As I headed out for my usual walk this dark, frosty morning, I saw the Blakely Pacific planting crew heading out to start the seasons planting. I like planting and the concept of creating a forest or perhaps replanting one so this started me thinking again.
First, we never called them a 'planting crew', they were a planting gang! Nothing to do with those hoods who create mayhem and are mostly outside the law!
Secondly it is still early in June. 1st of June is the start of winter though some may argue that winter actually start on the shortest day, 21st of June. I doesn't matter a lot.
I like to start plant as late as possible much to the chagrin of the nursery. Of course this depends on the size of the programme and if you have a fixed sized gang, then you must know their daily production and work out when best to start.
The reason for this is simple. Why plant out trees that will have to withstand the forces of nature's winter, any earlier than is necessary? Unless the winter is very mild, the seedlings will put on nil growth so there is no advantage - other than time constraints - to plant early. Mind you with this attitude, I have had my backside kicked on more than one occasion because it upsets the nurseries and upper management disapprove.
A major change that I have noted over my forestry career is seedling quality.
During earlier times while the nurseryman may have been growing to a certain seedling specification (spec) whether he attained it or not was a bit arbitrary because those were the seedlings available, so those were the seedlings provided.
The seedling were in bundles of 25, tied at the root collar with flax [or sometimes twine] and puddled. Puddling is dipping the roots in a watery mud, to prevent drying out. The trees arrived on site in bulk and were put into pits - the style of which differed wherever you go but tightly bulk planted so they could be temporarily stored. We used to even make beehives out of them. Create a large circle with the roots pointing inwards and build it up to a dome shape. Trees cannot be stored for long this way.
However with these trees that probably would be called 'substandard' today, we achieved at Herbert better than 75% survivals and all the areas have now been harvested for sawlogs and replanted.
Now to put my nurseryman's hat on, forest companies have progressively required a higher specification, and at prices that allow 'no fat'. They allow a low rate for seedlings outside specification and packaging of some sort is now required. Seedlings are no longer puddled.
Tree establishment on forests is much easier these days because of better land preparation (diggers have made a huge difference) and followup tree releasing is aerial and with chemicals.
With mycorrhiza [a symbiotic fungi] already established from the previous crop, new seedlings are going to perform better anyway.
There has been a lot of 'tree improvement/breeding' carried out over the years, mainly in increasing stem volume to afford a better overall financial return, but none of that breeding has gone into a smaller branch size. This is important as wood quality depends on knot size, which of course follows branch size.
Early plantings, at least in the South Island were carried out using grubbers [some call them mattocks]. As in this pic of a school planting programme, the tradition grubber had an axe-like piece on the back, but that bit was often cut off to make the tool lighter.But the handle was the same as a pick handle and not so easy to work with. Later purpose built grubbers with a thinner handle were produced and they made life a bit easier! [Not those lighter lighter, rabbiter's adze type]
Some of the jobs we carried out are worth remembering.
At Omihi, on Mt. Cass we were planting in nasella tussock areas - to rid the area of this noxious weed. The area had been sprayed with Dalapon to kill the tussock and this was only moderately successful. There was no road access, so we had to carry our gear and tree seedlings into the area - about an hour - and we had to grub the tussock plant out completely, then plant the tree using a three hit planting method, which roughly cultivates the soil.
Later in the season a track was established and access was better and the work a little easier.
At Craigeburn we were planting trees on shingle screes above the bushline in an effort to arrest erosion. The species were hardier exotic species and the winsome of the exercise would be questioned today.
Again it was humping the materials up the mountain on our backs and we formed a terrace on the shingle scree, held in place with short wall of hand cut Manuka scrub and stakes driven dug into the rock. The trees were planted on the little terrace so formed.
On the Hope Saddle, we were planting Larch in reasonably good conditions (burnt over scrub). All of us Ranger Trainees tried for the ultimate tally of 2000 trees planted in a day. I think we all achieved the tally by going without a food break and with someone keeping the trees supplied to the planter.
Larch trees are light to carry and the roots were well trimmed.
Tallies like this are really unacceptable because the quality of planting is somewhat low, but even with spade planting, it dented my pride if I couldn't plant 1000 in a day's work - well planted I might add.
These guys are planting using spades. Spades were used first in the Central North Island pumice country and as always, the North Island wanted to impost their techniques on the South Island.
