Plantskydd In The NEWS
“If what Bill at advised was correct, lots of money and young trees would be saved.”
Sunday, April 18, 2010
THE DAILY JEFFERSONIAN
MIDDLE EARTH AT MIDDLE AGE
Naked Hills
Experts make all the difference. And thanks to the experts, 1,825 trees were planted in less than two days on two of my hills timbered for gas well drilling. It took “a village” of people who knew what they were doing to pull it off, but pull it off they did.
Since building the new house, I’ve been planting pines and spraying them with Plantskydd to avoid deer damage. But, it’d been kind of hit or miss. The Plantskydd often clogged my sprayer and I was never clear how often to spray.
With this reclaim by Alliance, I wanted to get it right.
Alliance Petroleum had moved my earth so it drained well and then seeded my hills in rye grass. But I didn’t like the naked hills, devoid of trees, when for decades it had been forest.
Alliance said it was happy to get me trees. But it was up to me to decide species and spacing distance to plant.
I’ve worked with our forester, Jeremy Scherf, on many occasions. Because he has so much practical hands-on field experience, the stuff he’s taught me is not available online. Jeremy’s advice is always right.
So I turned over the species and spacing to Jeremy, except I told him I wanted some evergreens in eh mix.
Next day, he e-mailed me what species my naked hills needed – red and white oak and Norway spruce, spaced eight feet apart.
I turned Jeremy’s recommendations over to Marty Miller of Alliance Petroleum. Based on Jeremy’s recommendations, Marty formulated a graph to determine exactly how many trees were needed for the two hills. Marty’s calculations were 100 percent correct.
All of us were concerned with how to prevent the deer from eating the young trees. I contacted manufacturer of Plantskydd. I explained the project and that I had had so much trouble with my sprayer clogging (I tried three different sprayers) and that I needed a workable solution.
Bill Lasuta, the forester and expert, e-mailed me. His advice to me was a huge leap of faith for me because it was a big outlay of money. However, if what Bill advised was correct, lots of money and young trees would be saved.
Bill said I needed a sprayer with a diaphragm to prevent the Plantskydd clogging. And because we’d be planting 1,825 new seedlings and I already and 500 waist-high trees to maintain, Bill suggested a backpack sprayer.
Several e-mails later, Bill and I decided on the Solo 4-Gallon 60 PSI Backpack Sprayer with Diaphragm Pump No 475. I saved $10 by buying it at Amazon.com. It cost $103 but the shipping was free.
I bought three cases of Plantskydd and Bill sent me a tool that fits onto a drill to mix the dry powder with. Bill also gave me many mixing tips.
Once the trees arrived, Joni Miller sent out his crew of four young men: Lucas, Eli, Norman and William. All of them have worked here before and all know How particular I am.
In less than two days they planted 1,825 trees and then sprayed them with Plantskydd. The sprayer never clogged. Eli did the spraying and said, “I’ve done a lot of spraying and this is the best sprayer I’ve ever used.”
To get these trees planted and protected from the deer in three days is a testament to the team of experts we had working together for a common goal: Marty Miller to coordinate, Jeremy Scherf to determine species and spacing, Bill Lasuta to protect from deer, and Jon Miller to get those trees in the ground almost as soon as they were removed from the nursery soil.
In this case, it took a village to successfully plant two hills of forest.
Author: Jacqueline Tresl
Jacqueline Tresl is an attorney, a retired registered nurse, and a contributor to The Jeffersonian.