Hi Phil, I have enjoyed your videos and try to watch them often. Like you I am new in the tree farming business and I am learning every day. I was wondering if you started out with a quota for planting, your 1st , 2nd & 3rd year or did you just picked a field and started planting? This is my first year planting and I have planted 150 Murray Cypress, 150 Eastern White Pines and because I truly love and wanted to experiment with Colorado Spruce here in North Georgia I have planted 100 of these. Thank you on the info about the Scots and I have read that they are fast and great to grow but do have problems. Before watching the video last week I planted 100 of these and we will see how they do here. Back to my question. Did you use info from an extension service or local farmer to get your number of how many trees to plant or an estimate from a Christmas tree association, etc? I just roughly estimated 500-600 trees to start with . We have a population of about 65k and I used a close 10% figure to get a start. There’s not really competition within 15-20 miles from our area. What’s your thoughts? Keep up the good work.
Hi thanks for watching and great questions. I think I could dedicate a video to this topic because I did do a lot of research up front on the business side of things (the actual farming side, not so much). Our plan was based around selling 1000 trees per year so we started with planting 1200 per year, but after the heavy losses the first couple years we dialed that back to 400-600 while we kind of figure things out. I think we're over that hump and ready to kick up the planting numbers again.
I got a bit of a laugh when you talked about the Scotch Pines. That is 85% of what I have. I have not had much trouble with them other than the "Pine Tip Moth". Thanks Phil.
Hi Phil, I was curious if fogging trees with a backpack pesticide fungicide fogger is necessary. Some farmers state they do not spray or fog their trees but how are they detouring the insects away?
I have heard of some using backpack foggers, but that's pretty labor & time intensive and the tank doesn't last that long. If spraying becomes essential, you'll probably use a regular ag/chemical sprayer or get an air blast sprayer.
Out of 80 trees planted over the past two years, I’ve lost 3. Two in the year planted (tiny seedlings), and on in the second year, after it shot of nice growth it just up and died at the end of the summer. Not sure why. Haven’t pulled it yet. I have 100 Canaan firs arriving today!
Not a bad ratio at all! We've planted over 800 canaan over our first couple years and have less than 3 dozen remaining. We'll try some again on a different section where I think they may do better, but those might just not work out on our property
@@WoodsTreeFarm I’m in NH, so the climate is right for firs. The Frasers and Canaans I already have seem to be doing better than the Balsams. I also have a few fralsams. One of them was the weird loss at the end of last summer. I have deer problems though. We lost snow cover in the winter and deer nipped all the buds of my small trees! Sets them back, but they should survive. I’m evaluating deer exclusion options.
