Touring a Wholesale Nursery: Seedlings, Cuttings, and Grafted Evergreen and Conifer Trees
hey guys my name is Jason with s j Forest Products and today I'm down in Oregon at a Wholesale Nursery here I'm picking up a bunch of Redwood seedlings I got and Joe here the owner of the the nursery is going to give us a little tour and we're gonna go see what this whole operation is all about so here these are our redwoods here huh yeah all right these are the one-year-old plugs that you ordered they're uh they're nice big things that's one year from a seed that's amazing that's a that's 18 inches at least in one year that's amazing and then you ordered some uh two-year trees and that's these guys and these are called band pots you got it you gotta educate me about what I'm getting here so these are like this is uh gonna be the size that I plant in the field okay okay so we got a frog over there oh the Frog's making the noise yeah and uh these are these are uh like two or three inch band pots you call them okay three by five band pots and so down down here in Oregon you're near Portland can you plant these and have them grow pretty regularly I mean they're they're not gonna tears are fine if we get a really cold year they can freeze back okay and I've only had one year out of 20 some years growing this tree that it's killed them okay most of the time it'll just freeze off the top six inches or so gotcha and that's why I don't plant this size I'd advise putting these into pots and growing them up and getting a little bit thicker trunk on them before they go out because the top might burnt back sure okay that's good advice because I've I've you know I'm these are going to go out I'm up in Northwest Washington it's colder I saw your video on where you're planting them there yeah yeah so we'll we'll see I mean this is a big experiment for me I don't know if this is gonna work I I may kill every one of these trees I hope not it just depends on the coldness in the ear and how they get going yeah there I I do know there are there's two or three redwoods in Bellingham that are nice good sized trees so I know that it can work the Sequoias do way better I mean we've got lots of Sequoias up there but I I mean it's just such an iconic tree and I really want to see if I can get some of these going these are just beautiful plugs I these are amazing and what's so you you do the seeds you stratify them I buy actually buy my seeds I got my I did my crop of Sequoias this morning okay and I bought one ounce of seed and that's enough for my Nursery per year okay and down here that's right down here yeah sure today and uh we're gonna in one year we'll be harvesting them for you next time for me that's right next year I'll yeah I don't know if I want to make the drive down again but no this is cool so we we dropped one seed in each little plug here and one each little spot all be darned and then we're gonna cover it with a thin layer of sawdust okay the cedar sawdust works great because it keeps the Moss away oh sure but uh if you don't have Cedar sodas first sawdust anything will work you're talking like a quarter inch just a little dusting it's just okay okay cover it up and then that will keep the uh we got also got to keep the birds out of here because the birds will try to get in here and eat the seeds and the mice will try to get in here and they they love seeds wow and you were telling me earlier you don't need to stratify these this seed does not need to be stratified right out of the package one seed per plug and this all all of these cells are all Sequoias right now yeah wow two tables and Sequoias and that's my my usage for a year and then we're gonna fill this whole Greenhouse up here with other kinds of pines and Spruce and Douglas Firs and uh pretty much all the Conifer trees that I grow okay and so one ounce of Sequoia is how many roughly how many trees or seeds you got here like five thousand or times seven five thousand seven hundred and sixty wow so over 5 000 seeds from one ounce yep and and this one has a poor germination rate so about 50 to 75 percent will germinate oh okay okay so you're looking for two to 2500 to 3 500. how long you gotta stratify every seed's different um what the process of stratifying it is you take the seed like the ounce of seed that I would get or five ounces or three ounces or whatever how many I get okay soak them in water for 24 hours and then drain the water off and put in the refrigerator for this specified time period okay and it could be 30 days it could be 60 days um some of the White Pines I do are 120 days wow Scotch Pines 90 days Shore Pine is 30 days so and then they it's like creating a winter form okay take it going and then the cold weather and then they sprout so it's like you're tricking them into thinking they've gone through the winter they're and they're stored they're dried when they're stored there the seeds are picked the seed is dried down to a certain moisture content and then they can store it frozen for years okay but you don't want to you got to get I buy the Seed picking your own seed and trying to drive down to a certain moisture content it's just and store it and freezing it's it's too much too complicated for the one ounce or two ounces that I use sure sure yeah yeah much easier just to buy it yeah