Loblolly maximum row width?

[Stan snider]

I'm thinking of putting an old field to pine and wondered if making the rows wide enough to cut hay through them for a few years would ruin the form too much? I have a 12 foot SP swather . Any thoughts on this? This is a pretty good lowland soil in northeastern Oklahoma

[WDH]

14' is a fairly common industry practice now.  One very large timberland company plants on 20' rows.  The wider the row, the lower the cost to establish the plantation.  With a 20' row, there will not be take-out rows when the stand is thinned.  However, this regime includes pruning, so that is probably not feasible for you. 

I recently planted on 12' rows.  You could plant 500 trees/ac on 16' rows.  This is a spacing of about 5.5' by 16'.  Anything wider than that would require pruning at the first thinning to maintain decent log quality.  If you could do 14', that would be what many other companies are doing.

[Stan snider]

Thanks WDH .  How many years before they shade out the middles enough to not be worth baling if you went with 16 '? Are there any advantages to orienting rows north-south vs east-west or on contour? Not too much grade here anyway.

[Raider Bill]

Theres a couple threads going now concerning loblolly's I've been watching and asking Questions in so bear with me.

Here you are talking about row distance got me wondering On my property bowater replanted after cutting sometime in the 80's. It appears that they just dropped the seedlings randomly instead of in rows. Is there any reason for this? I noticed they did this all over the area no rows anywhere.

[scsmith42]

Stan, I was reading some information from my local Ag Extension office recently that stated that where grass is plated around trees, the tree growth is severely stunted due to competition for the nutrients.

If it were me, I would be worried about having a poor hay harvest as well as low growth on the loblolly's.

[Wudman]

Theres a couple threads going now concerning loblolly's I've been watching and asking Questions in so bear with me.

Here you are talking about row distance got me wondering On my property bowater replanted after cutting sometime in the 80's. It appears that they just dropped the seedlings randomly instead of in rows. Is there any reason for this? I noticed they did this all over the area no rows anywhere.

Raider Bill,

Your tract was probably planted by hand.  There is a method to the madness.  The first man out leaves the starting point and works around the outside perimeter of the tract.  The men behind him follow maintaining their distance between trees and between rows.  They are walking a line - it just might not be very straight.  The men typically plant at different speeds so they get scattered across the tract. 

Wudman

[Raider Bill]

Thanks!

I know in some places I can drive the Tractor with FEL and bush hog between trees in other spots I can't get my quad through without doing a 20 point turn .

It's sort of weird in that I have I'd say about 10 acres of pine that looks clean with nothing but pine needles on the ground surrounded by many acres of newer growth that the pine beetles got to so the ground is littered with decaying trees, underbrush and brambles. I can't figure out why not all of the trees were effected.
The good side of it is in the infected areas I have cedars and hardwood growing along with pine for a nice mix.
In the mixed area when I have time I try to bush hog the under brush down where I can get to. I call it my nature park as the deer and turkey seem to like it there best.

[WDH]

Stan,

Scott has a good point.  In my young plantation that I established in January, we sprayed the pasture in the previous fall to knock back the bahia grass.  Then, this spring we sprayed the pine rows with a band of herbicide.  If you don't control the pasture grass in some way, your trees will be much worse for it, and you will have higher mortality.  However, if you band sprayed, there will still be grass between the bands that could be bailed for three of four years, just not as much as the full spacing between the rows.  See this thread for the band spraying that I am referring to..... http://www.forestryforum.com/board/index.php/topic,33920.60.html

Bill,

Two other possible explanations for your loblolly situation.  Bowater used to do a good bit of direct seedling in the steeper terrain.  They would drop pine seed from the air to regenerate after logging.  Direct seeding can be hit or miss.  Sometimes it works too good and there are trees like hair on a dog's back.  Other times,  the rodents chew em up or the drought gets them, and there are not enough trees.  The disadvantage of direct seeding is that you cannot control the stocking.  That sounds a little bit like what you have since the trees are not in distinct rows.  The other explanation is a version of what Wudman explained where the hand planting was kinda random and then there was natural regeneration from surrounding pines that were not harvested or from seed that came from the harvested trees (this happens when you harvest in the late Fall).  We call these naturally regenerated trees "wildings" and they are not desirable because they do not have the better genetics of the planted seedlings.  Sometimes we go in and kill the wildings to help the planted trees.

[Restoman]

Here is a neat video on silvipasture.  I find this incredibly fascinating.

http://www.forestryvideos.net/videos/cover-your-assets-silvopasture-a-successful-alternative

I've watched just about every video on there.   Even though you would need to know a bit about cattle this seems well worth it.

[SwampDonkey]

Raider, then there is the forest company that plants just for planting sake because they are getting government money to pay wages. I have been marking out a 110 acre plantation to be thinned and to be quite honest it ain't plantation. The only sections that have any resemblance to a plantation is road side for about 50 meters where they burned the slash piles. Oh, they planted trees beyond that, but every tree has 1 to 10 natural trees growing up within 4 feet of it. You can pick the planted stock out because it's black spruce, stuck in a sea of either red spruce or sugar maple. The sugar maple saplings are so dam thick a spruce seedling never had a chance.  Those red spruce produce wood with similar properties, long lived and grow as big as white pine. I've seen a few on the cut block edge, left as riparian, that were nearly 3 feet in diameter. A black spruce will do well to give ya a 10" but log.

