I have been attempting to grow trees for many years now. My target tree is one that will eventually contain very valuable veneer. This means it has to be of the highest quality (well formed without defects). I have been unable to grow this type of tree using widely spaced seedling transplants in a monoculture plantation. I figured out that I needed to increase stem density very early on. I wound up using seed direct since seedling transplants were expensive.
Seed direct does work. I can not tell you how to do it. I do not know the best way . What is the correct and appropriate amounts of seed, the correct combinations of species, and on and on? The nuts and bolts of the whole system are constantly changing for me. Since I do not know, I will not be discussing “how to do it”, but rather “why I do what I do”. “What I do is use three basic ingredients. Seed direct, ultra high density, and companion planting.
I attempt to use these three ingredients to create a bubble of environmental conditions that is so conducive for the target tree to grow into the shape and form that I want that it will grow into this form without the constant prodding and pushing that I have been having to do with previous methods (wide spacing of seedling transplants) This bubble of conditions just happens to be those very conditions that are contained in a healthy growing forest.
But, I am ahead of myself. My presentation today will be in three parts. I would like to tell you a little about me, which leads directly into how this whole system has very slowly evolved over the years, and finally show some slides to demonstrate how the system is working.
OK, to start. I am Larry Krotz. My wife Sandy and I own 235 acres of agricultural land in southeast Iowa. I am not a forester. I am a retired engineer, a retired Air Force fighter pilot, and finally a very tired tree grower. I am a very tired tree grower because I plant a lot of trees. I spend a lot of time out in my trees. I am a full time tree farmer and I absolutely love it.
I got started growing trees in 1962. That is when Sandy and I purchased this farm in Washington County, Iowa which is very early in my Air Force career. We had always planned on moving back to this area and building our house in a rural setting among the trees. Unfortunately, this farm had somewhere less than 300 trees total on the entire place and they were not necessarily all in the right location. I started planting trees almost immediately and it just grew like mad to where today we have approximately 110 acres in trees. The original number of 300 has grown to (give or take a couple of hundred thousand) to approximately a million-million and a half trees.
When I first started, I knew very little about growing trees. I have learned a lot ; but, unfortunately, I have a whole lot more to learn. My main problem for this presentation is how to compile 40 years of mistakes, trial and error methods, of just plain stumbling around into a very few short minutes of explanation. The best way is to present a very simplified time line from where I am today back to where I started. It all started with planting that first tree. >From hindsight this is what appears to have happened.
We are going to imagine that I have this good looking little tree growing off to my right. Now, by definition, this little tree is a weed. A weed is simply a plant that is out of place and I do not want that little tree on my right side. I want it on my left side so I transplant it to my left side and tell it to grow. Three or four years later I look at the little tree and I am disappointed. The little tree is not growing and living up to my expectations as to just how well it is growing. It most certainly is not flourishing like it had been in it’s original location.
Now remember this was 40 years ago, and 40 years ago we tended to grab quick fixes for everything (we still do that even today) and the quick fix for this was that tall weeds were apparently stealing sunshine from the little tree. We solve this problem (mentally of course) by deciding to move our rows of trees further apart so that we can get large agricultural equipment between the rows in all different directions and mow these big tall weeds. We had already restricted the number of trees that we were going to plant, because seedling transplants are expensive, so that limits stem density somewhat. Anyway, we discovered that the beautiful patterns of twigs that can be viewed from all directions in perfect alignment still are not doing well. We discover that we have converted big tall weeds that were stealing sunshine to little short weeds called perennial sod forming grasses that are stealing something else from the little tree.
That does not stop us. We grab the sprayer and put herbicide around the little tree. If that does not suit our fancy we cultivate or mulch around the little tree and sure enough we get the little tree to growing. Unfortunately, since we have our trees widely spaced, the little tree gets lazy and puts on branches in the easiest possible manner and this happens to be a lot of side branching. This obviously does not fit our definition of the perfect tree ( vertical growth with minimal side branching).
Our next quick fix is grabbing the pruning shears and removing those offending side branches that ruin the appearance of our perfect tree. We now have a beautiful miniature specimen of our giant well formed tree with the unfortunate result that the little tree stops growing. We have slowed the growth of the tree by removing the food factory.
Just what have we been doing to ourselves the last 10-15 years with all of these solutions to our problems? We have been solving a problem using a solution, that in itself, has created a problem of equal or greater value than our original problem. This does not fit my definition of problem solving. What was really bothering me right about now is that I am checking the greener grass on the other side of the fence.
For the past several years, while all of this is going on, I am looking across the fence at my neighbor’s abandoned 3-5 acre farmstead. This area is not worth the farmer’s time and effort to farm because of buildings and small lots and in neglect it becomes a weed patch. It is a real eyesore, a jungle if you will. I started really looking inside this jungle and discovered a tremendous number of little trees , some of them not so little. Some of these trees were the very ones that I was trying to grow- black walnuts that had excellent form and excellent growth rates. These trees were growing by being neglected , while my carefully tended plantation that was manicured, that was beautiful to behold, that I in fact was loving to death was just not performing half as well.
The light bulb starts to light up. I decide that I need an attitude adjustment. Instead of me setting up this artificial set of conditions that I want (something that looks good and that I can be proud of) -placing the little tree in these conditions - telling it to grow and then being unhappy when it does not respond exactly the way I would like it to- I decide I have to seriously consider the apparent conditions that the little tree wants. I am going to have to create this weed patch-this jungle---I am going to create a forest.
This; however, creates a problem for me. A forest contains a lot of trees and remember when I first started I could not afford even a small number of trees. Now I am talking about planting a large number of trees and I still can not afford them. I solve this problem by deciding to grow my seedling transplants in my own private nursery beds.
