In the early 1970s Abitibi-Price Inc. (API) and other forest industry companies in Ontario were becoming concerned that Ontario, the owner of their wood supply, was not adequately ensuring the sustainability of that wood supply.
Prof. Ken Armson had, for years, been advising J.D. Irving Ltd. in New Brunswick on their silviculture. He was hired to help organize the Lakehead Woodlands Division to embark on a recommended program of planting cutovers and past poorly regenerated areas on the API private land and to train the company’s foresters on soils, site interpretation and silviculture techniques. I was a lucky recipient of some of that training.
At the beginning, company foresters were familiar with seedlings grown at the MNR nursery in Thunder Bay and they were concerned about their quality and the MNR inability to guarantee delivery. Forest industrial involvement varied with government policy changes. The company’s latest experience was in the 1960s under the Ontario “Regeneration Agreements” using MNR bare root stock and the company was unhappy with what was available at that time. In 1975 they saw no current improvements.
The company could not accept not having healthy seedlings to its specifications and initially built two heated greenhouses at a logging camp. For two years the company grew its own seedlings (jack pine), hardened them off and over-wintered them under tree-crown cover at the planting site. Growing was subject to a rigid labour agreement and it began to look like acceptable quality and cost would be impossible to achieve due to jurisdictional, seniority, and scheduling constraints. During the second year the company canvassed local greenhouse growers.
The direct involvement of Dr. John Scarrett of the Canadian Forestry Service in Sault Ste. Marie, and later Dr. Steve Colombo of the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources enabled the addition of black spruce crops, new growing regimes, induced hardening off, new fertilizing schedules, cold storage schedules and pest and disease detection and control. Crops became designed to meet specific site needs.
Meanwhile the Ontario forest industry, for its own security, wanted more direct involvement in forest renewal on Crown land
I was assigned to the Spruce River Forest as divisional forester responsible for forest management on the division’s public licences and private land at the Lakehead Division “to make it work.” Management gave us approximately three year’s grace to become relatively successful and it then began demanding cost control.
Grower Herman Van Duyn, Thunder Bay, in my opinion, kept the Ontario private seedling growers moving ahead with his determined independent investment in his business. It was his nature to be happy that he could help the others.
During 1985, the herbicide, Roundup, was approved and we applied it to control the brush and grass. We were a bit too early in the season (not hardened off) and some seedling damage occurred. Many were set back for a whole year. They recovered the next year and today, at 25 years old, that stand could be harvested for pulpwood. Most trees in the fully stocked stand exceed minimum merchantability for local pulpwood and by my estimate stand volume is approximately fifty cubic metres per hectare. I estimate that by age 40 it will well exceed 200 cubic metres per hectare.
Early on we learned that seedlings planted in the bottom of a scalp or furrow were slow growers and tended to develop linear roots or roots only on one side. We learned this by systematically excavating problem and healthy seedlings and comparing their roots. Roots that reached favourable nutrients grew and those in the bottom of the scalp or furrow died or stagnated. As trees aged we continued such excavations and noticed that trees with less than symmetrical root patterns became unstable. If there were a number of such challenged trees, seldom more than five in a row, they tended to all topple from wind or snow at the same time.
I predict an insignificant impact on stand yield as neighboring trees, soon utilize the available space.
Forty-five year old black spruce in a spacing trial at the former MNR Thunder Bay tree nursery demonstrated that 3.6-metre-spaced trees form a closed canopy stand with volumes of 148 cubic metres/ha. These stands are now 58 years old but I don’t have the current volume. I estimate it to be over 150 cubic metres/ha and over our initial target. Our plantations are at two-metre spacing so every second row of trees could be lost and the plantation would still possibly meet initial yield targets.
Probably the reason that our stands have a low number of such trees is the intense effort we and our contractors put into seedling and planting quality.
Some jack pine trees also have weak roots. The species does not respond as well to deeper planting and growth may even be depressed by deep planting.
During the early years (early 1980s) we were also too severe with our site preparation on some soils. It took a while to realize that for black spruce a shallow scalp with mixing of mineral and organic materials was enough. On some sandy soils with a thin cap of finer soil roughing or thinning of the organic layer is enough. Sometimes the deeper scalps or furrows offered too tempting an opportunity to easily and quickly plant a seedling. It was difficult to convince planters to plant “high and to the side” in the mixture of soils. In those situations there may be poorer root systems.
