While hazelnuts and chestnuts are incredibly hardy once established, they are very vulnerable during their first 3 years of life. Here’s our strategy to protect the investment during that vulnerable period, and how we’re going about the daunting task of planting 250 trees.
We’ll be planting the trees on contour, using the A-frame level described in this video. Swales might be a good element, but I don’t have any earth moving equipment, so we’ll skip that this time. Planting the trees on contour helps control erosion. It also makes for a habitat that is more pleasant for deer. Since this property is primarily a hunting property, we can stack functions with our hazelnuts and chestnuts by planting them this way.
Prior to planting day, we’ll measure the 15 foot increments I wrote about in the previous post for the chestnuts. Then we’ll place marking flags down to indicate where we’ll be planting the trees. My wife will likely do the measuring and marking with the A-frame level and some spray paint and flags. I’ll follow behind, using a post pounder to drive in 6ft t-posts. For the hazelnuts, we’ll do the same thing but with just 3ft increments.
6ft t-posts are likely way overkill for what we’re doing here, but t-posts are a durable and reusable asset. I’d rather spend extra for t-posts versus buying tree stakes which will likely rot after they’ve been in the ground for 3 years.
After the marking is all done, and the posts are in, the strategy differs slightly between the two types of tree. We’ll protect the chestnuts with tree tubes I found for sale on craigslist. The hazelnuts will be protected by some old welded wire that I also found used.
The essential premise of all this preparatory work is to minimize the amount of work that needs to be done when the trees are ready to be planted in the late fall. This whole project is crushingly overwhelming. I’ve written about that in brief before, but here is a post expounding on that.
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