General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: How to erase 100 years of carbon emissions? Plant trees--lots of them. [View all]csziggy
(34,120 posts)When I bought my farm in 1978, much of the upper 30 acres was corn fields and pig pens. We cleared the garbage and scrub trees and then planted a thousand loblolly pines, a thousand Southern red cedars, and a hundred dogwoods - the forestry department had a program that sold bare root seedlings in big bundles, so the "trees" were spindly little things around a foot tall. We also planted about twenty sawtooth oaks a neighbor didn't have room for.
One reason we planted lines of cedars and pines was as a wind and sun break - facing west from our house, we had what we called "mandatory sunsets" - absolutely nothing to shade the house from the sun in the afternoon. Around the house we planted sycamores for fast growth shade trees and crepe myrtles for open shade close to the house. Now those sycamores are immense and the crepe myrtles are forty or so feet tall. We still enjoy them though we built a new house (to replace the doubewide that was originally there) in a different spot.
Forty years later, many of the cedars have died, some of the pines were struck by lightning, and oaks have moved into the windbreaks we created with those trees. While only a fourth of the sawtooth oaks made it, other trees have moved in - post, laurel, and live oaks as well as cherry trees. The dogwoods were planted along the drive and many of them are dying, but post and live oaks, pines, and wax myrtles are providing greenery and habitat.
In addition, the loblolly pines that were here on the farm reproduced and we have about five acres of now 20-30 year old loblolly pines growing up in two different pastures. We also have encouraged the black walnut seedlings and other trees that have naturally occured - all they needed was protection from the horses in order to thrive.
Basically benign neglect works - plant one variety of tree and let natural succession take place. It takes work to continue a monoculture since nature tries to find a way.