I am proud to know that attention to plantation development and continuous learning enabled API foresters and contractors to continue making improvements long after I retired.◊
My Experience with the Paperpot Container System
as an employee of Lakehead Woodlands Division, Abitibi-Price Inc.
Mac Squires RPF, Divisional Forester, Retired
(Please note that the following is my personal opinion and not necessarily that of my former employer or fellow employees and I have no hard data currently at my disposal.)
This information is written as answers to a series of questions posed by J. Michael O’Neill RPF(Ret). The numbers and questions are his.
- How did you or your company come to decide upon the paperpot container system? Can I assume that Abitibi only planted bare root before 1983? Did Abitibi try any other container before the paperpot or consider any other containers before opting for the paperpot?
Answer:
In the early 1970s Abitibi-Price Inc. (API) and other forest industry companies in Ontario were becoming concerned that Ontario, the owner of their wood supply, was not adequately ensuring the sustainability of that wood supply.
API had 200,000 hectares of private land northwest of Thunder Bay. The company hired Prof. Ken Armson of U of T to make recommendations on the management of that land. Prof. Armson had, for years, been advising J.D. Irving Ltd. in New Brunswick on their silviculture. Familiar with the Irving success API asked him to propose how the land should be managed to increase the growth of the forest. His 1975 report to the Board of Directors was accepted. He was hired to help organize the Lakehead Woodlands Division (LWD) to embark on a recommended program of planting cutovers and past poorly regenerated areas (NSR) on the private land and to train the company’s foresters on soils, site interpretation and silviculture techniques. I was a lucky recipient of some of that training.
At the beginning company foresters were familiar with seedlings grown at the MNR nursery in Thunder Bay and they were concerned about their quality and the MNR inability to guarantee delivery. Ontario’s commitment to tree planting was variable over the 20th century. Industrial involvement varied with government policy changes. I refer you to Dr. Mark Kuhlberg, Assoc. Prof. of History at Laurentian University, mkuhlberg@laurentian.ca , as well as Prof. Armson, for details on that variability and industry response. Consequently, immediately prior to 1975 API had no involvement with tree planting and was not using seedlings of any kind. The company’s latest experience was in the 1960s under the Ontario “Regeneration Agreements” using MNR bare root stock and the company was unhappy with what was available at that time. In 1975 they saw no current improvements.
The company could not accept not having healthy seedlings to its specifications available on schedule so decided it had to grow its own seedlings. A variety of containers were looked at. All but one had several short comings as the company’s foresters saw them. Spencer Lemaire was an example. The seedlings available in Ontario in this system were too variable, chlorotic, subject to desiccation, small and weak. Handling was less convenient and the system around the container had not been developed adequately. The company relied heavily on the experience of Irving in N.B (Peter Ethridge, former Silviculture Forester could help. No known address). No better example of successful reforestation in Eastern Canada could be found and a decision was made to follow their lead. Prof. Armson was familiar with the high quality bare root seedlings and the paperpot container system (PCS) seedlings that Irving was using successfully.
The Canadian Forestry Service in Sault Ste. Marie cooperated by making Dr. John Scarratt ( jscarrat@soonet.ca )available to assist us in learning his techniques of growing seedlings in greenhouses. He had been collaborating with Lannon of Finland who had developed a seeding line for Japanese paperpots and had developed a successful growing regime for the PCS. Dr. Scarratt’s seedlings were healthy, uniform and as had J.D. Irving, he had demonstrated high survival after planting. Relative to bare root seedlings they were easy to handle and could be over-wintered outdoors and until needed for planting. Abitibi liked what it was hearing and seeing and decided to go with the PCS.
An efficient and manageable system, seedling survival in plantations, and early plantation growth were the basis for the choice. API foresters were confident they could develop the system to meet future cost control needs. At the same time that they were gearing up the private land program they were looking forward to soon possibly assuming responsibility for renewal on public lands. The company’s performance on its own land would be an indicator of its ability to manage public land. Ontarians were already critical of MNR’s forest management performance and heavy mortality in plantations.
API foresters believed that cost had to initially take a back seat in their decisions. They and company management believed that they had a very short window in which to convince government and a critical public that they could effectively manage the forest in company and their interests and maintain yield. On those factors the PCS came out ahead of all other known and available systems at the time. The expected high survival rates of the PCS should help them gain public credibility.
