Team - I have approx 15 acres of land and it is mostly hardwood, rolling with lots of rock mixed in. Some decent oaks, however, best I can tell, most trees are immature <30 years old. There are lots of them, tall and skinny, however, do fill out the canopy. There is very little ground cover due to this. Couple pieces of info: - I do not have enough smaller trees to hinge cut, nor am I looking for that look. - I feel that I do not want to make the cover in the way of brush or pricker bushes. - I love the look of green pines. Last year I started planting pine seedlings (4-6 inches). Planted white pine, eastern hemlock, and white spruce. About 400 in total. I spread them out to about half the acreage. I plan to keep planting them each spring. Likely increase to 500 based on budget (more if I could afford it). I figure in 5-6 years, It should start to really thicken up, even with the hardwood canopy. Curious what others think of this long-term cover project? One change I believe I will do this year, instead of spreading out the 500 seedlings, I will blast them into the same area and plant many closer together. I think this will make it easier to plant as well as make it more manageable for future plantings. Any feedback on this idea as well?
Protect those white pines at at minimum cover the leader on each tree the deer will destroy white pine and white cedar.
Thanks, Sota. I find it a little tough to stomach the cost of covering so many seedlings. I might have to plant less white pine and a lot more spruce. Will see how well this years batch matures. Maybe I am optimistic that half the trees will grow, and another quarter will be eaten...leaving 25% of the trees left. Making these numbers up... I have fashioned individual cages for a bunch of arborvitae however, hundreds of cages seems unreasonable. In theory, I could plant clumps of trees together in say a 10ft x 10ft area, then screen them off. Do this 10 times and it would ensure no plants in those areas are touched. I think I will do this each time but not for 100% of the plantings.
My rifle stand is overlooking 10 acres and I couldn't imagine that many pines on it. My idea would be to try and get fewer but bigger trees to transplant. Putting them in clumps of 3 or 4 spaced 6-8 ft apart.
That's a good point, in my rifle area, I'm always cutting shooting lanes because of pines. For this area, it would take many years before I would see the trees grow tall enough to become good cover. I could always cut them. Just planing a few taller trees might not create the amount of cover I am thinking about, however, maybe I need all three approaches mentioned in the post so far. I'm open to this and glad you passed it along. I failed to mention that I do not really hunt this land. It's more for viewing pleasure however, would like to make it more comfortable for deer to hang out for a while vs just passing through.
Plant Red Cedar. Plant in clumps of 4-6 about 5' apart. They grow quick & deer won't bother them. They will spread like wild fire once they become adult trees and grow anywhere.
