Adding pines into a deciduous forest....

I was wondering about the pros and cons to incorporating pines into a mostly hardwood forest. The terrain is rolling hills, we have many north, south,east, west, and everything between facing hillsides on just 27 acres. So that should say something about the terrain. But for the most part the largest elevation change is maybe 100 feet so not too crazy. The wooded area I'm wanting to intermix the pines into have mostly oak, poplar, walnut, hickory, blk cherry, sassafras, sycamore and some other species that arnt too sought after, but for the most part oak, hickory, and poplars are dominating the area. The specific site I'm wanting to begin on is north east ward facing so from all my reading that's the best site for lumber production. So far there are many sizes of future timber, many 6-15" diameter trees, few larger ones left from previous logging that are above the 24" diameter range. And way too many little saplings, sticker bushes and vines between it all. Which before I begin to incorporate the pines, I want to burn off the under brush at least 2 years in a row, maybe 3, to really weed out the crap from growing under the canopy. Then I could come threw and plant my pines on as best I can contour lines to stabilize the hills better. My only concern is how long would I have to let the new pines grow before I could do another prescribed burn without hurting them. This area is not really bush hoggable so burning is my only upkeep option. But I dont really see it getting outta hand because of the existing canopy and it's a northeast facing slope. So once it gets burnt 2-3 years back to back to back the vines stickers and most saplings should be killed off and be mostly maintenance free for the next 5-10 years at least for my pines to get established without unwanted saplings, vines, and stickers getting into the way of things. There is a fairly large natural pine stand on forestry property a few hollers over, but that is mostly a monoculture of pines and very few other species. So I'm not totally changing the natural ecosystem in the area by adding the pines, we just dont have any evergreens becides eastern red cedars in our forest. I currently have loblolly and scotch pine saplings about 2 years old (16inches) in pots that we are planting in a few spots but I have alot of seeds for those and soon to come eastern white pines, douglas firs (if they will grow here), and blue spruces (again if they'll grow here) to do my inter mixing with. I know southeast Missouri in the rolling hills near current river area has alot of pines mixed with oaks which makes the forest look so awesome in the fall. If anyone has info on pros or cons to intermixing evergreens into a deciduous forest that would be great.

Thanks,
Mike

I'm not really understanding what you are after. A sterile woodland floor with tall timber trees? That's what happens here if you let nature take it's course the big trees shade out everything over time.  If this is what you want all you need to do is wait, and go in with a bow saw and cut any saplings down that are crowded. To plant pines you'll need to make large holes for them which will include cutting some of the larger trees from the sound of it. As to burning pine, Scots pine will not be burnable for over 40 years. they don't drop their lower branches before that, remember they are not from forests that burn so they haven't evolved to deal with it. Mixed natural forests do exist in some places, but they seem very rare, the only ones I can recall are the mixed pine and silverbirch of the far north.

Do the forests in your area naturally burn? I've never heard of burning hardwood forests. Why would the canopy stop the fire? In my eyes it's more likely to encourage it?
You are not going to kill perennial plants with a burn like that, nor by bush hogging.  Either option will make the "weeds" smaller each year but it won't kill them. And saplings of course will come back the very next year, sycamore can get 10ft in their second year and don't stop after that either (I should know I have way to many of the horrible things)

I think you're looking for a shortcut that doesn't exist, of course I could be wrong, just because no one sets fire to broadleaved woodland here doesn't mean it can't be done.

Skandi Rogers wrote:I'm not really understanding what you are after. A sterile woodland floor with tall timber trees? That's what happens here if you let nature take it's course the big trees shade out everything over time.  If this is what you want all you need to do is wait, and go in with a bow saw and cut any saplings down that are crowded. To plant pines you'll need to make large holes for them which will include cutting some of the larger trees from the sound of it. As to burning pine, Scots pine will not be burnable for over 40 years. they don't drop their lower branches before that, remember they are not from forests that burn so they haven't evolved to deal with it. Mixed natural forests do exist in some places, but they seem very rare, the only ones I can recall are the mixed pine and silverbirch of the far north.

