Fencing, digging dirt and tree seeds

 Events are speeding up.

It has been wet this spring. Not so much huge amounts of rain in any single event but many days with some rain.

The pastures are soft and muddy. I have been lax about repairing paddocks over at Sprite's in advance of the current paddock running out of grass.

That is biting me now. The first couple of items on my agenda are to feed the critters their daily bait of corn and then to get the next paddock ready for them.

THAT entails humping some wooden fence posts through a corn field around a flooded-out swale. I also have to hump my Ph.d (Post hole digger) and 15 pound rock spud.

Then the rest of the day will be the usual mix of digging and moving trees, looking for my angle grinder, fiddling with the truck (the cap is still not off), moving fill from the burn pit to the foundation.

Planting seeds

Large map

A group of scientists put together a map of micro-climates with the intention of helping those of us who collect tree seeds.

Trees are a long-term investment. From a growth-rate standpoint it is desirable to select seeds from more southern sources because they tend to have faster growth-rates. That comes at the possible cost of growing too long into the fall and not being hardened off when sudden freezes hit.

Eaton County is labeled Area 24. It included the northern 2/3 of Indiana and ranges west to Rockford, Illinois and has a finger that sticks up through the middle of Michigan to Isabella county.

Looking at this map, seeds from Area 27 the yellow-green region (say the southern 1/3 of Indiana) would be reasonable sources of seeds for reforesting in my area.

There are some issues with variation in soil types which are not comprehended in this map. northwestern Ohio is in the same pink region as western, lower Michigan. Northwestern Ohio has heavy, poorly drained clay while western Michigan has deep, sandy soils. I would not expect seeds selected in western Michigan to have the resistance to root-rots that seed-lines that evolved in northwestern Ohio  would likely exhibit.

-Hat tip to Lucas Machias for the link to the article on tree seeds