This page has been set up to share photos & video relating to the "Stock Handling" chapter of "Step By Step, A Tree Planter's Handbook." Visit www.replant.ca/books to see books about tree planting.
Here are some boxes of spruce trees. The fact that the tops are open and the trees are standing up, with no bag liner, suggests that these are hot-lifted summer trees, rather than over-wintered spring trees.
A worker planting with closed inserts. The drawbag (the pouch that you are pulling trees out of) obviously needs to remain open. Or if you're ambidextrous, you'll be pulling trees out of both sides simultaneously, so both side drawbags will need to be open. However, if you have additional inserts full of trees in your back bag(s), the foresters may request that the drawstrings remain closed, ostensibly from moisture evaporating from the roots of the trees. Realistically, this is a rather useless rule. It made sense when people planted bareroot stock in the 1980's and 1990's, but the potential for dessication of a wrapped bundle of trees during the 30-60 minutes that it is in your back bag is almost non-existent. Regardless, it's wise to keep the foresters happy if they actually think this is an important rule. Luckily, most foresters focus on the bigger picture, such as making sure that the plugs are moist in the first place, when they arrive from the nursery.
Here are a number of bundles of Douglas Fir seedlings on the ground, about to be bagged up.
A planter, bagging up.
More bundles of Douglas Fir.
This is what a "reefer" looks like. Reefer stands for refrigerated trailer. A trailer without a refrigeration unit is called a dry trailer.
The cooling unit on the front of the reefer is essentially a big refrigerator and fan, which blows cold air into the reefer trailer.
The thermostat panel on the cooling unit lets you regulate the temperature inside the reefer. This thermostat shows that this reefer is 41.5 degree Fahrenheit, or slightly over 5 degrees Celsius. The optimal temperature is between 0 and 4 degrees Celsius. However, this load may still be cooling down after its initial loading. Summer (hot-lifted trees) often arrive on site at temperatures from 10-12 degrees or higher.
This thermometer confirms that the temperature of the reefer is good. Spring trees are typically stored at anywhere from 10C to 40C.
Here's a look inside a reefer. It looks like this was probably a full load, which has already been partly unloaded.
Here's another photo inside a reefer. The boxes usually aren't stacked like this. Unfortunately, this load arrived on site still frozen, so the crew re-stacked them and spread them out to allow for better air circulation, so they would thaw more quickly.
If you're unloading a reefer, having a set of rollers can make the job a lot easier.
If a storage area may be subject to flooding, you may want to put the boxes on sticks to keep the bottoms from getting wet and losing some of their structural integrity.
Here's a nicely constructed A-frame tree cache. Good job, Luke.
This cache uses a suspended tarp instead of an A-frame design. Incidentally, spring (overwintered) trees are typically stored in caches that are completely gift-wrapped (the tarp is closed on all sides). It is only the summer hot-lift trees that benefit from open boxes and air-flow beneath the cache tarp.
A crew unloading a reefer. Some boxes are going into the shade tent, and some are going directly into the crew trucks.
Here's another reefer being unloaded. It is often very efficient to form a chain to pass the boxes.
Here, a crew is using a set of rollers to work more efficiently, and to minimize poor stockhandling of the tree boxes.
Treat the boxes of trees like boxes of babies. Actually, they really are babies ... baby trees. Pass them quickly, but carefully.
During the summer, if the seedlings arrive from the nursery with dry plugs, the foresters will probably ask that the trees be watered before they are planted.
Summer trees (hot-lifted seedlings) may need to be stored in a shade tent, instead of inside a reefer or storage building. The shade tent has a special woven fabrice that allows water to drip through, and allows a breeze to pass through, but which blocks a lot of the sunlight that heats up the boxes. Shade tents are being replaced by summer storage in refrigerated reefers in many areas (thankfully), but not all foresters are convinced yet that this is a good practice. If planting companies can go through their tree deliveries quickly, instead of having summer trees sitting unplanted on-site for a week or more, more foresters would probably become convinced of the viability of using reefers for summer seedling storage.
The stickers that are on the end of boxes of trees are only placed on one side of each box. If you're loading a truck, or a reefer, or a storage facility, or anything else, please make sure that the box labels on ALL boxes are facing "out" so it's easy to see exactly what type of tree is in the box.
The Nursery "Lift" - packing seedlings into boxes.
Click here to see a page listing books related to reforestation in Canada. If you received a photocopied version of this book from your planting company, or you're a trainer at a Canadian planting company, click on this link for more information.