Do the forests in your area naturally burn? I've never heard of burning hardwood forests. Why would the canopy stop the fire? In my eyes it's more likely to encourage it?
You are not going to kill perennial plants with a burn like that, nor by bush hogging.  Either option will make the "weeds" smaller each year but it won't kill them. And saplings of course will come back the very next year, sycamore can get 10ft in their second year and don't stop after that either (I should know I have way to many of the horrible things)

I think you're looking for a shortcut that doesn't exist, of course I could be wrong, just because no one sets fire to broadleaved woodland here doesn't mean it can't be done.

well I live in southern illinois, and our forest service does prescription burns all the time in the forest during the fall or in the spring before leaving occurs. And I am here to tell you that it WORKS! And yes I am after a clean forest floor, meaning zero stickers, minimal vines, minimal saplings and the ability to maneuver threw the woods as I please without getting bit by stickers or caught up in vines or stuck between saplings. And I have seen areas in the shawnee national forest that looked just like my mess, viney,stickery,and way too many saplings under a decent timber/future timber stand and once they come threw and burn, omg humans and wildlife both  drop jaws once returning to the burnt area cuz guess what you can actually run threw the forest rather then chicken peck your way threw the stickers and vines.

And do any forest actually naturally burn themselves? Meaning zero human input? I dont think so, humans have been burning forest to help them not to hurt the forest for ions look it up. Forest can't be over crowded with saplings/close proximity trees either they either need logged/thinned/prescription burnt or disease will spread, think "tree social distancing" in the forest but more like 15feet then 6feet. lol.  And those choices depend on the current state of your forest. Mine is bad bad bad, previous owners obviously raped the forest for too many big trees at once and opened things up too much and didnt do a thing like you were suggesting and here we are probably 20years later with a mess of a forest.

Didnt say canopy would stop fire, was meaning the canopy would keep saplings stickers and vines down/minimal growth due to the shading. And to keep up on the under brush in the forest I wouldnt bush hog, i would just burn it every 5 years or so like the forest service does here. That's how forest need to be managed. It's obvious by looking at areas that were once a mess to be nothing but timber without saplings underneath. I promise you I'm not lying. Saplings dont have thick enough bark to withstand fire temps, therefore they turn into dead brittle sticks the next year that just kick over. Done it this spring from a burn last fall.

Where are you from where the forest service doesnt do prescription burns? Cause bow sawing saplings in a say 200 acre forest would be berserk. I get after a prescribed burn you have to come threw and mop up all the stuff that's left behind but if you have a landscape rake for a tractor, that can fit threw the woods, your in business and then push charred debris into piles and either wait til next season to burn again or burn before the canopy begins to leaf. And if your in a pickle like my woods are your probably gonna want to burn 2 or 3 seasons in a row to get things back in order for the every 3-5 year prescription burn for upkeep.

But back to the trees, I was actually gonna be planting the loblolly pines into my forest, the scotch pines are for along a future driveway for wind breaks/Christmas trees once they get big enough and just keep replanting, sorry for misleading. I know loblollys can handle fire the forest service burnt an area near me that was getting really bad with random saplings and vines, but this area was large 15inch+ trees. I was wondering what the youngest age of loblolly could handle prescription fire?

No nothing is burnt here, burning the forests we have would destroy them they did not evolve with fire. We also have a very damp climate and forest fires are rare, what they call forest fires are actually heath fires.

Here woods get to the clear undergrowth stage naturally, beech and oak don't let much light in so they stay clear in the under-story once they get to about 50 years in age

There's several species of trees that require burning to seed so yes forests do indeed burn naturally

How does it work with regeneration? If you burn it off every few years there will never be any new trees coming up, or is this only done in artificial planted woods? And how do you stop it at your boundary?

Skandi Rogers wrote:No nothing is burnt here, burning the forests we have would destroy them they did not evolve with fire. We also have a very damp climate and forest fires are rare, what they call forest fires are actually heath fires.

Here woods get to the clear undergrowth stage naturally, beech and oak don't let much light in so they stay clear in the under-story once they get to about 50 years in age

There's several species of trees that require burning to seed so yes forests do indeed burn naturally

How does it work with regeneration? If you burn it off every few years there will never be any new trees coming up, or is this only done in artificial planted woods? And how do you stop it at your boundary?

