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most efficient woodland planting methods.


Matthew Storrs
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Piecework using ranging poles' 1+1s, about 1000/day and up to 1500/day beating up a failed planting but had a lot more energy at 24.

Have to show this to a guy I know. Who took a whole year to plant 2,000 trees and for some reason, he thought he'd worked hard. Not really on the ball I think. Seen him fell oak and ask for firewood, then leave them on the ground, complete with limbs for 3 and 4yrs., simply because he couldn't be bothered to process them

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Piecework using ranging poles' 1+1s, about 1000/day and up to 1500/day beating up a failed planting but had a lot more energy at 24.

 

Remember that. Long runs with the ranging rods. We used to mattock plant and got competitive. Used to race with my work mate to get 400 planted each for breakfast at 10am. Young, fit and no straightening your back until the end of each run! Must have been mad:001_smile:

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What the OP describes is screefing where you make a weed-free, overturned bit of soil with the bucket. Plant in that! FC have excavators that do this in the Highlands.

 

I found last year that manually screefing/clearing ground with a boot before using the wee spade for slit planting resulted in no weeds/grasses growing within the Tubex so the trees weren't crowded out. Takes a little longer but definitely worth it if you don't want to de-guard everything and hand weed.

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The OP is basically describing a mounding operation, as used in commercial plantations. If you mound it as you describe you can either use the bucket of the machine to scrape up a mound, and leave an associated hole where it came from(hinge mounding), or overturn the mound back into the hole it was excavated from (inverted mouding I think they call it). The first has the advantage that it gives the tree an elevated position, giving it a slight advantage when it comes to weed competition, but the disadvantage that you have approximately 1200 ankle-breaking holes in the ground left over your site. The latter, does not give the tree any advantage over the weeds, other than the weed free soil around it. Both methods provide weed free soil around the tree and aeration. Notch planting on mounds is certainly quicker than either notch planting directly into the ground or pit planting. Mechanical ground prep is certainly less labour intensive than manual ground prep. Outputs for either manual or mechanical ground prep depend very much on the operator. I've worked with guys on mounding spades that can pretty much keep up with a machine, but machine operators who don't know what they're doing will not have the outputs that a professional mounding contractor does.

 

Staking and tubing can be easier on prepped ground as you can see more of the obstacles.

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I recently planted up 300 trees in around around an hour and a half using the notch method. The staking and tubing took longer than I expected though! Took the rest of the day for it! 5 foot tubes! Still, it was my first time doing planting and I hope it's last.... I'd still rather cut them down lol :)

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Have to show this to a guy I know. Who took a whole year to plant 2,000 trees and for some reason, he thought he'd worked hard.

 

We were on piece work but the trees had to be planted perfectly in line and 2m apart, otherwise when we came back to weed them with swap hooks we'd end up cutting them instead of the weeds. All establishment jobs were piecework then. My weekly wage was £19 but we'd get 1p for planting, 2p for pruning to 8ft and £15/acre for weeding, so there was a big incentive.

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