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Reforestation
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Posted by
fmetalx VA (
My Page) on
Sat, Oct 15, 11 at 20:03
| Hello! Recently I bought a 6.5 acre piece of land that the previous owner had cleared of all the trees. The land is completely covered in weeds around three or four feet tall. Also, the loggers left lots of large tree limbs everywhere. Now that I'm considering what to do I have many questions:
How hard would it be to turn the land back into a forest?
Would I have to clear all of the weeds?
What kind of tree should I plant (the royal empress tree looked like a good choice)?
How much will a reforestation project this large cost?
I know it's a lot of questions but I'm clueless when it comes to this type of thing lol. Thanks! |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: Reforestation
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| Skip the empress at all costs! Probably listed as invasive in your area anyway. Natural areas are reforested in stages. I would go with a mix of several species of fast growing trees for impact an mix in some others. If your state department of forestry does not offer near free native seedlings then a company like Musser Forests will sell you a hundred for a hundred bucks or so. Oh, and about the weeds, I would just clear an area around your little trees. Perhaps use sone Round-Up after knocking them down. Then I would follow up whenever time permitted. (And check out Metasequoia. They grow fast and are interesting if you like exotics) |
RE: Reforestation
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| Ditto what Toronado said, and double ditto on his first sentence. Below is a link to the VA Dept of Forestry's Seedling Store. |
Here is a link that might be useful: VA Dept of Forestry's Seedling Store
RE: Reforestation
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- Posted by lkz5ia z5 west iowa (My Page) on
Sat, Oct 15, 11 at 21:18
| If you look around more, could be possible that a lot of seedlings are already growing in this clearcut. What should be planted, depends on what your goals are for this little piece of land. |
RE: Reforestation
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| The easiest thing to do is to walk away for a few decades. My guess is that you would be quite surprised at the results. The thing to remember is that that land *wants* to be covered with trees. It's keeping the trees out that would require work. |
RE: Reforestation
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| Bonus points to the folks who mentioned some young trees are probably already present. Your climate is much like mine so in the absence of large herbivores the land will be covered by trees. Hmmm. Walk around with a cell/camera and put up some pics and we'll see what you have. |
RE: Reforestation
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| Thanks for all the helpful advice. My goal is just to have an enjoyable natural forest for me and my new neighbors who are not very happy about the old trees being cut down. Although, after doing some research it looks like the land was "clearcut" which is supposed to cause the forest to grow back better then it was before after time. The idea that there are already saplings is a good point! Tomorrow I will go out there and take some pictures. |
RE: Reforestation
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| A couple of good resources for you would be your Virginia Urban Forestry division (see link below) and your local Va. Tech extension office. Virginia has a terrific urban forestry program and I'd expect them to jump right on your band wagon. Also, Va.Tech has an excellent forestry (and Urban Forestry) department with strong community outreach resources. Your extension office should be able to help. |
Here is a link that might be useful: Click here
RE: Reforestation
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| Good recommendations above. By all means contact your state division of forestry - here in KY, they'll send a consulting forester to walk the property with you and formulate a reforestation/timber management plan tailored specifically for your property and your proposed usage. Trees are a renewable resource - they don't live forever, and if not harvested at some point, they just die and fall over. Timber harvest is not a pristine operation. But, I'd hazard a guess, as others have previously opined, that there are likely many small seedlings that have now been 'released' by removal of the mature canopy and will soon be growing 'like crazy', and will soon overtop the weeds - though it may be a decade or more before it looks like a 'forest' again. |
RE: Reforestation
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Ditto to all the advice about leaving alone. Just a bit to add.