The company initially built two heated greenhouses at a logging camp and for two years grew its own seedlings (jack pine), hardened them off and over-wintered them under tree-crown cover at the planting site. Growing was subject to a rigid labour agreement and it began to look like acceptable quality and cost would be impossible to achieve due to jurisdictional, seniority, and scheduling constraints. During the second year the company canvassed local greenhouse growers and found two that were willing to enter short term agreements to grow small experimental crops for the third season of the program. To make a long story shorter they were both successful and eventually signed five-year agreements. Under the agreements API capitalized new greenhouses designed for tree seedling growing plus a Lannon Seeding Line. Acceptable seedlings were grown from the first year forward. The direct involvement of Dr. John Scarrett and later Dr. Steve Colombo, (807) 343-4000 enabled the addition of black spruce crops, new growing regimes, induced hardening off, new fertilizing schedules, cold storage schedules and pest and disease detection and control. Crops became designed to meet specific site needs.
Meanwhile the Ontario forest industry, for its own security, wanted more direct involvement in forest renewal on Crown land. The Ontario Forest Industries Assoc. (OFIA) began talking to the government of the day resulting in the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) commissioning Prof. Ken Armson (mamkaa@sympatico.ca ) to investigate ways in which that could be accomplished. Prof. Armson received the cooperation of the industry and his report recommended the transfer of renewal responsibilities to the industry and the payment by the Crown of costs in return for certain guarantees. The industry gave his report their support. Prof. Armson was hired by the province to lead negotiations for them and API volunteered to be the company that negotiated the first and pattern agreement.
At this point in 1978 I became involved when I was transferred from API’s operations in Newfoundland where I had helped initiate an extensive stand-spacing program in the island’s overstocked naturally regenerating stands. From then I began to have some influence on the direction and delivery of the API and Ontario programs. I was privileged to be assigned as a junior member of our three-man negotiating team with the company chief forester leading negotiations. Immediately after negotiating the first agreement for the Iroquois Falls Forest we began negotiating a second for API, what became the Spruce River Forest at Lakehead Woodlands.
I was then assigned to the Spruce River Forest as divisional forester responsible for forest management on the division’s public licences and private land at the Lakehead Division “to make it work.” based on what had been negotiated. Management gave us approximately three year’s grace to become relatively successful and it then began demanding cost control. We were encouraged that with cost control they continued to emphasize quality control. I well remember spending one uncomfortable day in 1982 with our Vice President of Woodlands and the Woodland’s Ontario/Manitoba General Manager. They had heard that we were “throwing away” (culling) healthy seedlings that the public had paid us for. I had to take them to the bush and show them what we were doing. They easily understood that, yes, we should only plant healthy seedlings, but public complaints had reached them that we were throwing away healthy seedlings. They viewed our cull piles and systematically queried the reason for culling individual seedlings. They accepted my explanations, but demanded that I get the cull piles cleaned up and remove any eyesores that might encourage public distrust. They then moved to the plantations and again systematically asked why individual seedlings were going to survive and criticized many that had poor survival chances. I was advised that they would be back and wanted anything that was wrong righted. They were and it was.
I quickly learned that accountability for success or failure clears the mind, stimulates action, boosts moral, and builds self respect and pride of accomplishment. I believe these opinions expressed here will verify that indeed I do possess that pride. Be aware that intense pride sometimes limits objectivity so I strongly advise that for the credibility of your article that you do get other opinions.
- Do you recall if the paperpot plants were expensive compared to bare root? Was price of this container system the deciding factor?
Answer:
No, the price of this container system didn’t even figure in the initial deciding factors. In fact it was several years later when other systems began to become competitive in producing quality stock that price really began to influence our decisions (year three into the Spruce River Forest i.e. 1983 and seven years after the initial decision). From the beginning API was determined to produce the highest quality seedlings available and had decided before embarking on the private land program that when a system was chosen the company would stick with that system and make it work. Indecision and switching systems were seen as ways to waste resources and get lost in the weeds. I credit that resolve to our then Chief Forester, Duncan Naysmith (now deceased).
To the best of my knowledge and memory bare root and Spencer Lemaire planting stock would have been available for free, or a token price, from the MNR at the time. To get paperpot planting stock the company would have to either grow its own or hire someone to do it for them at considerable extra cost.
