This year my dad and I are going to plant 600 trees on a two acre field. a third are persimon, another third are oak, and another third are white pines. I know I should plant the persimon trees out front of the others but should I plant the pines in the back of the field where they will get less light or should I plant the the oaks in the back and the pines in between. Also how should I space them.

Planting trees is a great thing to do -

600 trees sounds like a lot - especially when planting by hand, but 600 trees won't go very far.

The following table shows the number of trees per acre at various spacings:




Spacing (feet)
Trees per acre

5 x 5
1,742

6 x 6
1,210

7 x 7
889

8 x 8
681

10 x 10
436

I went with 10x10 spacing for the pines I planted 4 years ago. The white pine you plant will need very little care after planting - but the oaks will require Roundup applications and probably wire fencing if they are to survive in good numbers. I don't know anything about permissions - but I'd assume they like full light as will the oak and white pine. The white pine will grow much faster than the oaks, so wherever you plant them- you don't want them over-shading the young oaks.

There is lots of good info on the web - here is one link worth reading

http://www.extension.umn.edu/distrib...es/DD0481.html

FH

Good luck! I have seven acres that me and my dad planted 2200 trees on about nine years ago. Alot of work does not describe it. We bought all the trees from the Ohio DNR for around a quarter a piece if I remember right. They all came bare root and we had to wedge them in. It was a bigax blade looking thing and you jammed it in the ground and shifted it back and fourth a few times and the stuck in the roots and mashed the dirt shut on either side. We were about dead after four days of hard work! But any ways, back to what your after. We planted two rows of pines around it followed by two rows of ash. Then the whole north half we planted red and white oaks. They were put on ten by ten grid with the rows staggered. You will need to mow the first three years at least to keep the weeds from choking the trees out. But we wished we would have went with a twelve pattern. Two acres and you should be able to do it with just a lawn tractor. But we have a real small tractor with a five foot bush hog and it is real hard to make the corners, I have taken almost all of my trees out on the ends of the rows by hitting them. If we would have went with 12 by 12 I would have been OK. Make sure you mark you rows so you can find the trees if you do not get into to mow as much as you should. Good luck and it will be rewarding. All of mine were sticks a foot high, and now I have some oaks that I can barely get both my hands around the trunk. I would also say that I did good since I had about 75% of my trees are still alive, expect some die off.

Roadkill, I planted 60 hard/soft mast trees and 120 Norway Spruces last year with great success, however the winter isn't over here in NY.

Plan on planting 112 hard & soft mast trees again this year, 125 shrubs and 750 various spruce & fir's.

The gereneral rule is that pines about a 10 x 10 foot grid so that you can stil mow around, plus when they grow, you and the "deer" in my case can meander around. As for fruit tree's, "Persimons" should be fine with about a 15 foot spread. Oaks are recommended for a 25 foot spread due to the size they become unless you plan on transplanting them later on and thats way you want them so close.

I started off slow in my first year, plus it was a cost factor because on all my hard/soft mast trees I put tree protectors, stakes and black tarp2 ft square tarp around the base to stop weed vegatation. All things to consider. I started off in 2006 with 4 foot tubes, but this year going with the 5 foot since I ordered larger 3-5 foot seedlings and the deer love to nip the leaves and branches when they grow out.

Best of luck! Remember to enjoy the experience, don't make it so labor intensive that you wouldn't want to do it again! We encourge family and friends to join us, as we created a "Annual Tree Planting Weekend", this will be our second.

Here's a pic of the 12 Yates Apple Trees we planted last year.

Thanks for the chart Farm hunter, It gave me a good Idea of how Im going to plant them. I will probably go with 12x12 because like Hotburn76 said, we to use a bush hog so I want enough space to mow around them.

-GR8Rally, I think your winter isnt going to be over for awhile, according from what Ive seen on the weather channel you have over 100" of snow, Holy Crap!! I think know matter what kind of work we have to do we will enjoy the outcome. We have 186 acres of property and about 80 of it is fields that we are going to manage wildlife on.

The oaks need full sun and lots of attention to do well. Persimmons will tolerate shade. Don't be too distressed with the persimmons if they die back. They're harder than most trees to transplant but they usually grow back from the roots.

When trying to mow rather than spray or cultivate to help the trees you have to remember that the tree roots are restricted by the closest tall grass next to the trunk that they encounter. You could mow the strips between trees completely but they won't do well if there is grass next to the trunk. Mulch works well around the oaks for this purpose.

The forester recommended a 6 X 6' spacing for my pines. His reasoning was that the trees will shade the competing grass sooner and let the pines take off. Also; that the pines will self trim at that spacing. The wider the spacing, the more manual trimming will be required to remove dead branches as the trees get taller.

Dan O.

Also forgot to add a little advice as far as round up goes. A friend or ours planted a bunch of trees in a small field, can't remember the size but it was at least two acres in a flat field next to a woods. He was proud of his trees and they looked nice mowed every two weeks and sprayed around his trees. After the first winter he had nothing! The deer and rabbits, mainly rabbits ate almost all ofhis trees! We asked the DNR about it and they said to stop mowing close to the trees soon enough that the grass and weeds can be about 18 inches high around the tree to camo them from the rabbits before winter. We had ours on ten foot rows and when we mowed in the end of august we stayed about a foot away from the trees. So if you looked at the rows it was a mowed path eight feet wide with strips of two foot wide weeds and grass in them. We had minimal damage. You can buy protectors, but when you have 2200 trees it can get pricey!

I learned a lot from this post. I have been thinking of planting some trees but have no experience with it. One piece of advice I can give you on the Roundup / Glyphosate application - this is a non selective herbicide that if applied at enough times at even a low rate is more than capable of killing trees. Do not make contact with you trees (trunk or foliage) when spraying around them. I had a tree in my backyardtwo years agoon the line between myself and a neighbor. It had poison ivy growing up the trunk (the tree was big enough that I could not reach around it with both arms and touch). Not thinking, I sprayed the poison ivy with roundup to kill it. That tree is now dead as a hammer so be careful with the spraying.

Why so many White Pines? Why any White Pines? Why not add some Sawtooth Oak? Tom.

If you use Roundup rather than Simazine make a shield out of stove pipe with a handle to put over the trees before you spray the grass.

Dan O.