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Treebeard
Member
| Joined: | Wed Feb 16th, 2005 |
| Location: | Costa Rica |
| Posts: | 2 |
| Mana: |    |
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Posted: Sat Mar 5th, 2005 07:25 pm |
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When you are making decisions about what trees you are going to plant this year, how do you decide?
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Fred Morgan
Sponsor
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Posted: Tue Mar 8th, 2005 02:00 pm |
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We try to factor in many things when making the decision of which trees to grow.
1. Does the tree do well here? Since our soil is so rich, there are trees that we shouldn't grow because they will produce inferior wood. We are careful to always check with our forestry engineer on any new specie.
2. What is the demand and value of the wood? For example, this year we had a craftsman come up and ask if we would start growing laurel since it is getting much harder to find.
3. How long does it take to grow? Even though we are wanting to plant (and are) planting trees that will take 50 years before they would be ready to harvest, the bulk of the trees are shorter lived and grow much more rapidly. This works well in transitioning from pasture to forest, since pioneer species tend to be those which grow quickly and are able to successfully compete with grass, etc.
4. Ease of care - One of our species - teak - requires a considerable amount of effort to grow good trees. Hector wishes all of our trees were Sura since they require about 1/3 as much effort to protect.
5. Scarcity - not only do we wish to protect the bio-diversity - but a rare wood is an expensive wood.
6. Dual usage trees - many trees suitable for lumber are also great wildlife trees. Almendro is a great wildlife tree, as well as a great lumber tree - it is also nearly gone. The only challenge will be how long it takes to grow. We will be planting it - but it is not expected to be harvested for many years.
7. Availability of seed or seedlings.
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JimC
Guest
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Posted: Sat Mar 12th, 2005 02:54 am |
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Thanks for the info on picking trees to plant .. very interesting. Of course, teak is looking really good right now, highly marketable and a proven grower in Costa Rica .. but, monoculture has its drawbacks. Presently we investors have a choice at Finca Leola of teak, mahogany, and sura.
There has been mention of tropical almond, but it apparently grows too slowly. There has also been mention of a tropical laurel, which sounds good if it is marketable enough.
Any chance of adding another species to the three offerings? Three choices are nice but more diversification is even better -- it seems.
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Fred Morgan
Sponsor
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Posted: Sat Mar 12th, 2005 09:33 am |
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Hi Jim,
Laurel is pretty sure to be on the list this year unless we don't succeed. The computer desk I work from, and much of the walls of the house I live in are of Laurel. It is a very nice, medium weight wood. Sort of a semi-hard.
It should be about 8 years to a good size log (12 to 14 inches or more). One thing that really appeals to me on it is besides scarcity, it is hard for many plantations to grow. It is very picky about soil conditions.
Also, I have a line on two species that someone just told me about - but didn't tell me the names - that have growth characteristices better than teak and better prices. And they are natives to Costa Rica.
I might also be trying a test plot of purple heart. Beautiful wood, and getting very, very rare. It normally grows on the Pacific side, but according to my forestry engineer - there really is no reason for it not to work on our plantation. If anyone wants to be part of that planting, I will reserve some substitute trees of another variety just in case they don't work out.
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Fred Morgan
Sponsor
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Posted: Tue Sep 27th, 2005 12:39 pm |
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One part of the puzzle in deciding which trees to plant is to figure out which trees do well on plantations. Because of this, we have hired Lucía to manage this for us.
We have planted several new species this year, including almendro, laurel, ron ron, roble corral.
Almendro actually is growing quite quickly and Lucia just finished an article for us on it. I will post the information up here.
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