Land Preparation

Gorse

One of the most expensive costs associated with forestry can be land preparation! Certainly as far as we were concerned at Herbert Forest, gorse was the biggest weed problem; bracken fern was also a problem as was grass - cocksfoot & fog being the worst.

Gorse was introduced as a hedging plant which was a fence as well as shelter on most farms. It was trimmed as a nice tidy fence and the trimmings were often burnt. But gorse is dispersed by the pod 'firing' the hard seed out on to new ground and the seed can remain viable in the soil for something like 70 years! Burning stimulates the seed to grow (cracks the seed coat to allow moisture into the embryo) and gorse coppices, regrowing from stumps. It is an invasive plant and difficult to control.

Whole farms were invaded by gorse, forcing farmers off the land. Forestry is one way of controlling the weed.

Land clearing by mechanical or chemical means is much easier today, but we were involved in many trials of gorse (and other weed) control, so control was much more difficult.

The Diamond Hill Block offered a good opportunity to carry out trials as the whole area was solid gorse, at least two metres high! The first thing the technicians wanted to find out was how many seedlings per hectare germinated after a burn. I actually didn't need to know; I already did - lots! But they were not prepared to take my word for it. Lines were cut (using my workers) and plots laid down 1/10 of an acre they were. Marked by rods of steel rod so they would not burn!

A funny thing happened after the burn; Herbie thought the steel rods might be handy at home so he collected them all up. So the plots marks were lost and the conclusion was that lots of seedlings germinated.

245T and Tordon were the main chemicals used, and I was in charge of the application, so flew in many fixed wing and helicopter sorties with some pilots that I trusted and some I couldn't wait to see the back of - that may become a topic.

Anyway, a few rules for controlling gorse. And what I am referring to is to prepare land for tree planting.

1. It is a waste of money expecting to kill standing gorse. Chemical will only translocate about 40cm. So burn off the gorse first. If you dare - these days not much burning is done.

2. Spray the regrowth/seedling growth when it is about 30 cm tall.

3. Plant after this. Then spot spray using Velpar granules.

Provisos - the burn must be clean - that is leaving no sticks standing. When that happened and we had no other choice, we had to linecut - using slashers. Never done these days but often in the past.

These lines in the center were hand cut - Reefton

So these days mechanical methods are best to prepare land, but shasher work was common and I remember Herbie's hands becoming fixed in the shape of holding a slasher, and had operations to loosen the tendons - but they remained permanently crooked.

The 'powers that be decided that we all should wear safety hats - even if there was nothing to fall on our heads. There was general resentment about this and many of my workers refused, but loyally, Bert wore his as an example to the rest, old Gibb's white hair became stained with the color of the hat band! Eventually though the rule became forgotten and nobody wore them linecutting. Bert always kept his in the rear window of his old Consul car.

It was hot in those gulley in the summer time, and we had to keep up production - the guy's did an admirable job. One local farmer told me that the forest was like an old man's club as they were all lazy. I challenged him to keep up for a week. He didn't last half a day!

Bracken fern was a big problem too, it often erupted after planting, and in gulleys, growing to 4 metres high! The tree maybe 30 cm! So lines had to be cut to release them, a hot and dusty job (fern had its own dust - a pretty brown, that got up your nose and in your eyes/ears). In cutting the stuff it is not realised that you have to put the cut material somewhere and the wind shouldn't push it onto the trees! So it was not easy. Later Asulox was used; sprayed on with 20% diesel and an emulsifier. This proved good control and after the burn only about 10% regenerated.

With fog grass, we developed a chemical mix that could be applied by air, but today spot spraying with Velpar is the ideal.

So establishing a crop of trees was hard work and technical too. Most of them have now been harvested, and who would know of the contribution these men made!