buckmine

Cedar, Spruce and Pine are our main trees. My brother keeps telling me that they may not like being close to the water. I think they like the low areas. A walk through the woods here in MN gives you the decidous on the ridges and the spruce in the low areas. In the Boundary Waters you have trees growing on rocks with the evergreens close to the waters edge.

About soil preference do they lean to the acidic side?

NorthJeff

I' m no expert, just a casual observer....

My property is almost entirely spruce, fir, WP, RP, and JP. My soils are primarily a sand loam, and have ph levels of 4.7 to 5.2. Although all will grow near water, none are living in water. The spruce and fir tend to be in the lower areas-but not wet, with the JP and RP on the higher/dryer/sandier areas, with WP being more addaptable to either the high or low areas, with the lower areas offering a little slower growth though. Some of my JP, and even RP, although requiring a pretty dry soil are growing on 1-2' very small ridges surrounded by sometimes fairly wet soil. When a beaver damned the area, flooding about 20 acres, we lost some trees that appeared to be over 20 years old. The higher ones made it, the lower ones didn' t. The beaver didn' t make it either.

Some of the JP and WP will have over 2' of growth a year.

Jeff...U.P. of Michigan

Dan O.

Cedar will grow in a swamp. It' ll also do well in anything but droughty soil. Spruce like wet conditions but not true swamp, except Black Spruce, which grows in swamps. White Spruce will do very well on the lower part of a slope. Pines will do the best in good farm soil but handle sand if they have to. Poor sandy farm soil is usually stabilized with pine plantings.

Last weekend I planted White Spruce at the slope bottom about 50' from the water line. Next was White Pine up the slope followed by rows of Red Pine. Lastly; White Oaks went in at the upper third of the hill.


Dan O.

buckmine

Thanks for the info.

farm hunter

Yep- acidic soil (5-6 ph) and moist soil.

Pines tend to grow a bit faster than spruce, and handle a wide variety of soils - White pine grows well on our acidic, clay/loamy soil.

Note: if you ever plan to plant along a road in the north - remember that White pine is Highly Salt intolerant - and will suffer when planted near roads that get salt & are plowed - Austrian Pine is much mure tolerant.

Dan O.

It looks like someone took a blowtorch to the pine trees (and cedar) within 50 yards of the highways. They used a lot of salt this last winter.

Dan O.