Growing A Road Screen

8/1/16

Project:  Plant a road screen to block views from the road in the northeast corner of the property.  

I planted 350 white spruce and norway spruce along the road.  They are spaced 4' apart for now, and I will thin as they begin touching.  I'm planning another 300 or so trees for this spring to go in along the north and along the inside edge along the norways. 

3/19/17

Getting ready for the next step in this project, there were two big oaks that blew down and were now in the way of where I plant next.  I got the neighbor involved and we got those trees cleaned up this weekend.  

Before

Here's the first one all cleaned up.

After

And the larger one.

Before

Cleaned up.

After

All the trees planted last summer look fantastic.  Three big victories I was happy with are that they have no winter burn, they were not browsed, and they didn't get smothered by the grass when it went down for the season.

4/20/17

The whites and norways look ok still coming out of winter.  

I also tried 60 scotch pine in the 3rd row to see how they'd do.  It didn't take two weeks and they look like shit.  I figure about half are already dead, and half are clinging to life.  Not sure what happened so quickly other than the root ball on the plugs were pretty loose.  Might be transplant shock.

Also put a hundred red pine in along the north line.  This is two weeks after planting as well and they at least look nice and green still.

Here's the current planting map.

8/6/17

The spring cleth application was a dud.  I suspect my mix was too light.  It doesn't help the cleth book is the hardest one to understand when mixing by the gallon instead of the acre.  Anyway, the trees look good and healthy buried in the grass.