You may from time to time walk around and thin some of the ones that are not good trees. You will need to learn a lot before doing this. Also you may want to discourage deer if possible. Keeping them from eating any young trees is impossible but depending on your budget and time some discouraging may be worth wile. |
RE: Reforestation
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- Posted by j0nd03 7 west/central AR (My Page) on
Sun, Oct 16, 11 at 21:43
| I would wait until the vegetation dies this winter then walk the property. Small trees will stick out in the landscape at that time and you can flag them. I would then ID them in the spring after they put out leaves and clean out around the ones you want to keep. Using nature for your tree supply is incredibly more successful than digging a hole and transplanting seedlings over 6+ acres. I would only plant in places nature hadn't seeded for me. And do be diverse when you plant. As already stated, local seedling will be more economical and have much better survival rates than large plantings. One or a few larger specimens that you could water would be something I would probably do along with the seedlings. Gonna be a LONG time before it is a forest again. Good luck! John |
RE: Reforestation
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| If I were trying to accomplish the same thing, I would try seed for some hard to find ones (Beech) and easy to grow from seed (not to mention cheaper) oaks. I think Sassafras is better by seed, if you wanted to include it too. I have some starting to sprout Chestnut oak acorns. They need good drainage, I can give you a good bit to start you out. They are fast growing but strong wooded, american native. They will just be raked up if nobody wants them, the tap root is starting out of many so they are fertile. If interested let me know.I have a picture of the parent tree but uploading pictures is harder than I thought. They are very nice trees anyway. |
RE: Reforestation
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| reforestation is a very long process when it occurs naturally. It usually takes several hundred years for a forest to fully develop. However, you can jump start this process by googling native VA trees and buying some samplings from a farm in bulk. I would recommend http://www.coldstreamfarm.net they have many native trees for sale there. If you want a fast growing forest I would buy some tulip poplar, aspen, birch, and maple trees. Only buy native trees because otherwise you will get a limited number of wildlife such as songbirds. Native trees provide food for these types of critters. also, once your forest is about 20-30 feet high I would start to add in some understory plants such as redbuds,dogwoods, and american holly along with some bushes like rhododendrons and spicebush. Mix in a few slow growing trees as well like oak and sassafras. |
RE: Reforestation
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- Posted by beng z6b western MD (My Page) on
Tue, Oct 18, 11 at 13:43
| Many tree species in the eastern forests will resprout from cut trunks. Cutting the trunk at just above (inches) the ground promotes this -- higher cuts are a no-no. Most of the forests in the east US are, in fact, resprouts. Trees that resprout to form new trees: oaks, red & silver maple, hickory, basswood, tuliptree, black gum, sourwood & quite a few others. Many of the resprouts will end up as multiple-trunked trees, and some suffer from base-rot as a result. |
RE: Reforestation
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In addition to the above, you will probably want to establish a walking path around your property. Winter/fall/spring are good times to figure that out.
Within 2-3 years after a cut-over in north Louisiana, the weeds and seedlings have usually started to create an over-grown thicket that remains near impenetrable for about 10 years til the seedlings become saplings and then emerge over everything. Til then your path may be the only way to access your property. Winter/fall/spring walk-thru will enable you to see whether or not any conifers have sprouted (unless you are covered with snow, hard for me to imagine that much snow), and down here Jan - Mar are prime times to plant seedling conifers (and seedling hardwoods for that matter). |
RE: Reforestation
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| I would also recommend watching and waiting. I had a huge infestation of Japanese Knotweed in my wood. After it had been tackled (repeatedly) with herbicide I planted various trees, all of which have now been outstripped by self sown trees from seed which was in the ground all the time. My Dad, now 91, had a motto from his WW2 days. 'Time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted.' He is absolutely right. |
RE: Reforestation
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| If you leave the land alone for a few years what you will have when you come back is a field full of invasive, non-native species which are already wreaking havoc on your local ecosystem. I would mulch the area, heavily - just ask a tree company to come dump mulch, they often do this for free. Then plant a wide mix of different native hardwoods - oaks, maples, tulip trees, etc. Seriously, the invasives will win out if you just leave it alone - they have the ecological edge on competition since they are not from this continent. |
RE: Reforestation
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| A natural forest often has fairly dense tree stands, with a lot of tall, skinny trunks and high canopies - sort of a 'lollipop' look. Many people like the 'open grown' look for trees; a thicker trunk, more massive, bulky look to the tree, and a large canopy starting much closer to the ground. Do you have a preference? Richard. |
RE: Reforestation
