Loblolly maximum row width?

[Stan snider]

Brian & Rocky Ranger; That coweescowee district refers to the old Cherokee districts set up in the 1800's after the Cherokee removal from GA, AL,TN area. My roots go  deep around here.                                                                                          Planting loblolly isn't something I am willing to bet the farm on but their growth rate sure inpresses me as well as thier tolerance for pests. Shortleafs native area gets within 25 miles of  here and are worth considering for sure. This is not really a commercial venture,just a use of some marginal ground.                                            As far as hardwood goes thinning some overstocked native timber would be my best use of time and energy I think.  It would probably have a harvest in my lifetime also.  Upland here is predominantly post oak so there are limits to my expectations. Maybe flooring?  Part of what I am thinking of planting is  heavy ground with poor internal drainage so walnut probably would not work so well.                                          Wonder what Magicman found out about pine straw? I don't have any good connections to market pine straw but it sure has a lot more appeal to me than the dyed wood chips that are prevalent around here. If it was more available there would probably be more of a market.  Brian, Do you have straw looking for a home?           Rocky Range : What area did you work in Oklahoma. I'm in Rogers county. Stan

[Rocky_Ranger]

McCurtain Co, around Idabel back in the day.  I'm in Polk Co in western AR now, been floating around the country for the past 35 years doing forestry, farming, wood products, consulting, liven', etc.  That far out of loblolly range might be a stretch, have you thought about a Christmas tree farm?  Relative quick turn around but tons of work, I done it for years and loved every minute of it.

[Stan snider]

Rocky Ranger;  A small planting about a mile away has done amazingly well. They are about 12 to 14 years old and probably 10" DBH. A killer ice storm in Dec. 07 pruned them a little but it was not much harder on them than hardwoods.They are planted in a single row if that made any difference. I cut some post oak firewood today from limbs that came down then. Maybe they were old enough that the damage was higher in the tree than I am accustomed to looking, because nothing in this country makes more than 16 to twenty foot of log,all hardwood. I'm still fixing fence from that and every time the wind blows more limbs come down. Christmas trees don't reall catch my fancy. Stan

[Rocky_Ranger]

If you have successes locally, run with it.  Sounds like the existing plantation is doing well - I wouldn't be afraid to plant likewise.  I would involve your County Extension Agent or OK Dept. of Forestry for their take.....  Just makes good sense to be fully informed about local conditions.

[Brian Beauchamp]

The young stands of loblolly can handle the ice and snow to a certain extent. The problem with plantations is they are extremely susceptible after thinning because they have been somewhat 'dependent' upon the surrounding trees to disperse the pressure of the effects of snow, ice, wind, etc. Also, once the trees get older/larger, they lose their flexibility. Those long needles of the loblolly catch much more snow and ice than, say, the shortleaf pine because of the greater total surface area. My opinion is that if the planting you have nearby gets hit with snow and ice again here in 4 or 5 years, they will snap in half. I have seen it several times over again, even much further southeast and closer to where loblolly pine management is 'supposed' to happen.

...and if you're looking for fast growth, the improved cottonwood varieties blow the typical loblolly out of the water with 1/2 to 1/3 of the rotation length sometimes. I'm actually doing some planting with them here within the next 2 weeks. If you have 'heavier' soils that hold water at times like you described, it may be the better choice. Also, pecan plantations can yield some pretty high returns as well. A productive grove can produce 800 to 1000 lbs of pecans per acre, per year. If prices range between $1.25 to $2 per pound, that is a revenue of $1000 to $2000 per acre, per year. Of course, that is on an optimal site, is several years down the road before a harvestable crop will be produced and does not include maintenance. It is hard to find an early return on your investment when it comes to trees, but pecans in this area are as good an investment as any and will consistently produce most every year, barring some natural disaster or hard freeze during flowering time...plus it is a lot of fun (to me) to work the groves.

I'm not sure if you had stated it previously, but how big is the area you are planning on planting? ...and if you can PM me a legal description of your property, I'll look up your soils information for you.


...and as far as what products and prices there are on timber right now, the majority is not worth selling because most everything has been bringing what many would consider to be pallet-quality prices. Things are rebounding a little, but a decent recovery is still a ways off. Hold on to what you have for now unless you have ice damaged timber or some other forest health concern and do not urgently need some revenue.

[SwampDonkey]

I remember one fellow figured he'd plant trees in a field that was planted to oats. Harvested the oats along with the trees. I've seen all kinds of stunts.

