Nursery Services

Forest nurseries or tree nurseries are specialized operations that are able to grow large quantities of commercial tree seedlings for large buyers. Most of these nurseries specialize only in the production of certain species of trees, and don't diversify with plants or flowers.

Most forest nursery facilities are able to produce millions of trees each growing season. In fact, the average order at these facilities is usually for hundreds of thousands or even millions of seedlings to each individual customer, and these orders are planned and coordinated more than a year in advance. Seedlings are grown in styrofoam blocks in various mixtures of peat, perlite, vermiculite and some composted materials, sometimes with timed-release fertilizers added. In the styro blocks, different sized cavities and planting densities are employed to produce seedling with smaller or larger plug sizes. The plug itself contains the rootmass of the tree. For rocky planting sites, a smaller plug may be helpful to accommodate shallow soils. In a high yield site, a larger plug (and?hence a larger seedling) may be used to try to get an advantage over competing brush. Foresters juggle the extra growing and planting cost for larger seedlings against the benefits of possibly avoiding future brushing treatments. Larger seedlings are also less likely to suffer from the same mortality levels as smaller seedlings.

Forest nurseries typically have two production runs and lifts each year. The first will take place in approximately July, when new stock trays are set up and seeded. These trees grow through August, September, and early October, then from mid-October through the end of November, the trees are "lifted" (pulled out of their growing trays) and then packaged into wax cardboard boxes or other types of storage containers. The trees are then placed into freezers for over-winter storage, and the sub-zero temperatures make the trees go dormant for the winter. When they are pulled out of the freezers in the spring, they need to sit outside for perhaps ten days to thaw out properly, then they are delivered to planters for planting in the spring season, usually April through June. These are called the spring lift trees, or over-wintered trees. From the time they arrive at the planting site until the time that the planters actually start to plant them, the cartons are often stored in closed, refridgerated trailers called "reefers" as the seedlings slowly continue to wake up from their dormancy period.

The other production run will start in the early spring. Again, trees are seeded in March and then grow throughout the spring months, up until the middle of June or even the start of July. At this point, they are lifted and packaged. This is called a "hot lift" because the trees are wide awake and growing at full tilt as they are packaged into their shipping cartons. They are then sent directly to the planting sites, and are planted almost immediately, sometimes less than 48 hours after they are lifted by the nursery. If these trees need to be stored for a few days, they are sometimes stored outside with the boxes open and perhaps covered by a tarp or shade cloth to keep direct sunlight from drying them out. The respiration of the hot-lifted trees produces a bit of heat and humidity, which is another reason why they aren't always stored in trailers, although a good refrigerated trailer is easily able to keep the boxes from overheating for several days.