Band Spraying Between Trees

If you are talking about spraying for weeds then it would be good to know what chemicals you are spraying. In my comments last night to Nick, I referred to planting the trees so they lined up in a row, on 90's and on 45's. That way you can drive through them at different angles and then you mow or spray between them each time. Go inline one time and at 90's the next and fix the issue. If you can mow often enough then spraying for weeds becomes unnecessary and you can save a bunch of money. After the first couple of years the trees are above the grass level and you can mow 2-3 times a year and not have a problem. That is why I was recommending that he plant wide enough to use a Compact such as your 4100 and a small rotary cutter if the acreage isn't an issue. An extra foot would mean alot if you could mow with a tractor instead of walking with string trimmers or roof mowers. One of the biggest issues in the NC mountains are most of the time the field that you can ride a tractor on are used for tobacco and the trees are planted on otherwise unusable land making them very labor intensive. Bigger growers are getting into automation now but still have a shortage of land resources.

I have seen several small farms give up and sell their trees after the 3rd year because it is sooooo o labor intensive if they are on steep land or planted too close together. There is no labor pool to pull from up there and the large growers have all of the contract services so families do this in their spare time. Gets old and they have a fortune tied up in chemicals and seedlings that have no chance of paying back for 8 years so it hurts to keep going.

If you are spraying roundup then you are killing everything around the trees. Don't you have any problems with erosion??? I don't know what species of trees you are growing but some can take a mild hit of roundup and not have any damage after they get up in size. I have always liked having a good sod base with grass growing because it protects the land and makes for a much better bed to harvest the trees from. Trying to get trees cut and baled in mud is a disaster and muddy trees don't sell well. Having the sod there makes for a nice surface to cut the tree down on and to drag it to the baler. Getting it down to just mowing makes it alot cheaper and better on the land.