The tree planting is the easy part! Now comes the mulching. We mulch because I think it may be less work in the long run and we don’t have to use herbicides and worry less about watering in dry periods. Today was the good mulching day. The fastest equipment was put into force today. Below is an old animal chute that I rigged up to hold mulch. It pulls with the tractor, drives over the rows and holds enough mulch for about 180 feet of row.
I also have some old barge wagons that I use, but they aren’t quite as handy. But these contraptions are nice since I can load them up in the late fall so they are ready to go in the spring. Today, I ended up getting 60 trees covered in the morning. Last Monday I got 35 trees done and suffered from equipment failure, equipment stuck in the mud, and smaller-scale haulers. The temperature was near 90 on both days, along with up to a 30 mph wind, so I spent some time watering as those are about the worst conditons you could imagine for newly planted trees. Now I’m on the lookout for a small low, trailer that the garden tractors can haul – the one I got at an auction 8 years or so ago to use to put the stock tank on to drag water on, was one of the equipment failures when the axle snapped (with an empty load, thank goodness).