I have a stand of red maple growing on loamy sand. It is about half junky poles and half medium quality small sawtimber. I assume that in presettlement times this site was mostly eastern white pine. A few of the old virgin pine stumps still survive to this day. It is doubtful that quality northern hardwoods could ever be grown on such poor soil. My long term goal is to convert this site to conifers. Conventional management would be to thin from below a time or two then when the red maples get to reasonable size clearcut, spray, and plant conifers most likely red pine. I have an idea that I would like to bounce off anyone with experience in this area. What if I did a heavy thinning now and cut all of the pole size trees. This would remove half the canopy and release the small sawtimber size trees on three or four sides. Then plant white pine in the understory. White pine is supposed to be the most shade tolerant of the northern pines. How would they grow in half sunlight? How much faster would the sawtimber size trees grow with the heavy thinning? Would the stems stay clean or would they sprout a lot of new branches? How long could I keep the overstory without stunting the white pine seedling/saplings? In ten, twenty, or thirty years could the red maple sawtimber be harvested without smashing up the white pine? If this would work I could get the same amount of red maple sawtimber faster and jump-start the conifer conversion by two to three decades. If anyone has experience with something like this I would like to hear from you.