In the end we were given the 'order' that that we must change our planting technique to use spades. Of course we resisted like King Canute, but we could not withstand the tide.
Of course there were no purpose built spade made available to us so Robert Hutton at the Waianakarua Garage cut down garden spades and welded small plates to push down on with the foot. I still use one of those spades today! However in the interest of improvements we had Robert manufacture straight bladed spaded that proved to be very good - nice long blades. After a time Atlas put out proper spades that are in common use today.
A bad spade planter, is better than a bad grubber planter. And pretty much this is true.
However with these trees that probably would be called 'substandard' today, we achieved at Herbert better than 75% survivals and all the areas have now been harvested for sawlogs and replanted.
Now to put my nurseryman's hat on, forest companies have progressively required a higher specification, and at prices that allow 'no fat'. They allow a low rate for seedlings outside specification and packaging of some sort is now required. Seedlings are no longer puddled.
Tree establishment on forests is much easier these days because of better land preparation (diggers have made a huge difference) and followup tree releasing is aerial and with chemicals.
With mycorrhiza [a symbiotic fungi] already established from the previous crop, new seedlings are going to perform better anyway.
There has been a lot of 'tree improvement/breeding' carried out over the years, mainly in increasing stem volume to afford a better overall financial return, but none of that breeding has gone into a smaller branch size. This is important as wood quality depends on knot size, which of course follows branch size.
Some of the jobs we carried out are worth remembering.
At Omihi, on Mt. Cass we were planting in nasella tussock areas - to rid the area of this noxious weed. The area had been sprayed with Dalapon to kill the tussock and this was only moderately successful. There was no road access, so we had to carry our gear and tree seedlings into the area - about an hour - and we had to grub the tussock plant out completely, then plant the tree using a three hit planting method, which roughly cultivates the soil.
Later in the season a track was established and access was better and the work a little easier.
At Craigeburn we were planting trees on shingle screes above the bushline in an effort to arrest erosion. The species were hardier exotic species and the winsome of the exercise would be questioned today.
Again it was humping the materials up the mountain on our backs and we formed a terrace on the shingle scree, held in place with short wall of hand cut Manuka scrub and stakes driven dug into the rock. The trees were planted on the little terrace so formed.
On the Hope Saddle, we were planting Larch in reasonably good conditions (burnt over scrub). All of us Ranger Trainees tried for the ultimate tally of 2000 trees planted in a day. I think we all achieved the tally by going without a food break and with someone keeping the trees supplied to the planter.
Larch trees are light to carry and the roots were well trimmed.
Tallies like this are really unacceptable because the quality of planting is somewhat low, but even with spade planting, it dented my pride if I couldn't plant 1000 in a day's work - well planted I might add.
In the end we were given the 'order' that that we must change our planting technique to use spades. Of course we resisted like King Canute, but we could not withstand the tide.
Of course there were no purpose built spade made available to us so Robert Hutton at the Waianakarua Garage cut down garden spades and welded small plates to push down on with the foot. I still use one of those spades today! However in the interest of improvements we had Robert manufacture straight bladed spaded that proved to be very good - nice long blades. After a time Atlas put out proper spades that are in common use today.
A bad spade planter, is better than a bad grubber planter. And pretty much this is true.
Our soils were heavier and tighter than pumice and we tried several techniques to carry out the planting operation. The one I developed for our planing was three cut parallel - in line with the slope - about one and a half centimeters apart and one bisecting them and lever open a good planting hole. All spade planting is assisted by deep ripping, but it is not always possible.
Of course contract or bonus workers will try and shortcut the technique and I have no problem with that, as long as the trees are well planted.
Most winters I took on small planting jobs, mainly to help out farmers who I was encouraging to plant trees.
I did several years for David Forrest and was caught out by frost on one occasion.
It is necessary to keep seedlings fresh, and they do not keep well in cartons for much over three or four days. I was planting on the weekends so you order the trees three days in advance and then you can't return them to the nursery.
Well I was to plant Cupressus macrocarpa in the fertile gulley bottoms, but there was a series of hard frosts. The soil was like concrete and the only way I could plant the seedling was to cut a square of frozen soil and lift it out of the way, then plant the tree on non frozen soil. Fairly hard work and time consuming - I didn't reach my target and didn't make good money. I never asked for a higher price either.
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