Help a newbie sodbuster, please.

[southerntester]

I am new to tractors and farming. I live on 16 acres in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. The land has been used as a hayfield for many years. I want to plant chestnut trees on about 10 acres of it. I have a New Holland TC33D that I will be working the land with and need advice on which implements to buy. I found and bought a used King Kutter bush hog and that worked great knocking everything down. Now I need to prep for the trees. The plan is to keep the grasses cut at typical yard height between the trees for many years to come. Should I disc the land over and over to breakup the sod? Which type disc should I use? Is there a better implement to do what I need to do? I am planning to use my post hole digger to plant the trees and they will have a 3ft by 3ft weed mat around them. Like most people, I have a limited budget so buying multiple implements will be difficult. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Bigfoot62]

Leave the sod alone.

Plant the trees far enough apart that you can still run the tractor and cutter between them, even after they start putting on limbs and spreading out.

 

[jeff9366]

I concur with Bigfoot62.

Make your Chestnut planting holes a good three time larger than the tree root balls, amend only if a soil tests calls for it. Create a 8" high earth dam around each new planted tree. Fill dams every day first week, every-other-day second week, every third day, third week; then as needed. Fill dams during dry periods first Summer.

I am planting Dunstan Chesnuts here, and they are doing well.

I plant trees with a Bucket Solution's Bucket Spade on my FEL.

Pictures show a Sand Pear tree and Bucket Spade is on my previous tractor, a Kubota B3300SU.

I haul water in six gallon former cat litter buckets, in my MUTS trailer.

 

[southerntester]

Thanks for the advice guys. Jeff, I am planting the Dunstan trees as well and looking at planting 500 eventually. Only doing about 150 this year. Did you use tree tubes and a weed mat like they suggest? Is this your first time planting the Dunstans? If not, have you had success in the past with the Dunstans? Any suggestions or things to avoid?

 

[oosik]

Southerntester -

BTW - Welcome to TBN

The thought of digging 150 holes for trees makes my back sore. I guess there must be a market for chestnuts in your area. I've planted 25 apple trees - of various varieties - and consider that to be more than enough - however, I'm not marketing them either.

Our big problem here is the pocket gophers eating the roots of the young trees. I dug a large hole, lined it wall to wall with broken glass and planted the young trees in the hole. This way I only lost 1 in 5 planted trees. Any tree that makes it to 5 years will not be killed by the gophers.

Be certain you plant the trees far enough apart so that when they are full size you can drive your tractor between them. And remember if you want to mow right up close to the tree it probably will not be with a pto rear cutter. You will probably need some kind of riding mower.

Finally - You must have some type of irrigation system planned to water this 10 acres of new trees. I sure hope you don't plan on hauling water to the trees unless you have a large trailer & water tank.

This undertaking will keep you busy and out of mischief for a long time. I wish you the best.

 

[oosik]

Southerntester,

I just had another thought. Since you will be planting so many trees over the 10 acres it would probably be advisable to have soil tests conducted over the acreage. You may also be able to find the general soil type(s) by contacting your local Soil Conservation district and they would be a good source to determine the location & number of test holes for the acreage.
I do not use tree tubes here - I wrap the trunk of the young trees with an expandable tree wrap tape. We get a condition called SouthWest damage. It is caused by all the weather - wind, rain. dust. snow - coming at us directly out of the SW. The tree wrap stops this.

 

[smstonypoint]

I just had another thought. Since you will be planting so many trees over the 10 acres it would probably be advisable to have soil tests conducted over the acreage. You may also be able to find the general soil type(s) by contacting your local Soil Conservation district and they would be a good source to determine the location & number of test holes for the acreage.

You can obtain soil sample materials at your local Cooperative Extension office (Department of Crop and Soil Environmental Sciences - Virginia Tech Soil Testing Lab | Virginia Tech).


Soil survey maps are available online at Web Soil Survey - Home.

Steve

 

[jeff9366]

Thanks for the advice guys. Jeff, I am planting the Dunstan trees as well and looking at planting 500 eventually. Only doing about 150 this year. Did you use tree tubes and a weed mat like they suggest? Is this your first time planting the Dunstans? If not, have you had success in the past with the Dunstans? Any suggestions or things to avoid?

I only have six Dunstan Chesnuts in the ground, planted in pairs during Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014. All are going well. My one year old Dunstan seedlings came in tree tubes. I have purchased weed mat circles to install this spring. I am also planting Persimmons and Sand Pear trees for deer forage plus seed Fall and Spring food plots.

The deer are wild but pets.

 

[Egon]

As stated, leave the sod alone. Plant on a grid that allows you lots of clearance for mowing.

 

[flusher]

Are you building an orchard, or will these trees be randomly located on your 10 acres?
Around here there are thousands of acres of irrigated orchard (almond, English walnut, pistachio, olives, mandarin oranges, plums for prunes). We have compacted soil (hardpan) so the first step is to use a ripper (aka subsoiler) to break up the hardpan so the roots can reach groundwater. My neighbor put in 8 acres of English walnut orchard about 3 years ago. He had to rip down to about 36 inch depth. He works for one of the large walnut processors in the area so he borrowed a D9 Cat to do the ripping.

Do you plan to irrigate these trees? If you're putting time and money into planting your trees, you need to make sure that they will have enough moisture to survive year round. Around here the orchards have to be watered year round--of course, more in the summer to get the trees through the triple digit temperatures in the Jun-Sep period.

To keep the orchard tidy and disease free, flail mowers are used to keep the weeds cut down to an inch or so height.

What are your plans for the nuts? Harvest? Then you need harvesting equipment. Walnuts, almonds and plums around here are harvested with tree shakers and accumulators/conveyers that catch the product and move it to the shipping crates to get stuff to the processors.

If you plan to just leave the nuts fall to the ground, you need to clean up to prevent disease. I have about 20 old, mature almond trees on my place (the remains of a 10-acre orchard that was planted 60 years ago). The trees are way to tall to harvest economically. So the crows and blackbirds do the harvesting for me in Aug and Sept. The birds strip the trees bare--not a nut remaining. They leave the husks and shells littering the ground as my part of the deal. Every year or two I run the rototiller lightly over the orchard to incorporate this litter into the soil.

Good luck.