I seen your from Denmark, your pretty high up there on the globe like 55°ish  latitude. I'm gonna guess you dont have a very long summer for weedy growth like we do and we also are in a very wet humid climate.I'm located at 35°ish latitude so we get alot more summer then your climate. so we get alot more unwanted growth out of weeds and such, and the wet humid climate doesnt help. We get 45"+ annual rainfall so everything's got plenty to drink as well. We also dont have wildfires due to the wet humid climate so only fires we have are set for maintenance (when we have a dry window) or by mistake. But I'm sure implementing fire into certain portions of your forest would help if done at the correct timing of the trees cycles and what not, also if it was planned and controlled properly. Not only is it good for the task of weeding out unwanted saplings but it also gets rid of all the extra woody debris laying on the forest floor and at the exact same time its killing alot of tree pest by smoking them out and burning some of their homes.

And if you want regeneration wait until the next generation of trees are old enough to survive the prescribed burn. That's why I wanna know how old do loblollys need to be to survive a fire? All my 6"-15" next generation of deciduous forest will survive fire, so I can burn and everything smaller should die from the burn, cleaning the floor. Of coarse there will be minor labor involved with the clean up afterward but I wont have to "bow saw" a million saplings in the 5ish acre spot I'm wanting to clean up for the pine addition.

And how do I stop it at the boundary? With a planned burn, you should clear a minor fire break 15-20feet wide path of leaves and burn able material from your boundary, hopefully you can access the boundary with a tractor so you can pull a water tank and have a pump so you can stop things if it starts going a way you don't want it to go. And just walk/ride wheeler around watching things with a rake and pump up sprayer for small things. Watch some prescription burning videos on YouTube they can explain much more details and benefits then I can type up for you.

Are you trying to grow them for lumber or just to diversify your forest? Just my $0.02, but around these parts (southern New England) white pines ARE the weeds. Being conifers, they naturally outpace the deciduous trees as they are able to grow year-round. They are also unimpeded by underbrush for the same reason. Controlled burns are rarely, if ever, used around here and would only be effective in fields (our woods are too damp to burn unless there is a severe dought). Burning the forest would only be feasable in Autumn when the leaves have fallen to the ground, but in my opinion that would work to the detriment of the forest, as the leaves are what's keeping the weeds at bay (natural mulch). Of course there are some briars and invasives that grow here and there, but I go after those with a machete or use a weed-wacker with a blade attachement for the denser stuff.  

Your milage may vary, but if you want to intersperse white pines in your forest, I would recommend trying it sans the controlled burn first and see if you can save yourself the effort. One last oberservation - once the white pines get established, they tend to choke-out competing brush, leading me to believe that they are perhaps allelopathic. The only thing that seems to pair up well with white pines are the mountain laurels. Given enough time, I've seen places where the white pines grow fast & dense enough to eventually choke-out mature hardwoods.

One of the important points to mention is that compared to some hardwoods, pines in general are more suppressed by low sunlight, so most of the hardwoods will out-compete them as seedlings.  This can easily be determined by what's called the "crown ratio", meaning the fraction of the tree that has green needled branches vs the entire height of the tree.  Vigorously growing young pines will have a crown ration approaching 100%, whereas sapling pines under light stress will have crown ratios as low as 10-20%.

So, select planting areas that are not going to get a lot of light competition.  Light competition also applies equally well to Douglas Fir, which is almost as light-sensitive as pines.

Here's a trick I learned for collecting seeds from the pines on my own property.  I took some of my wife's old nylon stockings, and slipped them over the still-green pine cones.  As the cones mature and open to release their seed, they fall into the bottom of the stocking instead of down on the ground.  I works!  The best part though was the look on my wife's face the first time I asked if I could have some of her stockings!