This immediately creates a major problem for me since I haven’t a clue as to how to go about this. There must by a thousand ways of converting perfectly good viable seed into dead seed by improper collection methods, improper storage methods, and improper planting techniques. I probably used 999 of the methods, but eventually I was able to grow my own trees in my nursery beds.
You guessed it. I create another problem for myself. I have 40,000 trees in a nursery bed that I do not want in a nursery bed. I want them out in my future forest and I want to cut out the middle man. Me. I do not want to go to all the work of transplanting these trees. Incidentally , somewhere within a 10 or 15 year time span we discovered that it wasn’t just sunlight that was being stolen from my first transplanted tree. It was a major problem called transplant shock. You know , that bit about 100% of the top and only 20-40% of the root that was causing a lot of our problems. Now, why in the world would I want to continue making more work for myself when there might be an easier way? The hard part had already been solved in direct seeding in just figuring out how to get the seed to germinate. It was not a great stretch to figure out how to get the tree to grow by placing the seed and never moving it. I did have to go through the gauntlet of folks telling me that it could not be done which took about a decade, but eventually I was able to do it.-I just planted the seed right where I wanted the tree to grow. That solved the first step of my three part system.
I am still glad that I had spent those years going through my nursery bed routines. Growing my trees in nursery beds taught me many things. I was able to observe (constantly observe) some of the things that the seed must go through to transform itself into the plant. All of my work was done mechanically by hand. The hardest part was keeping the beds free from weeds prior to seed emergence. Once the seed emerged things started to happen rapidly. My small seedlings were in very close proximity to one another so that I could use my time more economically (only inches or less apart in most cases). Once the seed germinated and emerged it rapidly grew (practically overnight) to 6-8 inches in height. With this height and close proximity the tops touched. I felt as though I was Gulliver one day when I was standing above a nursery bed that was a miniature forest at less than 12 inches in height. Those seedlings had canopied and canopy is when the forest magic starts to occur.
What is this forest magic? For one thing, I no longer have a weed problem. With shade the weed seed either does not germinate or if it does it produces a very weak plant which is very easy to remove. This simply put tells me that mowing, spraying herbicides, mulching and cultivating is not needed if my stem density is high enough. Second the trees are growing in the vertical direction without the constant need of pruning to form the tree. Shading is leading to self pruning. So now I have solved a few of my major problems from earlier years.
I know the stem density is definitely a factor in tree form. It is still not useable since I vary from my couple of hundred trees per acre when I first started to nursery bed density. Neither of these two is satisfactory. I grab a number of 1000 stems per acre for a starting point. It is easy to work with and easily divisible into the square footage in an acre. If I would do this each tree would need to cover approximately (rounded off) 45 square feet. I am 6 feet tall and with spread arms I assume that a full circle could pretty well cover that surface area. That really sounds good and if I quit there the problem is solved. Wait a minute though. I am not planting a 6 foot tree. I am planting a seed that must go from emergence to say 6-8 inches fairly rapidly. That little 6-8 inch seedling is going to look at the aliens in this 45 square foot area that are towering over it and just give up. This sounds too much like something I have previously done. I decide I do not need to go there. I am going to try something really stupid.
I am going to take a look at what this 6-8 inch seedling would theoretically do if placed so that it only had to conquer 1 square foot of space. You know, that just might work. The height to width ratio might just work to start shading and tops touching at a very early age. I am very enthused until I think just how stupid this really is. Can you imagine anyone trying to plant 40 thousand some trees of woody vegetation per acre? It is so crazy that Mother Nature does it all the time. Stan Tate helped my out on this by mentioning in his presentation that he figured some of the vegetation he noticed on his way into the park appeared to be 50,000 plus. So maybe the figure is not really stupid. Anyway , my figure I am going to assume lies somewhere between 1000 and 40,000 stems per acre with more (the high side) being better. I have been planting trees from seed for a very long time and one thing I have discovered is that you can not get the tree density initially too thick as far as the tree goes. The trees themselves will not allow it. Your pocketbook will govern what may be too much seed. That covers the second principle of ultra high density.
The third principle of companion planting was brought to my attention in a round about way with my nursery beds. I was walking through the nursery and one end of a bed of catalpa trees did not look too well, but I did not get back to really check until the next day. The next day, approximately 24 hours later, that bed of a thousand seedling trees or so, contained ¾ of a bed of twigs without foliage. Catalpa worms had started at one end and had worked their way through and were nearing completion. That certainly got my attention. This was only a small bed of trees. What would happen if I had 100 or 1000 acres of a monoculture of trees and some strange insect or disease was introduced? I could lose everything practically overnight. Scary isn’t it? I go back to Mother Nature. She does not plant a whole lot of monocultures. She had solved the Enron principle thousands of years ago. She uses maximum diversity. That decides for me that I want more than just a few species. I want 15-20 different forms of woody vegetation in all my forests. I will plant any plant that for one fleeting moment gives my target trees some help or at best does not hinder my target tree too much. Box elder, raspberry, and the list goes on and on of plants that I do not plan on harvesting, but I plant anyway, because at one point they will act as a nurse plant.
That sums up how I arrive at my three principles of trying to grow my trees. It is not the way to do it. It is the way that I try to do it and I am very enthusiastic about it so far. I use seed direct, ultra high density, and companion planting to grow my projected veneer trees. One other very important ingredient that I have not mentioned is really critical. You must have patience. A lot more patience than I have been seeing in the past. That completes my presentation. Thank you.
Larry D. Krotz