South Mississippi Forestry Question

[Bourbon]

Gentlemen,

Looking for some information on the typical seedling spacing for replanting pine trees in southern Mississippi. I have been doing more bottomland hardwood and cypress plantings lately and trying to see what the typical seedlings per acre is being used.

For BLH and cypress, we have been using 9 x 9 spacing for about 538 seedlings per acre.

Thanks for any input.

[Marenisco]

538 is fine.

With great site prep and high quality seedlings you could go lower but I wouldn't go below 400/acre.

[420 racin]

I planted my pines at 7x10 (622 TPA) maybe a bit thick, maybe not. I didn;t have real good site prep and had immigrants hand planting the trees. 538 TPA seems to be HIGH for BLH's. Around here (MS Delta) the traditional normal is 12x12 (302 TPA). Personally I think that is too many these days. I have had thsi discussion with several other Foresters, I gues everybody has an opinion, but nobody has any hard evidence of why to use this or that spacing on the BLH. I feel you are setting yourself up for a Pre Commercial thin in the future to allow the trees to deveop a crown and begin to drop acorns. Look at an unnamed WMA around Holly Bluff. I was involved in planting and sampling those trees for survival, at spots where survival was great, it is a baren wasteland as far as wildlife is concerned under the trees and you can barely crawl through there because the branches. At other spots where survival was less, you have a variet of other natural vegetation.

[Bourbon]

Thanks for the replies. We used to plant 10 x 10 or 12 x 12 for blh, but the government agencies started increasing that number gradually to 9 x 9. I agree, with proper site prep and good planting techniques, there is no reason to overplant like they want to do.

Funny thing, the newest blh planting is adjacent to an older planting on a 12 x 12 spacing. The older planting had over 95% survival and wildlife everywhere. The landowner mowed the strips between the rows for the first few years. Now he has an awesome stand of blh for hunting.