Arbor Day Weekend

[Mosey]

Today is the first day of Arbor Day Weekend, so plant some trees! I’ll be planting 15 white pines when I get home from work today. I get to use my new post hole digger, which will be much easier than last year when I planted 50 with a shovel. The trees are 4 year transplants, bare root, and require a 1’ dia by 1’ deep hole. The dirt needs to be chopped up before going back in the hole. I did it all by hand in the hard clay last year and was exhausted before I got done. We had a mini drought last spring and the clay was like concrete and I was doing it in the hot sun in early May. This time I’ll be lucky if it’s not too muddy and the temp is only in the 50’s.

 

[rancar]

Ahhh...Pinus Strobus, they're beautiful, fast growing trees. Have about 15 of them myself around the house and love watching them sprout 1-2' each May-July. Enjoy the weekend. /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

 

[lblair]

Just planted some myself. 15 silver maple and 10 colarodo blue spruce. I love planting trees. I transplanted a 20 foot maple last year. Its doing fine this year allready and i had my doughts when i first did it. I dug it up from my woods with my loader...one heck of a root ball i must say. Happy planting to you., Larry

 

[GrantMO]

Those white pine sound like good trees. Where do you guys buy yours from?

 

[rancar]

Grant,

<font color=blue>Where do you guys buy yours from?</font color=blue>

Ours grow native to eastern New York. All I have to do is find a smaller seedling on the property to transplant near the house. They do quite well. If you need to buy commercially, I'd recommend <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.musserforests.com/>http://www.musserforests.com/</A>. Buy the transplants as opposed to the seedlings. I believe they come in lots of 10, 50, and 100. You may also want to think about Austrian Pine (Pinus nigra). These also are quite beautiful and are not susceptible to White Pine Blister Rust disease.

Regards,
Bob Ancar
Cambridge, NY

 

[Mosey]

I also got mine from Musser Forests. I got the 4 year transplants, which are bare root. Musser is good quality and when I bought 10 virginia pines last year and none of them survived the summer, they gave me full credit for them on my next purchase with no hassle. The only problem with bare root trees is you have a limited span of time to plant them. This is the second year in a row that I’ve planted bare root trees and neither time has it turned out good weather wise. Last year we had a dry spell in the spring and the digging was hard. This year I was planting in mud in some places. But, when you’re planting more than just a few trees it gets expensive buying potting trees. Lowes had some 2’ tall in 8” pots earlier this spring for $8.50 each. They only had about 5 of them. The 4 year transplants from Musser Forests are $2.60 each if you get 25 or more. Next year I might try some of their 3 year transplants in plastic pots for $2.75 each. They are a little smaller, but would be more flexible on when to plant.