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Planting Trees
I plant between 500-700 tree seedlings each year. Over the past 5 years I’ve figured out the best way to plant large amounts of trees. I get my trees from my state’s forestry service at a reduced cost (.10 cents per tree). Your state probably has a similar program. Do a search on Google for “forestry service” and your state and contact them. You can also buy them at a reduced cost over your typical garden center from
Musser Forests. Normally Musser’s has trees at 10% of the cost of places like Home Depot or Lowes.
 I’ve found that to plant seedlings it is essential that you have a KBC Planting bar. This is a steel bar that you insert into the ground and wiggle back and forth to make hole for the seedling. Someone holds the seedling in place and then you insert the tool next to the hole and
wiggle again to close the hole with the tree. It can be purchased at
Forestry Suppliers.
 Plant the trees in managed rows. If you randomly plant trees you will lose track of them. With that said you should first use RoundUp vegetation killer to kill the grass where you will plant your trees. I spray RoundUp the entire row 4 feet wide. Let the grass and other vegetation die over the next few days. After the grass is dead use a tiller to till the entire row. Let the ground sit for two weeks and use RoundUp to kill any new vegetation that grows. You till the ground so that you can use the KBC planting bar easily otherwise you will constantly be jumping on it to get it to go into the ground.
 You can also do managed thickets once you get the hang of things. Plant bushy, low growing trees such as bristly locust 4'X4' apart. They will grow in and form a dense mat of trees.
Once you plant your trees you should fertilize them and place tree protectors around them. The tree protectors and seedling fertilizer can also be purchased at Forestry Suppliers.
It is important to make sure that you keep the area around your trees free of any vegetation for the next
2-4 years while they get established.
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