Best Un-Natural Forest Regeneration Ever

In July the Northern Nut Growers had their 100th meeting and scheduled it at Purdue University. Purdue has a national reputation for work on black walnut. My wife Mitzi & I live in Minnesota. There are many innovative hardwood tree planters between Indiana and Minnesota. On our way back, we drove through Iowa to meet John Olds of One-Stop Forestry. We wanted to see for ourselves the directing seeding magic we had heard so much about. John was at his office in Postville, IA behind the Northeast Iowa RC&D. By the way, Mitz took most of these pictures.

John Olds and Gary Beyer of the Iowa DNR were unsatisfied with the results from traditional low-density seedling planting and decided to see if they could take an old method of reforestation called direct seeding and modernize it to make it work for hardwoods in the Driftless Area where Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota come together.

John and Gary reasoned that trees know how to grow from seed. Seed is cheap. And the highest quality timber is produced when the trees are crowded and forced to grow clean straight boles in competition for sunlight. By direct seeding a large volume of nuts, seeds and acorns, they hoped to germinate and grow over 10,000 stems per acre. Competition, the site and natural selection would sort out which trees grew where. With help from three years of weed control and Plantra Tree Tubes the landowner would have an incredible stand of hardwoods.

We followed John in his pickup out to Daryl Landsgard's farm. Every forester has his favorite client. You know the type. The grower willing to try new ideas and the one who can be counted on to do his part. No planting succeeds without an involved landowner. Daryl is an enthusiastic deer hunter and wants improve habitat. He doesn’t mind if he produces some high quality hardwood timber along the way. Even though there were seedlings every two feet in this planting, I think Daryl knew the status of every single one.

A typical planting with seedlings has about 700 stems per acre. As I wrote above, John’s goal is to over produce an incredible 10,000 or more stems per acre. It was originally thought this many plants would overwhelm the deer. It would be more than they could eat.

That is only partially true. Although deer do appear to randomly browse as they walk around, in fact deer have strong species preferences for browsing. That means with so many stems nip, the deer get selective and nip what they prefer. In John’s plantings, if there is enough oak, the walnut grows free. Walnut is a fast grower and even excretes the phytotoxic chemical Juglone to control competition. So, even though there is plenty to eat, the deer browse the defenseless oaks. John has found that he needs to use tree tubes to protect the oaks and give them an advantage over the walnut.

At Plantra we are always looking for new and improved methods to establish trees. We have the luxury of working with the best of the best. Not surprisingly, John Olds is truly one of the best. After leaving Daryl’s farm we followed John back to his house. The Olds Estate (It doesn’t have a name yet, but is more than impressive enough to deserve one) sits on the crest of a hill with a commanding view of an immense valley. John wanted to show us what Daryl’s planting would look like in a few years.

The regeneration is so dense you have work up a little courage to enter. John’s biggest problem is deciding what to thin. With so many high quality stems to choose from the choice can be a difficult one.

Darn, too much black walnut!

Direct seeding is not a new concept and has many variations. Arlyn Perkey, author of Crop Tree Management has written about a direct seeding acorns in Tree Farmer Magazine and has a photo journal on direct seeding chestnut. By the way, John Olds says he reads his copy of Crop Tree Management every year. While written for the forestry professional, Arlyn’s clear prose and minimal use of jargon make it very easy to read for anyone. Every woodlot owner should have a copy.

For direct seeding in Iowa and the Driftless Area call:

John Olds

One-Stop Forestry

101 E. Green Street

Postville, IA 52162

563-864-3586