I have some trees to plant.

[Cliff Rogers]

I now have about 420 Qld Maples Flindersia brayleyana & 340 Silver Quandongs aka Blue Quandong Elaeocarpus angustifolius aka Elaeocarpus grandis.

They were free 'cos they have been in the nursery too long & now need to be planted out urgently.
Free Trees
I only have about 4 acres of fairly steep ground to fit them into.

I have borrowed the neighbour's ripper & stuck it on my tractor & started preparing the ground.

I have been given conflicting info about how far apart the QLD Maples should be planted. Local rumour has it that if they are too close to each other they compete with each other.
I find it hard to beleive because we already have about 4 or 5 acres of rain forest & there are a lot of Flindersia trees close together in there.

We are about 865M above sea level & it is a wet climate so I don't expect to have too much trouble with them.We will mix the Maples with the Quandongs. There grow very well up here.

[Enfield Guy]

Good luck to you I say. Free is always good. I wouldn't know about spacing the trees, but, if you plant at similar spacings to what is already thriving I can't for the life of me see what the problem would be.

Cheers

[Cliff Rogers]

That is what I reckon.

I have found an article about farmed forest & they plant a 3m x 3m spacings for trees that are to be commercially harvested.

[Barry_White]

Just leave enough room to swing an axe or a chainsaw which ever you prefer. The question is Cliff are you going to live long enough to harvest them.

[Cliff Rogers]

Nope.

I am mainly interesting in getting rid of the small amount of pasture that has problems with declared weeds that we have to control.

If it is all under trees then we won't have a weed problem.

I also want to leave something for the future.

[John Saxton]

Nope.

I also want to leave something for the future.

Thanks Cliff in the future i know where there will be an ample supply of turning timber!

ONYA Cliff ya deserve a greenie for being green.

Cheers

[derekh]

Give Sean a call at Private Forestry Southern Queensland » Contact I'm sure he could assist with some good advice.

cheers

[whitewood]

Cliff it depends on what you want out of them. If you don't want timber and only pasture control then I suppose closer the better. 3 x 3 or even closer would work. If you want timber then they need to be spaced. My Paulownia were planted on a 5 x 5 metre grid. Once the crowns touched most of the growth went into the crowns and not the trunks. I had to thin every 3rd tree to correct the situation. At the time I thinned I was told that I should have planted on a 6 x 7 metre grid. Just food for thought as paulownias are different to Aust natives.

Whitewood

[Cliff Rogers]

Thank you all, we have started out on a 2m x 2m grid alternating between the Maples & the Quandongs as I expect the Quandongs to grow tall & spindly very quickly & mature faster.

If they are ever harvested, that will leave the Maples at 4m X 4m to mature.

[Clinton1]

Cliff,
a couple of points.

First is that your local DPI&F forestry person will be the font of all knowledge.
They will be able to advise you on the growth effects of a close planting (possibly retarding maturation) and a sparser planting (possibly resulting in short trunks and large crowns).
From my experience there is no 'rule of thumb', there is just a correct management regieme for each species.

It is worthwhile following the established method, as even a few hundred 'harvestable stems' are financially significant (ignoring the environmental effect of heathy trees)... and if you do it incorrectly you may end up with the pasture and weeds retarding early growth.

It seems that you would like a 'fast' canopy development to supress the pasture and weeds...sometime too close or too far spacing s lead to retarded growth and that means that you are left with a paddock that you need to apply a pasture and weed control program to. Of course, for the future a combination of fast canopy establishment and tall stems is good... some bugger should benefit from your plantings even if it is not you.

An example of incorrect spacings and management are the El Arish teak plots.
They were planted too far apart, and that meant the pasture supressed root development, resulting in 10 year plants at 1.5 meter height and no canopy... meaning you ended up with a paddock of weeds and a grid of stunted teak. Planting at a far closer spacing (and a weed control and thinning program) leads to the next paddock having a 5 - 7m high closed canopy and total undergrowth supression at 2 years.

Make your tax dollars work and pick the brain of your DPI&F person. You have already paid for it, after all.

Finally, good score and a greenie for planting trees (and I hope I'm the bugger that benefits from your plans!)

[Cliff Rogers]

Ta.

130 planted so far.

[Cliff Rogers]

Progress pic.

Ripped lines, planted, staked & mulched.

[Cliff Rogers]

The big one in the background is a QLD Maple, that is what I want the maples in this lot to grow into.

[Clinton1]

Good stuff Cliff.

Hope they boom over the wet. My paltry efforts (seed and seedling collection of silky oaks and putting into friends gardens) are pretty slack compared to your planting.

[Cliff Rogers]

Got another 203 in the ground today, that is more than 400 planted now, past half away.... I think I'll crawl into a corner die now.