[Pullinchips]

I did my masters project partially on pine straw production along the coastal plain.  It was a part of the conservationforestry theme that i was studing, where other non tradiotional forestry techniques were used to sustian addional objectives along with money which was not usually the main objective.  I had a paper i beleive from UGA that said that you can rake on three year rotations without supplemental fertilizer.  The age all depends on spacing and soil, with some areas around here on good sites being raked as early as 6yrs old (longleaf).  Most all straw in my area is hand raked so the rows are not these 12 foot monsters like your thinking.  At that time my recomendation was to plant LL thick and not thin till tree decline was noticed then clearcut and restart. Actually it still would be with the decline in prices of roundwood, the hard part about this is that i have seen my day job is that with the hard market out there straw is not selling like it use to when house were flying off the shelf and everyone was pretting up there property, with average homeowners struggling to pay bills or save, there not throwing pine straw (read dollars here) into their yards at the same rate so this recomendation is that you have a market for the stuff as on a longtern plan the wood, even accounting for the higher percentages of poles that LL produces,  is never close to what the pine straw is worth.  This is why i would not do anything more than a light thinning because as u open it up it degrades straw quality to where you may not be able to sell it due to just trash like vines and briars.  The way to account for this is a longterm contract where the straw buyer will apply herbicide to all unwanted trees and brush as to maintain a clean understroy.

Ok i got on a tangent this 3 yr rotation consist of one year fallow one year burn and one yar harvest.  Lets start at age 10 (to make it round #'s) year 10 fallow, year 11 burn, year 12 rake, year 13 fallow, year 14 burn, etc.  etc.  The burn cleans up the old straw and sticks and trash and prepares the ground to have a clean base for the straw to fall on and increases the value to the landowner.

I read others on raking every year and i beleive it only required fertilizer every 10 years but i really cant remember without digging out my stuff, (i know im a bad student) but the way i see it is, like i had a professor tell me, as long as you understand it and know where to look for your answer is what counts, i dont have all those books memorized but i know that i can refer to one to answer a question on some uncommen situation to me.



-Nate

[SwampDonkey]

I'm no fan of burning personally. What I see that it does to pasture and cultivated land, is it encourages weeds indicative of poor sites to flourish and takes away carbon from the litter layer that could be worked into the soil by the creepy crawly critters. Thus loss of nitrogen as well. Still people continue to burn grass in their back 10 acre pasture and the golden rods, daisies, black eyed susans, alders, asters, devil's paint brush, thorns, sumac, red osier dogwood take over so a decent spruce or hardwood tree is sparse until they leave it alone all together and you start getting something worth while growing. Some people think weeds make good hay for cattle, because that's all I see cut on some fields. Dad never fed any of his animals those weeds, only good timothy and clover and grains. Walk through a field with cattle pastured and you'll see that cows avoid touching all those weeds listed above.

[Pullinchips]

Swamp i respect your knowlege and opinion, but on this i think you are right and wrong.  I mean in your area of canada fire may not be as frequent of an occurance so you may be correct but here in the south esp. in the LL forest it has been proven that it burned like every 1-5 years.  Many of the species that are desired in this ecosystem are fire dependant.

But you were talking about hay fields and pastures i am speaking about woods so you may be aware of all i have said.
 
Pitcher plant is one and the big and little bluestem etc.  Wire grass is the dominant species which allows fire to be carried in this open savannahlike forest.   When you exclude fire in this ecosystem you get encroachment of things like sweetgum and non desirable hardwood species which are not fire tolerant and you get increase frequency of wax myrtle and red and sweetbay, all of these create a waxy leaf understory when  not allowed to burn every few years your get disaterous fires which kill everything including the overstory, (look up the myrtle Beach fires here in SC, nothing compared to cal. but huge in this area).  These large fires steralize the soil and volitalize every bit of litter down to bare mineral soil, not what a good controlled burn does. A proper burn will leave the moist litter layer and just burns fresh needles and steams the cambium of smaller trees either killing them or topkilling them.  Some nitrogen is volitized but there is still the entire organic layer of detritus in the soil as well as the older leaves straw, and partially decomposed stuff.  Many plants in this system proliferate after fire what you get depends on weather its a growing season burn or dormant burn.

The moitains of SC as well as all appalachia was also said to burn frequently can remember the frequency but i think it was something like 5-20 yrs but not sure?  Since fire suppression after ww2 is the reason we see fare more sweetgun and poplar in the moutains than historcally there as well as the thick moutain laural that has creeped out of creek banks and covered entire hillsides, which again burns wery hot when it does.  Reasearch has proven that sweetgum and poplar when seeded will use a lot of energy in above ground growth (why it grows tall fast) but little on root growth, where oaks for a long time will develop roots first and not much topgrowth, so a frequent fire does little to setback growth but on a sweetgum a fire will top kill it and after a while will kill it or if the fire is severe enough it kills the roots and not oak roots which are deeper and older and then leaves the oaks in a position to repopulate after a good fire.  If your interested look up Van Lear in USFS papers he spent his career studying this and i had the benefit of being taught siliculture under him in one of his last years he taught.

I know this is taken a huge tangent of how wide should my rows be so sorry for that.

And hey swamp not trying to ruffle feathers here, like i said your my elder and you have probly as many yrs experience as i am old but i dont think your statement holds true at least in my region.
But you were talking about hay fields and pastures i am speaking about woods so you may be aware of all i have said.

