Tree planting question.

[M Large Forestry Equipment]

250 a day is a lot.

[muttley9050]

Thanks for all the advice. Started putting stakes in today. Got 700 trees with stakes and guards and 300 shrubs with canes and spirals. Not really at all interested in trying to plant 200. The amount of people said there coming to help we should only gave to do 60 a day each to be finished by Sunday.

Will upload a pic when it's all done.

[Goaty]

Look forward to the photo finish!

[Will Heal]

When I was planting we were on a piece work rate. Not much more than 30 pence per tree and tube so we had to plant lots in a day. Mind you we were well practised and slit planting and either random spacings or wavy lines but as others have said if you go slower then you will plant the trees better and spread the roots properly. I still think plant first then stake tho! We used homemade post bangers, made from 2,5 inch steel tube with a weight in the end. It was just right to grip around the tube. And the right length so that when you knocked the stake in until the tube touched the ground the stake was the perfect height

[sandspider]

What sort of area are you putting the 1000 plants into? Good luck, look forward to the finish pics. Hopefully I'll be doing something similar myself next year...

[headgroundsman]

Sounds very similar to what I have just completed with my mate. Tried to load some photos but hit a problem

[headgroundsman]

The machine that tows my chair is shown next to the trailer in the last picture. It did struggle a bit in the wet ground

[Goaty]

Here's one we did a year after planting. Photo taken last October. The tall guards are the long term trees protected against deer and the rest are not so important. Guards under powerlines have only shrubs of low final height, this plantation is primarily a visual screen against an industrial installation for a community

. It's maintained by cultivation and a weedbadger interrow vineyard type cultivator. The picture shows after cultivation but before weedbadger attack.

 

This is a grant scheme job which was not managed last summer. It was higher than the guards in bracken. Here it has been rolled to flatten bracken. The plan is either asulox herbicide or rolling this year.

[headgroundsman]

I went for a more random pattern. I know it will make it a little harder to maintain but it is what I wanted

[muttley9050]

We're planting randomly at around 2m spacings. I There going on the edge of an existing woodland in a field with a few maturec trees in. It's about .6 of a hectare. After checking it is actually only 900 not 1000. And strictly no herbicide.

Edited February 27, 2016 by muttley9050