Met the forester last week

[dakids]

I finally met the forester last week on our land that he is going to write our stewardship plan for.  He tried to talk us into planting the entire 7.5 acre field into pine trees.  Since we are already enroled into the WHIP program that requires us to plant the field into 1/3 conifers, 2/3 hardwood/ shrubs mix over the next 3 years he couldn't make us do the entire field into pines.   We spent at least 5 hours walking the property with me getting the boundries marked.  While we walked he identified most of the plants that we have and which animals eat them.

A few of the problems that we have is that the aspens are of 2 age classes and mixed.  The biggest problem is that one of the predominate younger species is Iron wood.  Nothing eates it and it doesn't get big enough to use for anything except buggie axels for the amish.

The trees that are on the land consist of White oak (bur), red oak, basswood, black ash, green ash, aspen, birch.  The shrubs consisted of pincherry, naniberry, rasberry, dogwoods, chokecherry, and also leatherwood.  He said that the native americans used leatherwood for something but he couldn't remember for what.  If anyone here knows let me know. 

I learned more from him than I had from any book that I have read before.  A couple of things that I thought were very important were that when we plant the trees we are only to roundup the strips where we are planting the trees.  The strips of grass will provide wind protection and give bugs and grubs something to eat other than the tree we are planting.  Also when putting the trees into the dirt to make sure that all of the roots are pointing downward and not turning back upward like a "J".  The trees will grow and look real good for about 4-5 years and then just die for no aperant reason.  Also when planting trees in the area that already has trees and is used by the deer heavily we should use the tops from the unwanted trees that we cut down to protect the seedlings.

The one thing that we had wanted to do was plant some faster growing pines but the forester is only able to recoment native plant species which limits us to only the slower growing varieties.  This is fine with me because the native varieties are what is best for our soil types.

We will be getting our final stewardship plan in a couple of weeks.  He sent me a preliminary one with a list of our goals and it was all about promoting the land for use by deer, bear, and grouse.  The easy work is done and we are planning to plant 1/3 of the trees in the end of august or early september, which gives us time to prep the field, and get a well drilled.   

[deadeye]

Sounds like you are lined up for many hours (days) of very enjoyable work. 

[Big E]

When you say you use the tops of the trees to protect the seedling what do you mean? Lay it over the top of it or off to the side?
 Native Americans used the bark for bow strings, baskets and all that type of stuff by weaving it together....I didn't know this off the top of my head but you got me curious so I googled it.