well what is now it's a seed cost 100 bucks a couple hundred bucks why do the whole Greenhouse here there's 75 000 seeds and it's roughly a thousand dollars wow so they're not very expensive for seed and some varieties are more the Sequoias are sometimes expensive but it's still pretty pretty relative to what the trees sell for sure yeah yeah well cool well awesome so I think I've got the process now so let's say you were wanting to grow trees in Bellingham and uh your first crop of these trees you're growing it from your kids yes correct yep so you plant these trees out and let's say 90 of them died off but you had a a certain group of them just 10 of them that really took off and grew and they didn't seem to be bothered by the cold weather okay or bothered maybe they had an exceptional growth rate so they're like two characteristics that you want as a Timber grower okay to see because when you're buying seedlings they're all sexually propagated so they're the parents are different okay every seedling is every tree is different genetics so if you wanted to select out genetics that were to your desire yeah fast growth maybe blue if you're in the nursery Business Like Me Maybe blue growth people like blue for some reason okay or Timber you want to grow fast maybe sure or wet tolerant or cold yeah okay I'm with you so you can take one of those trees in and you can genetically clone it and the way you clone it is you take a cutting off of it okay I have right here I want to show you these because these are Giants or Post Redwood that I cloned oh no way yeah and they've stricken up I'm striking roots on these they've already got Roots popping out okay all right and so this is a cultivar that I've selected I just call it Coast Redwood but it's one that doesn't have as much it has a little blue or darker color to it it's a little bit faster growing and it seems to not be bothered by the cold temperatures as much interesting so the traits that I have that I like okay but there are some other cultivars out there that people have selected that are popular they have names on them and some of them have patents on them which I don't like patents so you just took a cutting of the of the tree you liked you dipped it in I've heard it called rootone or rooting hormone rooting hormones my different mixes I use but pretty much a root tone type of mix and then I put them in here and this is a heated bed oh the wires these these tubes here are full of hot water um okay oh yeah they're warm yeah yeah and we take the cuttings in January when it's real cold outside and the tops of the trees in the greenhouse is not heated except for this so we keep the the top of the foliage cool so it doesn't dry out okay and we warm up the root Zone and The Roots just tend to come I'll be darned it's even fine little fruits look at there that is just a beautiful little cutting there and is there is it the tips of the branches it looks like you you cut you know half you cut the top off and how do you how do you some trees are different we usually this one didn't root but usually um yeah we just try different parts just yeah just just take cuttings and and yeah see what you can get I'll be done 100 take but we get pretty good some trees we do better on and this is a tree you have here that you like some oh yeah there's a row of them out there that we take cuttings off of every year so I've been growing this one every year for year after year oh okay so is that the same I'm getting or I got see I got seed okay okay very cool so you're saying if if like let me re say what you told me and see if I got it right I I need to take my trees and if I plant them and there's three that I really like they're doing really good they're I can cut those take cuttings root them and then I should have much better success you'll have a crop of trees that are genetically the same as the one that you took the cuttings yeah so you're cloning them is now can you do that with Western red cedar and Doug Fir you can this is Western red cedar right here uh this is a former Western red cedar that rose bush here and is more desirable for a hedge oh okay really easy they're just full Roots wow okay and I grew like five or six different varieties of Western red cedar this one's called petrovirons I think let's say an old one no Hogan's here okay which is native to the Gresham Oregon area and so these aren't cells this is just a tray and you just shove them in there yep and then about now do you replant them and just into bad pots or well in a good a good year we'd have Labor in the summertime and and do it okay but it often doesn't get done till later in the in the year because I don't have Labor available okay okay if you want to go next door we'll show you what they look like a year from now oh yeah this is this is great factory tour my dad loves these Alaska Cedar oh Alaska yellow okay so do you do you do just a mix and match of the I mean some from seeds some from cuttings or do you do you do mostly cuttings for your um the greenhouse is about probably uh 33 000 cuttings and 70 000 seats trays wow okay and those seeds we don't get all the germination but sure we try here sure and so I mean as we're walking through these greenhouses are most of these sold or are most of these inventory for you this is this is all inventory for my own use for your own use I plant in the field okay all right but you'll that you'll grow up when we sell yeah okay so my Target's a six foot tree that is dug up wow gotcha and how many acres do you have here about 70. 