Growing paperpot seedlings was not expensive compared to bare root, but exact figures have long since escaped me. My vague memory has API cost of paperpots at contract price approximately $170/thousand plus the capital write-off over five years. That write-off approximated $40/thousand. MNR reported costs to produce approximated $300 for bare root and similar for containers at the time (I suggest that you not use those figures as my memory is very foggy on them and I always questioned the real-world validity of MNR production costs). Certainly today container seedlings are much cheaper than bare root with the margin depending on stock specifications being grown. Current container contract prices of $140/thousand, all inclusive, are available locally. Kevin Vandyn of Hills Greenhouses/Boreal Nurseries of Murillo with his father Herman, can offer reliable comparisons of cost of production with paperpots, various configurations of styro blocks, Jiffy plugs and maybe today various other systems (sorry but I can’t guarantee their willingness to give exact costs but I feel certain they will be interested in your article and help). They are a dynamic duo and Herman, in my opinion has kept the Ontario private growers moving ahead with his determined independent investment in his business. He was impatient with government red tape. While others waited for government to subsidize innovation he invested his own money, got the best help available and moved ahead. The others followed with government subsidy, and capitalized on his developments. It was his nature to be happy that he could help the others. Although he is now retired he remains active and is a member of the Abitibi-Bowater Black Spruce Forest (BSF) Citizens Advisory Committee. The BSF is the old Spruce River Forest now merged with the former Bowater Black Sturgeon Forest.
- What planting tool was used to plant paperpots? Do you recall any problems with handling or planting with this system?
Answer:
The Potti Putki (PP) (I’m no longer sure of the spelling) was the first planting tool used. It was successful until a better method was demonstrated. Problems encountered included, low mechanical availability due mainly to spring breakage on the release trigger, inability to penetrate firm soil, low ability to customize the planting hole. I add though that paperpots were (are) very forgiving of poor planting holes. I have seen successful trees develop from stashed seedlings left lying flat on the ground under slash. I have also seen a tray of paperpots that was left suspended a foot above the ground on logging slash extend roots to penetrate the ground and survive for a year.
The PP was phased out after 1983 when we first contracted Brinkman to do part of our planting. He and his people quickly demonstrated that their planting spades, when used by trained and experienced planters, were still a superior tool, even for container planting. The spade enabled custom planting chance creation under almost all circumstances whereas the PP had limitations. It probably took another three years to completely phase out the PP as we maintained a union tree plant for several additional years. They too gradually adjusted to the spade.
The PP worked best on wet peaty soils and was used for several additional years at out sister location at the Iroquois Falls Forest in the Ontario claybelt.
- Were you satisfied with the early growth performance of paperpot plants?
Answer:
Early growth performance was acceptable from the beginning. Well-planted, well- balanced PCS seedlings consistently doubled height during the same season planted. Some of the plantations that developed from out first seedlings grown in the company greenhouses in 1977 and 1978 are impressive. Unfortunately poor choice of seed source has resulted in some poor tree form. Yes we had problems, but by strict adherence to seedling standards that we developed based on field trials, culling at the greenhouses and in the field only acceptable seedlings tended to be planted. Meanwhile the PCS, by virtue of its moisture holding capacity, helped seedlings through rough handling, crude storage and inadequate watering in the field prior to being planted.
One problem specific to the PCS is they are difficult to dry out enough in the greenhouse to drought stress the seedlings. That was necessary in developing tight root plugs. That was a perpetual frustration to the greenhouse growers as we demanded seedlings to spec. Occasionally part of a crop reached the field with weak root systems barely able to retain a plug. That required a field meeting with the grower and planting supervisors to assess whether the seedlings would be used and whether the grower would be paid. The weak roots syndrome was mostly confined to black spruce. Jack pine with its coarser more aggressive roots quickly overcame that condition. The difficulty of drying out the containers also handicapped our development of different growing regimes. The PCS was a “one size fits all” system when it came to root plugs. It was the primary reason that we moved from the PCS to the SCS in the late 1980s. By that time the SCS was more developed with its increased flexibility and opportunity for grade and cost improvement, and was now superior to the PCS.
PCS plants gave us good early growth equal to or better than any other system available to us during the 1980s. The proof of that is visible on approximately 250 square kilometers of forest north of Thunder Bay. In my opinion the best proof is a two square kilometer stand planted in 1983 by company union labour. All experts who viewed the seedlings as they left the greenhouse for the field predicted total loss after planting. Most who saw the seedlings after planting predicted they would not survive the first winter.
