June is off to a great start! Looking back at notes from last spring, May went down in the history books as one of the wettest on record. May 2020 might have it beat!  As we transition into summer, we are happy to see some sunshine and dry days to get our field work done. Our Above Ground Holding Yard is well stocked, and we continue to ship out trees daily for customer projects. In the field, we are on to staking, pruning, mowing, and spraying. The nursery is already shaping up, and it looks like our trees are off to a fantastic growing season.

Our first order of action has been spraying & mowing. We work hard to keep our pest & weed populations under control. This time of year it is extremely important to maintain the clean trees and fields in a timely manner. By doing this we can successfully grow a healthy crop year after year. A little bit of work on the front end  prevents a lot of work later on. We are happy with the progress we are making so far in the fields to keep weeds and pests out of our fields!

At the same time, we are starting our pruning & structure work in the nursery. Depending on the age or variety of tree, we have different techniques we are working on right now. First, we decided to tackle pruning our new 2020 liner crop. We do initial clean up of branches, structure work, and canopy reduction so that the trees can get off to the proper start growing. We also re-straighten after rains and adjust heights for ones that may have gotten planted too low or too high on planting day. These extra steps now ensure the trees will flourish while here in our fields. Next, we move into 2nd & 3rd year crops.  More aggressive growers, like Elms & Locust are usually first on our list. These are already putting on tremendous growth which is great.  However, we want to stay ahead of that and make sure we keep the canopy and trunk in check with each other. Leader work, canopy reduction, and staking are important in the development of quality trees. This kind of field work will continue on all summer. If you want to come out for a visit we can give you some pruners and you can spend a day with the trees!

Below are a few pics of some spring field work in action. Enjoy!