Thursday, September 4, 2008

Some Kind Of Record

One of my customers has planted several hundred acres of glacial lakebed fields into bottomland trees in the Little Wabash River valley. This has been a difficult project because the lakebed can flood during any month of the year. He typically planted each spring after all of my other tree planting projects were done, usually in June. One year he planted up to the 4th of July. His soils have a very high clay content and they hold moisture well, so he has had good success.
This year he wanted to fill in some areas with low survival, so we ordered seedlings; then it flooded, and flooded more. He kept his seedlings in cold storage, and I figured that he never was able to plant. He called me near the end of August so I could come out and look at what he had done.

He started planting on July 21, and finished on July 24. One month later the trees looked great, and I think they will have new buds formed before the fall frosts come. Back in April when we were planting uplands, the water would have been over his head in this field.

A bonus that day was seeing the mallows blooming around us.... in the marsh. Marsh Mallows.



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