The Rural Voice, 1998-11, Page 25experts and planted 3,000 trees five -
feet apart in five foot rows: 1,000
each of basswood, walnut and ash.
The second failure of foresters,
Dixon says, is that they plant the
trees and then forget about about
them. "What farmer ever plants a
crop with the idea that 'There, it's in
the ground. Let's go. We'll come
back when its ready and see if we've
got anything or not.'"
With
the spacing of his
woodlot, however, he
pretty well had to do what
nature dictated because he couldn't
get in between the rows, Dixon
explained. For years goldenrod and
purple aster and other weeds grew
and the trees didn't. "It was one of
the most woebegone little plantations
you ever saw."
The trees eventually grew and in
1968, the year he read about the
$6,000 walnut tree, he saw he had
enough walnut trees in the bush he
should be doing something to
improve their value. He leaned a
ladder against every walnut and
trimmed the limbs off to a height of
20 feet. He took out some trees to
increase spacing, but now feels he
should have taken out more. In 1982
he had someone cut out all the
competing ash and basswoods. He
found he had 138 good walnut trees
and wondered why he had planted so
many trees to get so few.
Standing on the lawn beside a
large walnut that he says was so
small in 1959 that he drove over it
four times with a tractor when he
built his new house and leveled the
lawn, Dixon explains his theory that
trees should be pruned vigorously to
produce long, straight, knot -free logs
suitable for veneer production. He
cuts limbs off when they're small and
tries to get a 20 -foot log and to grow
the tree fast. Now measuring 25
inches in diameter, the tree on the
lawn will reach 30 inches in diameter
by the time it is 58 years of age, he
predicts.
In 1991 Dixon sold a 30 -inch
walnut from the edge of the lawn for
$1,500. The only reason it was worth
that amount of money is because he
pruned it, one time only. "The tree
became worth $1,500 with about 15
minutes work,", he says. "I made
$100 a minute that day." All trees
should be pruned, he feels.
"I have roughly 1200 walnut trees
pruncd to be logs like that," he says.
If at maturity they arc worth S1.8
million and if it takes 70 years to
rcach harvestable size, he says, it
works out to "524,000 a year — for
watching trees grow." And all off 40
acres of land.
He tours the group around the
back portion of the farm, pointing out
the various experiments
he has undertaken over
the years. He started out
planting walnuts
(actually Jim did the
planting) on a steep
hillside in 1968.
Fighting wind and sun,
thc trees had a struggle
until they got large
enough to start creating
their own environment.
The youngest
plantation of walnuts,
planted in 1986, had
corn for a nurse crop
while they got started.
The corn would provide
a woodland environ
tree on the farm except the orchard,
have been pruncd from the bottom to
produce long straight logs. The fast-
growing poplars will be ready for
harvesting in about 20 years, he
estimates, and he predicts thc price of
poplar will be good at that timc
giving an early income boost. "I
think that poplar is a much more
valuable tree than we've given it
Andy Dixon stands in the woodlot that changed his
thinking on growing trees.
ment and shade the trees during thc
stress months of July and August,
Dixon theorized.
It worked. He grew three corn
crops between the trees, ranging from
90 bushels per acre in a drought year
to 148 bushels per acre. "I made as
much as my neighbours made on my
corn and I got my trees established."
He followed up with oats and wheat
before deciding he didn't like having
to depend on custom operators. He
seeded the arca to perennial rye grass
planning to sell certified seed but
crown vetch, previously grown on
the field, kept coming back. He
decided to let the crown vetch take
over and grow it for seed but several
crop failures wiped out that
experiment. However, he noticed that
where there is a good stand of crown
vetch there is a vigorously growing
tree and where the crown vetch
hasn't established itself, the trees,
aren't doing as well. Now, he says,
he would have sheep or cows
pasturing under the trees if it weren't
for a few smaller trees that would be
damaged.
He shows another plantation
where he has experimented with
using hybrid poplar as a nurse crop
for red oak. The poplars, like every
credit for."
He now favours using poplars as a
nursc crop. "It gives you quick
protection from wind and gives
shade." He also likes poplar because
if you get a tree that docs well, you
can take clippings from it and plant
them, duplicating the tree.
Hardwoods must be reproduced from
seed and even if the mother tree grew
well, there's no guarantee the
offspring will carry the same
genetics. "I'm pretty well sold on
poplar."
Latcr he shows of a pine
plantation, trees planted 15
feet apart and once again with
all thc trees pruned up to provide
clear pine lumber (no knots). He
leaves about five whorls at the top of
•the tree and prunes off everything
below that. Hc thinks it will take 35
years to grow to 15 inches in
diameter. The last time he looked, he
said, clear pine was worth two dollars
per square foot and a 15 -inch tree
will be worth a lot of money.
Dixon likes the idea of planting
poplar and white pines. If a man can
plant a crop of trees that his son can
harvest instead of taking 70 years to
mature, he says, people would be
more willing to plant trees.0
NOVEMBER 1998 21