Starting a Tree Farm

[SprigOfTheLivingDead]

I think 10 acreas is perfect. Not too much to plant and maintain but enough to have all your favorites and for canning. Keep us posted on your endeavors. We want to share the ride with you.

Mary

Yeah. This year we wont have much of a garden, except for 5 volunteers I pulled from the ground at our last place and six scotch bonnets that I started in January, but we'll make do

 

[SprigOfTheLivingDead]

Made my first purchase as a business this past week: tree tubes. 6 foot tall ones

They arrived today and I installed 10 of them. I'll install the rest tomorrow.

 

[SprigOfTheLivingDead]

Building a gravel bed for my baby trees but one of the good places to put it happens to be slightly graded, so I'm going to need to dig out the inside for the 14 tons of gravel that will go inside it.

Normally you can build a gravel bed frame in an afternoon, but since this required trenching it took me two days. I'm really excited to get this finished.

 

[ducks4you]

Gee, I never heard of doing that before!! What is the benefit of putting baby trees into a gravel bed?

 

[SprigOfTheLivingDead]

Gee, I never heard of doing that before!! What is the benefit of putting baby trees into a gravel bed?

You put them in there and irrigate it with drip lines. It let's them focus on root growth

But the real benefit of it is you can plant a few hundred trees in a gravel bed in a day and then pull them out one by one to plant over a season instead of having to plant all of them in ground or in pots in a weekend

It's super easy to pull them out of the bed too, just shake them and pull and the rocks kind of fall away. It's not always that simple, but usually is

 

[SprigOfTheLivingDead]

Yay gravel!!!

Also, there's over a foot of snow forecasted for this week

 

[SprigOfTheLivingDead]

Almost fully dug out. Ain't gonna happen before the snow hits, so that sucks

 

[flowerbug]

Almost fully dug out. Ain't gonna happen before the snow hits, so that sucks

View attachment 31143

pretty much sounds like hydroponics without all the extra trappings. g.l. sprig!

 

[SprigOfTheLivingDead]

pretty much sounds like hydroponics without all the extra trappings. g.l. sprig!

Yeah, no extra nutrient love and it isn't meant for plants at a fruiting stage

 

[ducks4you]

Here's hoping that you don't get the 2ft+ snow predicted!