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  • From: "Mitch Triplett" <mtriplett@bctonline.com>
  • To: "'permaculture'" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Carbon farming as solution to climate change?
  • Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2010 16:32:50 -0700

Hey Darren.

Thanks to you and Ben for the explanation & video links.

Here in the Pacific Northwest (U.S.), I've seen the tractor-based systems
used for Christmas tree plantations. I've also seen them used for af- &
reforestation projects on flat ground and/or barely rolling hills. For
those of us whose properties have more... uhhh... 'character', I think the
pottiputki would be the way to go as the tractor would be both dangerous and
damaging. I've been planting plugs anyway so I might be able to plant my
400 trees/year in a morning rather than 3 days. Just have to match the
available plugs with the right size pottiputki. Alas, my trusty planting
shovel will have to be the way to go for those species only available as
bare-root stock.

Keep up the great work.

Mitch Triplett
Tri-Pearl Family Forest
Member - CCFFA/OSWA & OTFS
Associate Member - FSC


-----Original Message-----
From: permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Darren Doherty
Sent: Wednesday, April 21, 2010 2:29 PM
To: permaculture
Subject: Re: [permaculture] Carbon farming as solution to climate change?

G'day,

Thanks for the note and the opportunity to show you how one person can plant
a lot of trees per day. Firstly if I only planted 150 trees/day I would be
out of business in no time. I have to say that I have planted a lot less
than a lot of friends and colleagues...Its actually a bit weird in these
circles to know how many trees you have planted as this only demonstrates
how few you have actually planted!

We use tools to help us do this (these by the way are demonstrated on
the Taranaki
Farm website <http://www.taranakifarm.com/blog/?cat=16>) so that the numbers
actually stack up for you:

1. Pottiputki aka Planting Spear...my personal record is 6000/trees/day
though I have heard of so-called gun planters of Eucalyptus globulus
planting (for Managed Investment Fund) pulpwood getting 8-10000/day which
where there might be qualitative issues but still that's a lot of trees
inserted into the ground in a day by some poor soul.

2. Mechanical Transplanter....these are great little machines that really up
the ante as far as numbers are concerned. Also you have a mate next to you
to keep you company with the radio on (hopefully with a 5 day test match -
Australia vs England is of course the ultimate!): one planting, one putting
out bamboo stakes and tree guards. These machines are converted vegetable
planters...Anyways these plant between 6-12000 per day (3m spacing between
trees) we have one machine that can plant with two people (one planting:one
driving the tractor) 5000 trees/hour and water them in to boot. I bought my
1st planter in about 1995-96 and it cost me $300...fantastic little machine
made in California actually - Mechanical Tranplanter was the brand. It was
already 30 years old when I bought it and needed a bit of TLC and some small
adaptations to plant 93cc rootballs from V93 Hiko trays (see the Taranaki
site or our
Trees<http://picasaweb.google.com/permaculture.biz/Chapter6Trees>section
of our
PhotoLog <http://picasaweb.google.com/permaculture.biz>)...it has a little
cam actuated waterer as well which gave each tree a drink as it was planted.
We put a 44 gallon drum onto a platform on the front of the tractor I welded
up and it fed a 1:10 solution of molasses:water to this waterer...later on
we added all sorts of potions to it to get it all happening.

3. Direct Seeding....haven't really done a lot of this and I don't keep
tally of the thousands of tree seeds I have planted using these machines.
They are very popular in doing Landcare plantings here in Australia but I
feel are very inaccurate with respect to tree spacing and somewhat wasteful
of hard-gained tree seed. Much prefer to have designed spacings of
pneumatically planted containerised stock as the source of our planting
material.

I have designed it but haven't built it yet: a plains planting machine that
would Keyline Plow:Compost Tea:Sow Groundcover:Shallow
Cultivate:Mechanically Plant around 24-36000 trees per day as a tool for
alley/avenue farming of plains/prairie lands....Actually not that difficult
but would cost about $40K thereabouts....

Hope that this helps to correct the math Mitch and perhaps captures your
imagination where the America's are concerned and the grand retrofit of
those continents that are soooo necessary.

All the best,

Yours and Growing,

Darren

On 21 April 2010 23:50, Mitch Triplett <mtriplett@bctonline.com> wrote:

> Hi Darren.
>
> Could you give us some more detail on the following:
>
> "... but also in vegetation stores (of millions of trees actually - about
> 2.5million or so at last count)...."
>
> Obviously you haven't planted 2.5 million trees (that would be 150 trees
> per
> day, every day for 45+ years), so I'm wondering how you get to that
number.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Mitch Triplett
> Tri-Pearl Family Forest
> Member - CCFFA/OSWA & OTFS
> Associate Member - FSC
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
> [mailto:permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Darren
> Doherty
> Sent: Monday, April 19, 2010 3:34 PM
> To: permaculture
> Subject: Re: [permaculture] Carbon farming as solution to climate change?
>
>
> Of course I have been charged with being Carbon Negative (my preference of
> semantry!) many times and I have done the math many times to prove that I
> and my family emit far, far less carbon than we sequester: especially in
> soil carbon but also in vegetation stores (of millions of trees actually -
> about 2.5million or so at last count)....what concerns me is how much
> Carbon
> send out of the mouths without returning it to the lithosphere (Carbon
> positivity!) and that is the ultimate challenge to all of us in every
> activity: that's being a conscious being in this day and age....
>
>
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> And: http://www.richsoil.com
>



--
Hooroo,
Darren J. Doherty

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