phillip miller

Thank you

We have 350 bare root Christmas trees coming next week. Would it hurt anything to dig the holes ahead of time? I don't want to use the dibble bar this year.

thanks, what would you suggest for a ground cover on a Christmas tree farm?

I don't mind strange folks coming to the house, I build and sell farm tables and we sell baby koi fish. so we are used to that. as far as where folks are buying trees... it 20 miles one way and 30 the other to the nearest Christmas tree farm. I would want to do the cut your own type. family gatherings are no more then 30 miles away and I don't mind the work, im the type that cant sit still, always have a project going on. and thank God my wonderful family joins right in.
i thought about the crp program, don't know much about it yet. but we don't really need to make our money back out of the land because we got the house garage and 2.5 acres for 1315.00 bucks!! ( long story ) the house and garage are on one acre and the corn field is on the 1.5 acres.
as far as parking, we live on a dead end street. im the only house on it. that always helps for parking. and the garage would be a great place to set up shop for the Christmas season.
we already have grapes, peaches, apples, cherries and blackberries. more peach trees and grapes would be nice though. cant get enough of the grape jelly.
there is a chicken house over there as well, so chickens will be coming soon

hello, this is my first post here, im from central Illinois. we are buying strip of corn field in from of our house. it is 1.5 acres. flat black dirt. I don't really want to have it back in corn and beans. but I also still want to farm it with something so that the taxes wont go up.
we have a 3 year old son that I would for him to be able to play on the ground as well. so all of this has brought me to the idea of starting a small Christmas tree farm. I already have a love for trees and growing stuff in general. and as a bonus our kids can still enjoy the field as well year round. I realize this might sound like a very small area, but will it work? will live in a town of 200 people and have a lot of small towns around us, 5 to 10 miles away.
from what I have read I can get around 1500 trees on that 1.5 acres over about 7 to 8 years time.
whats your thoughts? thanks