The black-spruce seedlings had been allowed to grow an additional two weeks before shut down at the greenhouses. They exceeded our height specs by several inches and had small stem caliper. They were whips (stories around the crop developed into an urban legend that API demanded tall wimpy stock). They were, however, blessed with a good root plug (many judged “root bound”, the subject of another urban legend). They had been grown to plant on an NSR on a rich site overgrown by brush and bluejoint grass (Calamagrostis canadensis). Roundup had not yet been approved for use and the seedlings were expected to be buried by grass that first winter. We decided to take a chance based on the healthy root plugs and moisture holding capacity of the paperpot. They weren’t buried. The grass actually supported them during the summer as they gained caliper. They were so sturdy that we had 95% survival that first winter and they never looked back. During 1985 Roundup was approved and we applied it to control the brush and grass. We were a bit too early in the season (not hardened off) and some seedling damage occurred. Many were set back for a whole year. They recovered the next year and today, at 25 years old, that stand could be harvested for pulpwood. Most trees in the fully stocked stand exceed minimum merchantability for local pulpwood and by my estimate stand volume is approximately fifty cubic metres per hectare. I estimate that by age 40 it will well exceed 200 cubic metres per hectare. Practically all paperpot plantations meet our initial targets in stocking and yield at current age (these are my estimates based on frequent aerial and ground visits to 2005 and ground visits since, during which I “eyeball” tree size and stand volume). I chose the above example because it is easily accessible, well written up in witness statements to the EA hearings on timber management and although one of our best stands not much better than our average for PCS spruce stands. These are my babies and my legacy. William Towill at MNR (807) 939-2501 can help with hard yield data.
- Dirk mentioned he and his brother actually pulled a 20-year tree out of the ground. I find this amazing and I would like to hear your version of this event.
My Version:
Yes, Dirk and Wieb did pull a 20-year old tree out of the ground on the 20th anniversary of their beginning to plant with us and there were more that could be pulled out. That was actually the 27th anniversary of API planting paperpots. I too have pulled 20-year and older trees out of the ground. There are lots of stories about such experiences from Finland to here that, with all due respect to Dirk, have morphed into urban legends of whole stands with no roots. Dirk has seen a large percentage of our plantations several years after planting and I have accompanied him on many looks back. We both have intense interest and pride in our plantations. We both cringe at the loss of one of our babies. I do believe, though, that the numbers of trees so affected is less than 1% and paperpot containers are not the primary cause of such root problems.
The company had heard of such problems from suppliers of competing systems when it was considering the PCS. The highly successful and legendary J.D. Irving plantations, however, convinced API that such problems were not necessarily the case. In subsequent visits we saw no evidence of the problem there and they were doing comparative studies. My memory says that the trials that we observed there were demonstrating that paperpots were performing equal to or better than bareroot stock. I don’t have any recent knowledge if that difference continued. The province of New Brunswick under Neils Krieberg, also had extensive experience with PCS and other systems and gave us helpful insight as we progressed during the early 1980s.
I am not aware of a single one of our plantations, paperpot or otherwise, that has been severely affected by this phenomenon ( Nearly all, even today, maintain 85+% survival (My ocular estimate based on extensive viewing into 2008). There are some stands that have small openings that were obviously created by toppling caused by weak root systems, some caused by root rot. But I also see those in bare root, and even SCS plantations. These small openings tend to follow a line of trees as if they were planted by the same planter and, or, had the same furrow or scalp line.
Early on we learned that seedlings planted in the bottom of a scalp or furrow were slow growers and tended to develop linear roots or roots only on one side. We learned this by systematically excavating problem and healthy seedlings and comparing their roots. Roots that reached favourable nutrients grew and those in the bottom of the scalp or furrow died or stagnated. As trees aged we continued such excavations and noticed that trees with less than symmetrical root patterns became unstable. If there were a number of such challenged trees, seldom more than five in a row, they tended to all topple from wind or snow at the same time. Some were lucky enough to have sturdy supporting neighbours that kept them standing until Dirk or I came along to pull them out or they became the under-story and died. I predict an insignificant impact on stand yield as neighboring trees, soon utilize the available space. Thirty-seven year old black spruce in a spacing trial at the former MNR Thunder Bay tree nursery demonstrated that 3.6-metre-spaced trees form a closed canopy stand with volumes of 88 cubic metres/ha. These stands are now 58 years old but I don’t have the current volume. I estimate it to be over 150 cubic metres/ha. and over our initial target. Our plantations are at two-metre spacing so every second row of trees could be lost and the plantation would still possibly meet initial yield targets.
