5. Step up the planting program. All together, 
Florida has 7.1 million acres of forest land which, 
because of inadequate seed source, are not expected 
to restock. About a half million acres of this is 
rated good-quality forest land, about a million acres 
is fair, and the remainder poor-quality land. 
In general, most of the planting effort should 
be directed toward restocking the more productive 
land first. However, there are landowners who have 
little else other than poor-quality forest land. Even 
though the returns from their investment in planting 
may be low, these owners still may wish to restock 
their land rather than let it lie idle. 
During the 1949-50 planting season, a total of 43,- 
000 acres was planted in Florida. At this rate, it 
would take 35 years to plant just the 1.5 million acres 
of fair- and good-quality nonrestocking forest land. 
To do the job in 20 years would mean stepping up 
the annual planting to 75,000 acres, or nearly double 
the area planted during the 1949-50 season. 
A large part of this 1.5 million acres of nonrestock- 
ing fair- and good-quality forest land is suitable for 
machine planting (fig. 40). About 1.3 million acres 
is made up of areas that are at least 10 acres in 
size and sufficiently firm, level, and free of stumps 
and rocks or scrub timber to permit the operation of 
a tractor-drawn planting machine. The remaining 
area would have to be planted by hand. 
6. Work out ways of restocking the less productive 
forest land. One reason for concentrating the plant- 
ing effort on the more productive land is that 
methods of getting the poorer land restocked have 
not been very well worked out. All together, Florida 
has 5.6 million acres of poor-quality land which is 
Ficure 40.—Florida has 1.5 million acres of fair- and good-quality nonrestocking forest land. About 1.3 million acres of 
this is suitable for machine planting. (Photo courtesy of Florida Forest Service.) 
48 Forest Resource Report No. 6, U. S. Department of Agriculture 
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