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| I didn't say do nothing for a few years - I said watch and wait. You need to walk the land constantly with your eyes open and a bill hook in your hand. There is almost certainly a seed bank of native plants there which will start to show up. In my wood the invasive Buddleja did indeed appear quickly but native trees, ash, oak, hazel and willow, also came and are now beginning to shade out the Buddleja. You will get herbaceous plants first, then pioneer species and gradually the succession will be established. By all means plant some native species and keep an eye open for invasive species. But nature will provide young native trees on her own. Look out for them and protect them. There are lots of ways of managing woodland. Research them and decide which one you like, as Richard suggests. Regarding the idea of heavy mulch - it might delay invasives but I think it would also interfere with the succession becoming established - there is a whole flora which takes advantage of cleared areas in woodland. If you mulch I think you'd end up with a tree garden, not a wood. |
RE: Reforestation
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| Ok, finally got a chance to go out and explore the different plants! It really surprised me at how diverse the plants that have grown up are. It seems that the main bulk of the plants are the one weed that is very tall and bushy on top. Some of the plants:
http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/4671/cimg4961.jpg
(This seems to be the dominant plant)
http://img855.imageshack.us/img855/8796/cimg5012l.jpg
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/269/cimg4993o.jpg/
http://img855.imageshack.us/img855/4674/cimg4984.jpg All of the images:
http://imageshack.us/g/59/cimg4961l.jpg/ There are 92 images total because of all the diverse plants, plus I was trying to take pictures of the spots that looked like they had different plant mixtures. Also, I read all of the suggestions and am taking them all into consideration but it would probably take awhile to reply to all of them! They are all incredibly helpful. Note: There where also "trees of heaven" but I didn't take any pictures of those because I already knew what they are lol. |
RE: Reforestation
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| Well, I'm north of you, so some stuff I haven't seen before. I see holly though, and a pine and some spruce,and pine and spruce cones (trees to be), so you have a start. The deer will eat young shoots, so you might decide to cage a few trees each year, till they get their growing points up above the deer's reach...6 feet +. Nothing wrong with going around the side of the road with a shovel either.......pop up tiny trees and move them into your woods to be. Your woods is wet and fertile, lots of creeping blackberries/raspberries, a good sign. Not sure if I saw larch or not, but that grows where it's wet, and makes lovely saw logs for flooring.........and a very pretty tree, lovely gold fall colour. The drier parts of your woods might do for sweet chestnut, they grow really fast, oaks are almost as fast. Would any of your neighbours give you permission to dig seedlings at the edge of their lawn? Because of the deer tracks you photographed, I would suggest planting fewer trees at a time, just what you can cage. After they are 6 or 7 feet, you can give them a spiral tree wrap instead, and use the cage over again for a younger tree. I'll upload a tree with a spiral wrap, and you can see what they look like. Link later, after I upload. Another choise, instead of a cage, would be to pile brush around the trees you want to save, to make it hard for the deer to reah them, a big pile of branches with just the top of the tree sticking out. When the golden rods and brambles start getting thick, you can plant a tree in the centre of each clump...they grow slightly slower, but the deer don't eat them, and they soon get tall enough that the deer can't eat them. |
RE: Reforestation with pictures
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| This is a sweet chestnut planted in the middle of a clump of goldenrods so the rabbits/mice and other critters can't eat it. http://i459.photobucket.com/albums/qq314/JocelynClarke/th_wolfvilletal
lestone.jpg?t=1319412466 |
RE: Reforestation more pictures
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| Here's a little tree with a spiral tree wrap so the deer can't eat it. http://i459.photobucket.com/albums/qq314/JocelynClarke/th_UniackeHouse
planting007.jpg?t=1319412266 |
RE: Reforestation
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| I think the point about paths is a good one. This fall I would mark the trees that you think you are going to want to save, then mark paths through out the area. Several times per year run the mower down all of the paths. It will be some years before these paths will be under beautiful trees, but you would be surprised at the interesting things that you will see when walking these path as your forest grows. There are several parks in the Indianapolis area that have taken this approach to reforestation. Even now before the trees are barely visible above the tall grasses (Others may say weeds) you can find wild flowers and all types of birds and animals. |
RE: Reforestation
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| Deers eating the saplings is a problem I didn't even consider. The idea I'm leaning towards at this point from what I've read is making paths through the property near the trees currently coming up, then planting a wide range of trees (probably all the trees that have been suggested so far) near that path with the rest of the yard taking the natural course (except killing invasive trees). That way the yard can grow the way it's supposed to and I can have some faster growing trees in the mean time to make the yard attractive. With the lower number of trees I can put them in cages too. Does that sound like it would be a good way to go? What exactly is this tall grass (http://img543.imageshack.us/img543/6428/cimg4998.jpg) that takes up the whole field? |
RE: Reforestation
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| Yes - deer are a menace. Mine are roe deer quite small but very hungry. I use tree guards like the one at the link on youngsters and would back up the suggestion of picking out good self sown saplings and protecting them. Another menace is the grey squirrel (an invasive non-native for us) which will eat the growing tip out of a sapling and ruin its shape or remove bark and damage trees that way. I don't know what that plant is but it's not a grass. Maybe Eupatorium capillifolium? (Dog fennel)The Name that Plant forum here on GW is very good at identifying stuff. |
Here is a link that might be useful: Tree guards
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