[Magicman]

Our County Forestry Ass'n has a field day scheduled for Nov 7th.  The educational topic for the day will be centered aroung harvesting pine straw for the mulch industry.  Pine straw harvesting is possible after 10-12 years and after canopy closure.  Wider planted rows are more "friendly" to mechanical harvesting.  Closer planted rows generally require the use of hand bailing methods.

[WDH]

Pine straw bailing is a little controversial.  There is concern that removing the pine straw time after time depletes the site of nutrients since most of the nutrients that the tree takes up end up back in the pine straw.  Supplemental fertilization is a way to manage the nutrient depletion, but that requires spending the money for fertilizer, and fertilizer is not cheap.  For that reason, I have chosen not to sell pine straw.

Magicman, let us know if this come up as an issue at the Field Day

[Magicman]

Magicman, let us know if this come up as an issue at the Field Day

It's now going to come up for sure, because I'm going to ask. 

Now let me ask a question.  What about burning?  Doesn't that burn up nutrients and send them up in smoke?  I know that potash is left, but what about all of the other stuff?

[Stan snider]

This is some really good discussion.  SCS  and WDH bandiing the rows would be easy to do. IF I could band beans and corn in the past, trees would be a snap.  A 16 foot row would give me room to drill a row of beans in the middles for a year or two! Any roundup ready pine out there??   I bet the N credit wouldn't hurt tree growth either.                                                                                                                                          I went past a few loblollies planted three years ago yesterday and they had lots of bark missing.  How many years before the deer leave them alone? This may take some tall hot wire to cure.  Maybe we need to hunt more ?                                                   Around here pine straw is a rare commodity and that could add some income after a few years. The nutrients removed would be a minute fraction of the value of pine straw in $ value and I am already very well acquainted with more than one fertilizer dealer! How much will pine straw yield or there any established numbers? The video linked by restoman indicated that loblolly wasn't the favorite straw of users. Why?

[Magicman]

16' rows will probably require some manual pruning.

[WDH]

Yes, that is surely the risk. 

Magicman, burning causes volatilization of nitrogen.  It does not impact phosphorus or potassium, in fact, it might make them more available.  The good thing with nitrogen is that it is replenished in the soil from natural rainfall (nitrogen is dissovled in the rain since the atmosphere is made up of mainly nitrogen and oxygen). 

However, if you were paying for fertilizer, then burning would be very wasteful since you would pay for the nitrogen fertilizer, then proceed to burn it up. 

[Magicman]

Makes sense.  Thanks,  I'll be listening and asking questions at that field day.

[Brian Beauchamp]

Where exactly in northeast Oklahoma are you? Loblolly is a big risk here because of all of the ice storms we have, plus the softwood market decreases significantly the further north you go in the state. Wide spacing is a good idea if you do plant it because there is virtually no market for softwood pulp here. You can't get anyone to thin it and if you do, it will be a precommercial thin where your costs are so high you won't make a profit. Like Magicman said as well, be prepared to do some pruning. Depending on where you are, too, the deer will really do a number on a new planting. Can't keep them off of it where the numbers are high. I'd suggest a hardwood planting myself. Black walnut would likely be a good choice for agroforestry like you are thinking, but I doubt you'd see the returns from that in your lifetime. Pecan would be another choice, but you need wider spacings and would sooner have to switch over to haying or pasturing due to how the roots run shallower and wider than the walnut. Also, if you know of someone buying pine straw in this area, send them my direction, I'd like to make that contact...don't know of anyone around here doing it. Cottonwood may be another good choice since it's a lowland area, especially the improved varieties. The hardwood pulp market has been pretty steady and you should have a relatively short rotation for those trees.

[Rocky_Ranger]

Good catch Brian, I used to live in Oklahoma and I don't know where the "Coweescowee District" is either; if he is in southeast OK though he is in fat city for loblolly.  Agroforestry carries all sorts of externalities for production - if he (Stan) is in timber production then plant for the crop at hand.  I get a little nervous when loblolly is spread out due to the amount of limbs they produce.  Pine straw might be good since I know of no one doing it up here (might be a reason for that), I seen research on echinasia planted in loblolly........   

[Brian Beauchamp]

Thanks, Rocky. If the map in his profile summary shows the correct location, he is near Chelsea, just southwest of Vinita in Craig County...right close to me here in Miami. I'd definitely suggest to change the planting objective. Just too much risk involved with loblolly here. One of the state guys keeps suggesting these loblolly plantings and the landowners come to me wanting help with plantings or harvests of their existing timber and bring up what he suggested. If you are to use any pines for a planting in this area, Eastern White or Shortleaf are the better choices. They have much slower growth rates though. With that considered in conjunction with the local markets, I would still go with a hardwood planting.