Probably the reason that our stands have a low number of such trees is the intense effort we and our contractors put into seedling and planting quality. Our early trials showed that black spruce planted so that there was about two centimeters of soil or duff over the top of the paperpot had much better root systems. In the beginning we instructed our planters to ensure the top of the pot was covered by two centimeters. Initially the intent was to prevent wicking and drying out but we soon discovered the second advantage offered by this practice. Adventitious roots quickly developed above the paperpot and soon became the primary feeder and support roots. The roots in the pot eventually died. This phenomenon is also observable in SCS and bareroot with black spruce. The species roots best in duff or the interface of duff and mineral soil. This occurs over only 2-3 centimetres of depth so that a 10 centimetre plug has more (deeper) roots than are necessary for the species. Abitibi-Bowater is currently planting black spruce with only 5 cm-long plugs and getting excellent success. I speculate that the death of the deeper roots may even offer infection courts for root rots (Armelaria) in later years. This too is present in most plantations but again is not overly significant. I consider practically all of our plantations of the past 28 years to be fully stocked to the planted species.
Some jack pine trees also have weak roots. The species does not respond as well to deeper planting and growth may even be depressed by deep planting. However, its more aggressive roots penetrate the paper more readily and they put down a tap root through the open end of the pot. I am not aware that weak roots are more extensive in pine than they are in spruce paperpots. Exceptions are our first two year’s plantations, which were all pine. They do demonstrate weaker roots and more variable growth. That was before we developed satisfactory seed sourcing, greenhouse regimes, seedling culling, and planting quality.
During the early years (early 1980s) we were also too severe with our site preparation on some soils. It took a while to realize that for black spruce a shallow scalp with mixing of mineral and organic materials was enough. On some sandy soils with a thin cap of finer soil roughing or thinning of the organic layer is enough. Sometimes the deeper scalps or furrows offered too tempting an opportunity to easily and quickly plant a seedling. It was difficult to convince planters to plant “high and to the side” in the mixture of soils. In those situations there may be poorer root systems, not as a result of the paper pot but more of our poor site preparation and planting control.
By year five (1981), despite the above, we were consistently creating plantations of jack pine and black spruce in paper pots that today are the envy of many in the industry. I am proud to know that attention to plantation development and continuous learning enabled API foresters and contractors to continue making improvements long after I retired.
- There have been all kinds of research papers about root deformation and instability especially with jack pine grown in first generation containers like the paperpot. I would love to learn your thoughts on this.
My Response:
I guess my thoughts on this one have already been expressed. They tend to sum up to this way. Planting stock of all kinds have tended to be the scapegoats for poor practices in choosing seedling specifications per site, nursery management, seedling storage and handling, culling (nursery and field), site preparation and planting. Sometimes too more attention should be paid to possible flaws in experimental design and practices. The same practices that caused problems in commercial plantations have been present but unrecognized in some experiments/trials of various systems that have condemned a system or shown no clear differences. If that were not the case then, based on some research reports, in my opinion, we should have few, if any, successful PCS plantations to show.
- Specifically, I would like to know what has happened to those early paperpot plantations. Have they all toppled over? Is current growth and yield not meeting expectations? Is a paperpot plantation any different than a plantation started out as bare root, or in any other container system?
My Response:
I have also answered this in my ramblings. I again refer you to William Towill of the MNR, (bill.towill@mnr.gov.on.ca) who can lead you to people on his staff capable of providing hard data on yield of plantations originating from various planting stock systems. Some of his data comes from API’s plantations. I repeat though that current growth and yield from both PCS and SCS appears to be exceeding our initial targets. We targeted 140 cubic metres per hectare at age 40. I see few stands that, in my opinion, will not meet that target. We did use small amounts of bare root stock on our private land over the years. My observations of some of those, as recently as last fall, show that plantations of bare root stock appear similar to adjacent PCS and SCS plantations of the same age.
Malcolm (Mac) Squires, RPF
In the early 1970s Abitibi-Price Inc. (API) and other forest industry companies in Ontario were becoming concerned that Ontario, the owner of their wood supply, was not adequately ensuring the sustainability of that wood supply.
