Soaking up Summer at SGN Trees

SGN Oak Pruning

Summer didn’t waste anytime arriving at the nursery this season! We went straight from our crazy busy spring season right into long summer days in the field. The weather has been beautiful – maybe a little too hot and dry somedays. But periodic rainfalls bring the much needed relief our trees need this time of year, and they are responding well. The growth in the field so far this season has been TREEmendous (sorry – couldn’t resist)!

Summer field work lately has consisted of un-staking 2nd & 3rd year trees, letting them “flop” around a bit, pruning the tops to reduce canopy weight, re-staking as needed. We are completing our Oaks blocks this week which take the most time of any genus we grow. Here is a link to some videos we wrote about the Oak pruning process in the past:

Our Oak blocks currently look AMAZING! We couldn’t be happier with the crops we have coming on for the next few seasons. Here is a video clip of our staking machine in action. Becky’s Dad built this custom staking add-on to our tractor. It has staked thousands of trees over the years for us and works perfect for what we need!

Staking SGN Oaks Video

For more videos throughout the season, check out our Instagram page @springgrovenursery

Besides working on Oaks, we have been busy on some Maples, Honeylocust, Hackberry, Spruce, and Pine – basically whatever is telling us the loudest that day it needs attention!

In addition to pruning, we have been working on general farm maintenance cleaning up the nursery with mowing & spraying. We are currently putting in some new drainage and gravel in our loading areas. The areas that we finished harvesting have all been worked up and planted with a soybean cover crop. The crops is up throughout the nursery and it looks great! Our ideal rotation would be to let the ground rest at least 1 year before re-planting to trees, ideally 2 years.

In the middle of nursery growing season, we have been taking care of our garden at home and getting lots of time with our new grand-daughter, Fern. Fern and her folks are in the process of moving back to our home town so we couldn’t be happier! Fern will gets lots of time on the farm with us to grow along with our trees!

Here are some pictures from around the farm these last few weeks: