Tips & Tactics: Summer Reforestation

So I'm going to give you a little detail. Go back to the reforestation process. I was talking earlier about this time of the year, which is basically the first of July. We're starting our site preparation for tree planting that'll be coming up this winter, this fall and winter. And so I want to talk a little bit about, you know, that process of herbicide site prep or, and, or mechanical site prep and why we do it this time of the year, why are we thinking about it now, why are we prepping now? And I'm gonna go through a little bit of that process. So, you know, there are two ways to do a site prep for tree planting and we could go into a lot of details on why each one's used. But basically what's used anymore is a herbicide treatment. So this time of the year, timber was cut, let's say last fall, and we've gone through most of a growing season and it's time to apply our herbicide because of the regrowth that has occurred through March, April, May and June. We've got enough regrowth now of competition coming up that we want to treat it with herbicide because the object is to kill it. And we want to kill it with the herbicide. Wait about 45 days. We're going to run a prescribed fire through it to clean up the site, all the debris from the logging. And once we do that and finish that process, prescribed burn, then the site will be ready for tree planting. That will typically occur, I'm going to say starting in December. We want to wait. Of course, the seedlings won't be available to us from the nurseries until December and dormant season. So our site will be free of competition. The competition will be controlled. It'll be burned and ready to either hand plant or mechanical plant with V blade tree planters in the winter starting in December. And that tree planting season is December, January, February. And so again, that's the reason why we're preparing now to kill the vegetation, to be able to burn it by the fall and then be ready to tree plant during the winter.