The yearlings think Spring is coming - they went climbing on the big rock for the first time since early December and were acting a bit goofy...
When you are planting seedling trees you use a planting bar for manual plantings or a tree planter for larger plantings. I planted 5000 mixed hardwoods one spring using a tree planter. It is basically a large diameter single disc with a hollow wedge behind the disc. Someone drives the tractor that pulls it and someone else rides with the seedlings in buckets and drops them into the slot that wedge creates. As you pull away from the seedling there are wheels on the back of the planter that are intended to close the slot the wedge created. My wife rode in back with 500 trees at a time to drop into the slot while I tried to steer the tractor in a straight line for her. It took us about 2 days of work to plant all 5000 seedlings this way. If you are using a planting bar you stomp it into the ground to open a slot, drop in the seedling and then stomp the bar into the ground an inch or two from the original slot you created. That closes the earth around the seedling's roots. No way would I ever try to plant large numbers of seedlings using a shovel. That is way too much work.