70. so you're you're not in the seedling business you're in the tree business whatever is left over after I plant my Fields is what I have available and that's what I try to sell oh okay okay I'm with you I'm with you here's my giant sequoia this is the result of one ounce of seed so the the all the trays we saw over there this is after a year this is what you had germinate and come up and do its thing of Giant Sequoia okay uh this is uh Pines right here I'm not sure which plane the Pines I get pretty good percentage on yeah the Douglas firm right here these are dogs why are the needles so big what are you feeding these things oh okay yeah here we go yeah that looks more like a dog to me all right boy those are are these dogs yeah man they're huge look at the needles on those things they're like three inches long what are you feeding these things a lot of well a lot of it's the seed Zone you get the seed from so I a real selective of my seed Zone this comes from the Santiam national forest or Santiam Forest I guess the national forest okay I think so anyways lower elevation East Side Eastern side of the or western side of the Cascades but it's an area that I've had good luck with okay and these are these are remind me again these are cuttings no these are these are seeds okay these are all seeds and this is the these are these are a year and then you'll put them out this spring I'll put these into uh well I will go up and see the next yeah sure I know I'm jumping ahead sorry I'll follow you so here's my uh my Coast Redwood [Applause] what I did is I kept all the small ones oh I got all the big ones you got some of the bigger ones well thank you for that part of them I sold a few others to some other people but that's all I want this year in in Coast Redwood okay and I'll also supplementing them with my cutting grow ones so I have a mix sure that makes sense I took the smallest ones because the time by the time they're big enough to or by the time I'm ready to plant them in the field it'll be too big okay okay uh-huh well here's my cutting girl ones right here look at there and so they just they just sprout right out the yep right off the cut look at that and these were just transplanted in January so they haven't really rooted out yet we haven't fed them yet but I don't feed them too much because if I not careful I get them too big by summertime I plant in the summertime you plant in the summertime you have a lot of water here oh uh sure with the river right there yeah yeah I get the ground just worked up good when the ground's good dry and hard and then I can plant it my leisure and then I just turn the water on letter letter let her go look at that wow well this is this is super cool right here and the growth the new growth is yellower is that they're a little hungry and then they were they should have been transplanted a while back they kind of sat for a long time because I didn't have any labor all year uh I I hear you I'm having the same problem so they're a little bit off color and they have a they would have benefited more if they would have been planted on time but for my use they'll be fine because they'll by the time I plant they'll be ready well yeah and and yeah you get them the right mix and they'll green right up use we do use by cuttings is that right now tell me I'm fascinated by use they're a little bit of a rare tree is that right the actual Pacific View the native one is a difficult to root okay so these are these are the European right oh okay and they they strike pretty easy okay but the the one we have native here is is a little bit more difficult short Pine's an easy one so you mentioned Douglas fur earlier right yeah so Douglas fir does not like the root from cuttings so if we want to clone that one okay we need to graft it oh really so over here in this greenhouse you do some grafting of the conifers now that's a real common practice with apples and fruit trees and things like that yeah but you can also graft conifers oh yeah so these are all grafted trees here these are all grafted on this side right in this section I'm going to show you I have some Douglas fir somewhere in here and the whole point of this the grafting is you can't root them from cuttings but you want to get the same characteristics of the tree you graft them on a rootstock right so if the tree is either hard to root or you root it and the root system is poor then the way we propagate them is to graft it onto a tree that has a good root system and since we're digging digging the trees here we're trying to grow root systems so that they dig easy okay so like on a um pine tree we'll use Scotch pine as the rootstock and a little graft on our Japanese Red Pine and this this is a densa flora Pine or uh down here is a here's our Douglas spur so you grow a Douglas fir tree cut the Douglas fir from seed cut the top off now we grafted on a weeping Douglas fir here okay so this tree grows up has real blue needles and it grows up and weeps over like a like a Japanese maple type of tree you know just it weeps over okay and