6 years after planting, these plots 

 were pre scribe -burned to control 

 brown spot needle disease. Wild- 

 fires burned over them at 8 years 

 and 17 years after planting. Another 

 controlled burn to remove excess 

 fuel was made in February 1950, 

 15 years after planting. 



At age 15, there were about 

 twice as many trees in active height 

 growth on the burned plots as on the 

 • unburned plots. For example, on 

 "S areas planted at the rate of 1,600 

 trees per acre, unburned plots had 

 only 176 trees per acre in active 

 I height growth while burned plots 

 had 363. These plots are fairly 

 typical of the difficulties that have 

 been experienced in growing planted 



. §1 longleaf 



During the first 15 years 



•<^VH'V«.-' i : all plots suffered losses from town 

 * ants, hogs that temporarily invaded 

 I the fenced plantations, salamanders 

 E (eastern pocket gophers), and 

 .brown spot. Fires reduced the 

 | stands on the burned plots, but not 

 so much as the brown spot infection 



iflngpg;. on the unburned plots 



Figure 13. --In open-grown stands, 

 100 longleaf trees per acre can be 

 pruned to a height of one log for 

 about $5. 50. (Photo by Elemore 

 Morgan) 



acre pruned to 17 feet (fig. 13); 3. - 

 pruned to about two-thirds of the tree height. 



When the stands were 16 

 years old, three pruning treatments 

 were applied to a total of 4, 800 

 rough, limby trees in the wider- 

 spaced plots: 1. --All trees pruned 

 up to a height of 17 feet (1 sawlog); 

 2. --One hundred selected trees per 

 One hundred selected trees per acre 



One-log pruning required 3 man-minutes of labor for a tree 4 

 inches d. b. h. and 6 minutes for an 8-inch tree (which usually had larger 

 branches). At 85 cents per hour for common labor and 25 cents per hour 

 for transportation, supervision, and other expenses, pruning costs per 

 tree averaged from 5.4 to 11. 1 cents. 



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