Caliper Trees
Every year we get calls from people who need a 2 inch caliper tree for their landscape deposit. A 2 inch tree requires a 40 liter container, and even then it’s marginal. Pay attention to watering -- it uses up all the water in the container in a hurry.
A 1.5 inch tree is quite reasonable to do. This translates into a 5-6 foot spruce, a 7-8 foot pine or a 10-15 foot leaf tree.
Economics of 1.5" caliper tree production
A tree block is a strip 6 feet wide x 240 feet long. It contains 720 #10 grow bags (40 liters), usually 3 or 4 species mixed, with different growth habits. (Consider: A spruce is wide at the bottom. A maple is wide at the top. Mix them up, and they don't crowd each other as soon.) The advantage of a grow bag is simple: You can put a seedling in it, and it won't develop a hollow root ball, but will instead develop a very fibrous root system. Google "Root control bag" "Hi-caliper"
Inputs:
720 growbags @ $4 each $2800
720 * 40 liters of soil mix = 30 cubic meters -- half a walking trailer load. About $1000
30 bales flax straw for mulch ($4/bale) $120
500 feet drip line at $0.12/foot $60
500 feet spaghetti tube at $0.04/foot $20
Landscaping fabric & geotextile staples to fasten down $200
720 drippers at $0.14 $100
720 seedlings average $1 each $720. (Can also use larger trees -- shortens the cycle, but increases the labour. My present tactic is to plant one block of seedlings and one block of larger trees each year.
4 cubic meters of water/week for 25 weeks. (This is average: The first year they get enough rain. It is about double this at the end.)
30 gm fertilizer once a year. (Average again.) At $2/kg this is 40/year
It takes about 4 to 8 years for a block to mature. At the end of this time you have about 650 trees left that are 1.25 to 1.75 inch caliper, 7 to 10 feet tall, that retail for about $100 each.
With 14 foot aisles this allows 6000 trees per acre.
Lodgepole Pine in our front yard.
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Sherwood's Forests is located about 75 km southwest of Edmonton, Alberta. Please refer to the map on our Contact page for directions.