Prof. Ken Armson had, for years, been advising J.D. Irving Ltd. in New Brunswick on their silviculture. He was hired to help organize the Lakehead Woodlands Division to embark on a recommended program of planting cutovers and past poorly regenerated areas on the API private land and to train the company’s foresters on soils, site interpretation and silviculture techniques. I was a lucky recipient of some of that training.
At the beginning, company foresters were familiar with seedlings grown at the MNR nursery in Thunder Bay and they were concerned about their quality and the MNR inability to guarantee delivery. Forest industrial involvement varied with government policy changes. The company’s latest experience was in the 1960s under the Ontario "Regeneration Agreements" using MNR bare root stock and the company was unhappy with what was available at that time. In 1975 they saw no current improvements.
The company could not accept not having healthy seedlings to its specifications and initially built two heated greenhouses at a logging camp.For two years the company grew its own seedlings (jack pine), hardened them off and over-wintered them under tree-crown cover at the planting site. Growing was subject to a rigid labour agreement and it began to look like acceptable quality and cost would be impossible to achieve due to jurisdictional, seniority, and scheduling constraints. During the second year the company canvassed local greenhouse growers.
The direct involvement of Dr. John Scarrett of the Canadian Forestry Service in Sault Ste. Marie, and later Dr. Steve Colombo of the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources enabled the addition of black spruce crops, new growing regimes, induced hardening off, new fertilizing schedules, cold storage schedules and pest and disease detection and control. Crops became designed to meet specific site needs.
Meanwhile the Ontario forest industry, for its own security, wanted more direct involvement in forest renewal on Crown land.
I was assigned to the Spruce River Forest as divisional forester responsible for forest management on the division’s public licences and private land at the Lakehead Division "to make it work." Management gave us approximately three year’s grace to become relatively successful and it then began demanding cost control.
Grower Herman Van Duyn, Thunder Bay, in my opinion, kept the Ontario private seedling growers moving ahead with his determined independent investment in his business. It was his nature to be happy that he could help the others.
During 1985, the herbicide, Roundup, was approved and we applied it to control the brush and grass. We were a bit too early in the season (not hardened off) and some seedling damage occurred. Many were set back for a whole year. They recovered the next year and today, at 25 years old, that stand could be harvested for pulpwood. Most trees in the fully stocked stand exceed minimum merchantability for local pulpwood and by my estimate stand volume is approximately fifty cubic metres per hectare. I estimate that by age 40 it will well exceed 200 cubic metres per hectare.
Early on we learned that seedlings planted in the bottom of a scalp or furrow were slow growers and tended to develop linear roots or roots only on one side. We learned this by systematically excavating problem and healthy seedlings and comparing their roots. Roots that reached favourable nutrients grew and those in the bottom of the scalp or furrow died or stagnated. As trees aged we continued such excavations and noticed that trees with less than symmetrical root patterns became unstable. If there were a number of such challenged trees, seldom more than five in a row, they tended to all topple from wind or snow at the same time.
I predict an insignificant impact on stand yield as neighboring trees, soon utilize the available space.
Forty-five year old black spruce in a spacing trial at the former MNR Thunder Bay tree nursery demonstrated that 3.6-metre-spaced trees form a closed canopy stand with volumes of 148 cubic metres/ha. These stands are now 58 years old but I don’t have the current volume. I estimate it to be over 150 cubic metres/ha and over our initial target. Our plantations are at two-metre spacing so every second row of trees could be lost and the plantation would still possibly meet initial yield targets.
Probably the reason that our stands have a low number of such trees is the intense effort we and our contractors put into seedling and planting quality.
Some jack pine trees also have weak roots. The species does not respond as well to deeper planting and growth may even be depressed by deep planting.
During the early years (early 1980s) we were also too severe with our site preparation on some soils. It took a while to realize that for black spruce a shallow scalp with mixing of mineral and organic materials was enough. On some sandy soils with a thin cap of finer soil roughing or thinning of the organic layer is enough. Sometimes the deeper scalps or furrows offered too tempting an opportunity to easily and quickly plant a seedling. It was difficult to convince planters to plant "high and to the side" in the mixture of soils. In those situations there may be poorer root systems.
I am proud to know that attention to plantation development and continuous learning enabled API foresters and contractors to continue making improvements long after I retired.◊