-Nate

[SwampDonkey]

I wasn't attacking you Nate. Stuff just spill's out of my fingers because of what my eyes see around me. Sometimes what spills out is like oil and covers a whole lot of stuff that ain't directly relevant, but may have some slight resemblance to the topic. As a point of note, our hardwood forests up here would be rare to have a fire in at all. Our spruce/fir/pine and cedar forests burn a lot more frequent, but 80-200 or more years on the same ground. They use 80 here because it fits their management model of 80 year rotations based on clear cuts mostly. But we know it can be much longer or we wouldn't have 400 year old red spruce, 180 year old jack pine or 300 year old cedar. Besides that this part of the country has been settled for 500 years and most fires since we had a fire fighting policy in NB have been man made in these parts. My grandmother's cousin was chief forester of NB in his day and was responsible for our fire fighting program. Not that that fact has any bearing on the discussion except for a whole lot better record keeping of fires since the program began. I mean there were fires before that not even noted, too far away from settlements to care. Except the really big ones that came to towns like the Miramachi fire. During the 70 and 80's there were a few deliberate fires set in poorer regions of the province, just to get a job and nothing else.

[WDH]

Yep, y'all are talking about entirely different ecosystems.  Longleaf requires fire to thrive, otherwise all the other species that invade out compete it.  With fire, longleaf is boss.  Northern species need a different cycle.

Nature has her ways.... .

[SwampDonkey]

That's kinda where I don't conform. The fire thing, because it benefits species procreation of the desirable ones ignores the fact that other species are meant to come along in the natural ecology of the area to reach a climax forest. Maybe it becomes hardwood with less fire frequency. That I don't know as I have not lived down there to be educated in that environment. My gut tells me there is more fire frequency in a hotter climate.

OK, I said enough.

[WDH]

The fire thing, because it benefits species procreation of the desirable ones ignores the fact that other species are meant to come along in the natural ecology of the area to reach a climax forest.

Not so on the sites where longleaf adapted.  The climax forest is a fire dominated longleaf pine - wiregrass ecosystem with associated other plants and animals like gohper tortoise, red cockaed woodpecker, the indigo snake, etc.  It has nothing to do with human desirability.  Nature created it.  Now, it is mostly gone because of human preference.

[Pullinchips]

WDH is correck LL is the climax species with a BA of avg 40 or less in some cases with trees that are 2-4 feet in diameter with younger patches of LL spread troughout.  If you exclude fire yes you will get a more HW dominated forest the waxy shrubs/short trees will invade and the HW out of the swamp fringes and Ponds(if your not from here you will see a wet hole/depression with tupelo gum, cant forget cypress and water oaks red maple etc in it) these areas would only burn in a super dry catistrophic fire, but anyway these hardwoods would creep up the hill (like 6 inches of topography in many places) and populate the longleaf savannahs and the wire grass will be lost shaded out the LL dominat trees have hardwood all around them and the RCW leaves and you have nothing resembling forests of 400 years ago, hey kind of like today in all but the most intensively mangaged (for LL areas).  This i gues you can say with the influence of man and the exclusion of fire this is what the climactic forest would be, but in a world without man all of his subdivisions walmarts etc, or if we were all gone again and could come back in 150 years we would most likely see a LL dominated forest with wiregrass again as seeds i have heard can remain viable for rediculous amounts of time untill a fire and they are exposed.  Now this would only be in coastal plain areas as you go inland you have several different systems, but again in the sandhills (old coast line about 80 miles from the current ocean) you again have these LL forests as they are one of the few trees that can live in the very poor deep sand found here today as well as back before us.

I wasent taking it like you were trying to beat me up i just wanted to make sure that those reading this realized that mine as well as yours cant really be taken as a blanket statement (different areas evolved differently with different fire regimes). Just like you i know will ill say it nothing about Canadian silviculture, we leared all those furs and spruces in school but other than seeing them in yards or arboretums (sp?) i will never see one in the woods nor put onto one of my log trucks so i have no idea of their habitat requirements soil or life cyle needs or anything other than the brief lessons received on them in dendro.

I wasent trying to beat you up either just could not leave it at that and have an unknowing reader scratching his head.

-Nate

Hey by the way where is the pig roast id lov to get to one when it is closer by.  Im kind on young just starting out and funds to travel to these exotic locations like florida or michigan do not exist

[WDH]

The Pig Roast don't move.  It is firmly entrenched in Harrison, MI   .  It is Michigan or Bust  .

[SwampDonkey]

Nate, I'm glad I ain't the only poor forester.

[Pullinchips]

we need to start a southern pig roast!

[Rocky_Ranger]

Would that be armadillo?

[Pullinchips]

If thats what you want to eat but i was just thinking pig or hog on the grill but i guess if thats what you want we can take requests! 

[Magicman]

I haven't really announced it yet, and it's not gonna be a pig roast, but there is going to be a Get Together/Field Day at my place soon.  Pinenut, fishpharmer, Radar, & ljmathias for sure are coming.  Those that do not attend will be talked about....