The Trees
August 8, 2016 1:40 pm Leave your thoughts
Woodmere Nursery: Spruce Trees for DMI
Recently I have had the pleasure of receiving a tour of the nursery, Woodmere Nursery Ltd., which grows out seedlings for us when I went to go pick up a few boxes. Jeff, showed us green houses and how they worked per species, the assembly line for packing them up, the cooler room, and how the get loaded into the trucks to be sent to the tree planters. And even more tidbits of knowledge shared, and it was quite neat to see our own saplings shortly because they were sent to our own tree plants.
Did you know these little spruce take up much less water than growing aspen? Or that they increase the light exposure to 23hr to get them to grow quicker. But they then use those dark curtains to then decrease the hours of light to mimic oncoming winter to get the trees to, in a sense, hibernate. But Pine on the other hand they have greenhouses that open entirely on top for direct sunlight in a humid enclosure, which grow much quicker. From there they hit the assembly line to be measured, quality checked, wrapped, boxed, and stored in a larger cold room until they are shipped to the appropriate planters.
Map credit: Resource Analysis Section, Forest Management Branch, SRD (page 40)
I mention appropriate planters because we have seed zones, which restrict where you can plant seedlings. For example, you cannot plant Millar Westerns trees from meant for the Whitecourt area in the Peace Region. I knew this had to do with the seed zones, laws and keeping the forests authentic to pre-harvest but I learn on this trip from Jeff that this same species react to weather changes differently due to our different elevations. The cold can cause hibernation much quicker in some zones or they require less water.
Helicopter transporting boxes of trees into a winter cutblock. 2015
Because aspen regenerate so amazingly we only have to plant spruce in our blocks, but in case you didn’t know they primarily regenerate through root suckering. This advantage for DMI also encourages our best harvesting practices, since if we are careful enough taking out the old trees without disturbing or compacting the roots then an effortless forest returns to us. In the next blog I will show you an example of this naturally regenerated aspen as well as the spruce planting operations.
For more information on seed zones, the tree nurseries and the when how to plant check you http://treetimeservices.ca/reclamation-faq.php because there is always more information than I could ever cram into each blog.