Pete Podurgiel wrote:Are you trying to grow them for lumber or just to diversify your forest? Just my $0.02, but around these parts (southern New England) white pines ARE the weeds. Being conifers, they naturally outpace the deciduous trees as they are able to grow year-round. They are also unimpeded by underbrush for the same reason. Controlled burns are rarely, if ever, used around here and would only be effective in fields (our woods are too damp to burn unless there is a severe dought). Burning the forest would only be feasable in Autumn when the leaves have fallen to the ground, but in my opinion that would work to the detriment of the forest, as the leaves are what's keeping the weeds at bay (natural mulch). Of course there are some briars and invasives that grow here and there, but I go after those with a machete or use a weed-wacker with a blade attachement for the denser stuff.  

Your milage may vary, but if you want to intersperse white pines in your forest, I would recommend trying it sans the controlled burn first and see if you can save yourself the effort. One last oberservation - once the white pines get established, they tend to choke-out competing brush, leading me to believe that they are perhaps allelopathic. The only thing that seems to pair up well with white pines are the mountain laurels. Given enough time, I've seen places where the white pines grow fast & dense enough to eventually choke-out mature hardwoods.

the pines I'm mostly wanting to just diversify my woods, but of coarse once they are large enough and/or I have a project that I need lumber for then of coarse I'll use them for lumber. But i really just want to diversify the woods for the awesome look of oaks and pines mixed together. And I'm sure there are other benefits to having the diversity.

I was planning on growing some white pines but not for my woods diversity, just wind breaks along driveway and for Christmas tree production. I think loblolly pines are the only pines really native to my area that handle fire well.  And the area I'm wanting to add the pines into  already has alot of 6"-15" diameter hardwoods so if I add the pines in as saplings then they should all be ready for harvest around the same time since evergreens grow year round and deciduous trees only grow during summer.

And I get the leaves work as mulch, I collect leaves to mow up by freshly planted trees. But when your woods get over grown with saplings,vines,stickers, and the damn autumn olive/russian olive trees, the only way to get things back in order is to sacrifice your leaf litter a season or two for getting rid of the underbrush via FIRE. Also alot of ticks and other forest pests get burnt up too, keeping your woods from becoming a breeding ground for borers. But once you burn off the under brush the forest canopy should deprive those junk plants from growing so well. Also an article I was reading said that oak stands benefit from fire to clear under brush and encourage bird habitats that actually help eat the forest pest that damage oaks. And in the areas we burn we would broadcast some annual ryegrass so we have green mulch the following spring into summer once it would probably die off due to lack of sunshine and heat. Then the next season it could have leaf mulch again. I'm not saying I'd burn regularly, only when the woods seem to need it, and right now my woods are in such bad shape they need 2 seasons of leaf mulch sacrificed to get things back in order. I get that burning too often can negatively effect things but I just want to use it properly to get things back on track for productive forest growth. I'll look for the article about the oak stands benefiting from fire and post it here.....

Michael Qulek wrote:One of the important points to mention is that compared to some hardwoods, pines in general are more suppressed by low sunlight, so most of the hardwoods will out-compete them as seedlings.  This can easily be determined by what's called the "crown ratio", meaning the fraction of the tree that has green needled branches vs the entire height of the tree.  Vigorously growing young pines will have a crown ration approaching 100%, whereas sapling pines under light stress will have crown ratios as low as 10-20%.

So, select planting areas that are not going to get a lot of light competition.  Light competition also applies equally well to Douglas Fir, which is almost as light-sensitive as pines.

Here's a trick I learned for collecting seeds from the pines on my own property.  I took some of my wife's old nylon stockings, and slipped them over the still-green pine cones.  As the cones mature and open to release their seed, they fall into the bottom of the stocking instead of down on the ground.  I works!  The best part though was the look on my wife's face the first time I asked if I could have some of her stockings!

So are you saying that my loblolly pines arn't gonna grow as well if the canopy is too shaded? If so I guess I could get in there with my pole saw and just nit pick at limbs that could allow some sunshine in. Of coarse I'd do my trimming in the off season. But i also still have to weed out the excess saplings and some invasive trees that will allow some more sunshine in, so maybe ill wait on the pole saw nit picking until I know I need more canopy light penetration.

https://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/compass/2019/01/31/using-prescribed-fire-to-restore-and-sustain-oak-ecosystems/

here is the link to the oak stand fire program.