The Rural Voice, 1998-10, Page 36No wonder Ron Hubbs
neighbours thought he
was crazy. The Prince
Edward County farmer was
preparing to take his best
farmland out of crop
production and plant it to
maple trees. Nearly 10 years
later, Hubbs is happy with the
results and, as the trees grow,
even the neighbours are
starting to become interested
in his work instead of
questioning his sanity.
Hubbs is one of a number
of Ontario maple syrup
producers experimenting with
planting maple orchards. A
maple orchard in Ontario is
defined as an area of maple
trees intensively managed in
field environments to produce
large volumes of sweet sap,
Dave Chapeskie, agroforestry
advisor with OMAFRA at
Kemptville told the
Provincial Agroforestry
Conference in Woodstock in
September.
A maple orchard, says
Chapeskie, is a way to
expand a traditional sugar
bush with high-producing
trees.
That's what Hubbs had in
mind when he risked the
ridicule of his neighbours
back in 1989. He had a 116 acre farm
with 40 good workable acres and the
rest mostly in hardwood bush. He
had cashcropped the 40 acres but
after his neighbour Lyle Vanclief ran
for parliament (he's now federal
minister of agriculture), he lost his
custom operator and it was hard to
get prompt service.
The idea for a maple orchard
began in 1981 when they suffered
winterkill in their apple orchard and
had to cut many of the trees. He
thought about planting maples in
their place but when he mentioned
the idea to his neighbours they
thought it was a joke and he
reconsidered. By 1989 he decided to
go ahead anyway and began planting
trees.
His orchard has been a low-
expense proposition, Hubbs says.
"All the work can be done by hand
and we do it in stages. It's a little bit
of hard work but it can be very
Whether in a traditional bush or a maple orchard, sugar
maples can add to farm income or even be the main crop.
Tapping a maple resource
By planting maple orchards some
syrup producers plan to expand
By Keith Roulston
32 THE RURAL VOICE
rewarding in the end.
"The goals we set for ourselves
were to plan 10 acres of our best
farmland, to plant 100 trees per acne,
which is a spacing of 21 feet by 21
feet, and to get the trees to a tappable
size in 20 years. We hope to at least
double the sugar content of the trees
we have in our natural bush."
With the 21 -foot spacing the
Hubbs are putting in twice as many
trees per acre as they want to end up
with. When the trees are five to six
inches in diameter they will take
sugar sweetness tests. "By the time
the trees reach 10 inches in diameter,
or a tappable size, we will have half
of the trees, the less sweet ones, cut
down and we'll be just left with what
we call the super sweet trees in the
orchard."
The Hubbs family begins site
preparation the summer before they
plant by marking out the site, using
stakes to mark the 21 -foot spacing. in
September or October they
spray around the stakes with
Roundup to kill the competition
from other vegetation. They dig
the holes in the fall so they can
save time in the spring. They
did one fall planting but weren't
pleased with the success,
though others have assured
them fall planting has worked in
their experience.
In the fall, they also go to
the bush and try to identify the
saplings they plan to transplant
the next spring. "We look for
saplings that are six to 10 feet
high, that show lots of new
growth. That tells us that they
are used to the sunlight and they
will transplant probably quite
well."
The height of the tree is
chosen because they have a deer
problem and shorter trees will
be browsed off. The Hubbs like
trees with a smooth, slightly
reddish bark. If the bark is gray
and knotty at the bottom it's
probably an indicator the tree is
slow growing, Hubbs said.
The planting is generally
done in the first couple of
weeks of April. They dig as big
a root -ball with the tree as they
can handle by hand, then slip a
burlap bag under the ball to
prevent the. roots from being
too disturbed during transportation to
the orchard. The tree can then be set
in the hole and the bag slipped out
from under the roots.
n mid-May, after the frost is over,
J
they prune about 20 per cent of
the lower limbs and take out any
forks at the top of the trees. The first
few years they also work hard to
prevent competition from other
vegetation using Roundup and a
back -pack sprayer.
"I've never used any fertilizer
though 1 know people who have."
Hubbs says he's just beginning to
see the value of pruning the trees in
the orchard. "I think there should be
a lot more emphasis put on it because
it will carry quite an impact down the
road."
He mentioned the experience of
another speaker at the confernece,
Ray Fortune of Lanark County who,
during last spring's vicious ice storm
in eastern Ontario, found very little