Field Trees
Field tree operational considerations
A field operation is very different. Different tools, different skills, different customers, different workers. Many customers for large trees want to purchase the tree and the installation service from the same outfit, so there's no finger pointing "It was a sick tree" "You didn't install it right" later on. Your customers are mostly housing developers, landscape contractors, and municipal governments who want to sub-contract the supply and tree planting to you. Occasionally you will get a single tree contract. These are a pain unless you can line up 6 of them that can be done on the same day.
Field grown trees will eventually require a bobcat and tree spade. If you deliver you need a good truck and a substantial trailer. When I started up, I initially considered field growing but ran into this:
- For any tree farm, most of the sales occur in spring.
- For any tree farm, your new trees are planted in spring.
- Most of the work to lift and basket field grown trees to leave occurs in spring, along with loading and transport to clients.
- It takes a crew of 3-4 people to efficiently run a basketing operation. There was only one of me.
- A used bobcat is 15 to 30 grand. A tree spade about half that. New equipment double that.
- If you deliver, you need a 1 ton pickup, and a large enough trailer to hold both trees and tree spade. Or two trucks.
- Skills are not minimum wage skills any more, but you need to keep these guys on the payroll doing something.
This uses much lower density planting. You need space between the trees for equipment to move. On an 8 foot grid, you get 600 trees per acre. (In actuality you do alternating 5 and 11 foot rows. Same overall density, but better machinery access.) In my current pot system I get 6000 trees per acre or more.
I decided that I was going to skip this. If you go with this, you are on your own. Oh, you can ask me about it, but it will be the blind leading the blind.
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.