Treenut's Forest Notes for 2026

July 2, 2026 Somewhere near Centuria, Wisconsin USA

I took 100 of my new seedlings to our farm as a proof of concept. I needed to find clear space to plant and I needed to mow the weeds and plow a furrow. I haven't done this for many years and I needed to make sure all the pieces fit.

Fired up plow rig after years in storage.

Everythig worked perfectly. I was glad that I'd greased the plow shares before storing.
I feared the mowed weeds would plug the plow but the coulter sliced through everything and the soil was perfect for plowing.
The evening after I finished putting in all 100 Spruce, it rained buckets.
PERFECT!

Perfect soil condition for cutting cores.

My home-made corer worked great. The process went like this:

• Drive probe (avoid rocks)
• Life out core (knock out of probe)
• Fill hole with water (dilute 'miracle grow')
• Gently knock rootball out of pot
• Drop in hole
• Gently heel in

That evening -- after planting all 100 Spruce -- it rained about an inch; nice and slow.

The next day I sprayed deer repelent on each transplant (just to be sure).

White Spruce after 2 summers growth.

Three racks of 98 pots plus half rack of 49.

At the far end there are 24 larger tubes containing Ginko, Maple, and Hackberry.

Just in case I have time left over.

There are a few clearings on the farm where we either missed planting trees or the trees didn't survive.

Basicly any space were I can make a furrow is a candidate for planting.

This area is in the far NW corner of the farm and is what we used to call the "Back 40".

It was always a small patch of woods which got much smaller after the tornado in 1952 because my father harvested much of the Red Maple and Red Elm to rebuild the barn.

The weather has been pretty dry since I planted in July which dictated the use of a shovel over the probe.

The week prior to planting this September was quite wet. This made it easier to plow a furrow but the bottom of the furrow was still dry.

The probe tool that I used in July no longer worked in this hard subsoil so I returned to the tried and true spade shovel.

This worked just fine.

October 2026:
After 400 trees were transplanted, I still had 50 'runts'.

I moved these into larger tube pots and they will remain in my nursery until next summer.

Hopefully they will survive and prosper because I still have a little space remaining at the farm but this will require transplants to be slightly larger in order to compete and survive.