exclusion practice in the back of the farm that will get the farm to 95% of the creeks fenced off from the cattle.
I also practice TSI (Timber Stand Improvement) on the farm. A fair amount of marginal pasture was allowed to grow up on the farm over the years and that mostly has meant red cedar has taken hold with some other trees. So in those areas I have cut cedar in order to release the other trees and encourage stand diversity. So a chainsaw can be a beneficial tool in forest management.
The Chinese Maple is an ornamental tree, grows very short and stout. usually trimmed back and has a weeping style branch. very small pointy maple leaves. they are fairly expensive trees but are very pretty. The mulberry I planted is also a weeping Mulberry, they will get much bigger but I am very partial to them as my grandparents had them in their yard and I spent many hours climbing around those trees as a young kid eating the berries.
We try to stick with native species, but have a few foreign varieties. The other day, the wife mentioned that she wants to plant some Ginko trees. They have a nice form and unusually shaped leaves and in the fall, they turn a brilliant yellow. They are said to be messy trees and that the fruit gives off a bad smell, so if I plant them, they will be far from the house. We've tried to grow Apples trees in the past, but lost them to cedar apple rust and fire blight. This past spring, I got two Asian pear varieties that are supposed to be disease resistant, so I'll just have to wait and see. Sometimes going with foreign varieties is the only alternative. We have a lot of Mulberries growing wild and this year they didn't seem to do so well. The leaves one the Mulberries, as well as the Black cherries had very sparse leaves. We had a pretty wet spring and early summer and I'm thinking the roots just got too much water.
I planted lots of oak about ten years ago. Mostly red but a few whites. Transplanted lots of white pine before that.
We just have a medium sized lot in town. I planted my mulberry about ten years ago. Last year we took out two big red maples that were becoming a liability, This year we put in a catalpa, two peaches and two plums. We are talking out the big silver maple and are considering putting in a Kentucky coffee tree next year.