if you take this from cutting it doesn't want a root and if it does root the roots are real poor okay so we use the the native seed okay and just graft onto it and the graphs takes really easy we'll get 100 on these really and then you'll cut off the the Doug Fir you'll cut you'll cut off this top when this one comes up and then it's just that that other characteristic for the whole tree here's a perfect example here this is a Scotch pine because Scotch pine has really nice Roots the seeds is really easy to to germinate uh it's real cheap it's twenty dollars an ounce and you can get five six thousand plants out of an ounce okay real cheap and it's cold hardy and everybody likes it for rootstock so the Digger the tree diggers like to dig it because it has a lot of roots okay then we'll graft onto a Lodgepole Pine here called Chief Joseph okay this is a very highly sought after tree and uh so we can make a a yellow tree out of we can make anything we want Yeah Yeah from the root from the you make roots and you grab something on and yeah so grafting the conifers is the way to go if you can't get them to root right we we graph the pines and the spruce and uh Douglas Firs the arch oh yeah and uh theodorus any any of the true Cedars that they moved on to the advantages yeah and there here again you have tens of thousands of trees in here yeah so this is uh a blue spruce which is what everybody wants a spruce tree to look like is blue okay and the cuttings will not root okay and nobody likes to dig a Colorado Blue Spruce from seed because the fruits are really hard so Norway spruce is the way to go a real nice cold hardy rootstock and we just graft it on and the take is really good really and then we go from that's what I have planted outside here is all these all those blue screws are all all the roots are going and so is that a blue spruce now I mean is that or is that a we'll cut the Norway spruce off and now it's a in the nursery trade a Colorado Blue Spruce and no one cares what the roots are it doesn't doesn't matter it's just a blue spruce it's a lot of work it's a lot of work no labor either time frame so that seed over there Norway spruce one year I get them up this big a year yeah that's Norway spruce in one year oh it's a long-term investment yeah yeah these down here are we go through and sort through them here's last year's so that's year two geez they're slow and then you're three and you're full so we got three or three three four years into the seed before you before you even get it grafted and then after we graphed it we got we got uh another six seven years before it's ready to harvest holy smokes so those must be worth a pretty penny to you at that point [Laughter] is what it is so these are these are all your this is what everybody wants he's a blue spruce these are all look at that these were uh planted out right when the covered lockdown was taking place okay about three years ago then and can you can you see the graft on these anymore or it's grown over yeah so why in a situation like this why don't you cut it down flush why do you leave a little stub just out of curiosity when the tree is trying to take well here let's go look at the next one so we grafted this The graft cakes that we found that if we leave some tops some part of the top on it pull up ah Intrigue growing more fast and it the grafts percentage is higher and the tree takes off better if you go in there a lot of nurseries will just cut it right off and try to get to heal over real fast but then the tree just sits there kind of shocked yeah so we leave a little extra on there and then it kind of dies back so yeah we do uh we leave that top on keep pulling it up and then a new new Pine that we grafted on here this is a Thunderhead Pine has taken off and it's it's good it's it's attached now and this one will go into the field this summer okay it's gonna shoot probably up about that tall and then it will go to the field and then will you cut off this later and cut it down we're going to cut all that this off uh in the next couple weeks oh before it goes at you so you cut those off plant them out and now that it's it's gotten taken hole and it's good to establish now we're going to cut it all off so that all the power goes into the new into the yeah the Thunder head okay and so these are these are three four years worth of worth of work to get them to this this spot remove those Spruce out in front yeah here's our blue spruce taking off there so see they don't take off much that's why we leave the top on it that makes sense that makes sense wow look at them all and so all these are going out in the field this this in the next couple weeks you said no this is summer it's not oh you're right you said in the summer they'll all get them back trim back get ready and plant them in the summer yeah so if we let this grow uh This is Gonna Sprout out it's already starting to sprout and a lot of energy will come up into this okay but we want it all to go into here into the bottom okay yeah there's a weeping watch a weeping large this is from uh from seed yeah yeah yeah here's some uh ones that were planted Last Summer so we let them get fairly big last Greenhouse down there before they come out here in the field yeah well thank you Joe for the tour that was that was great great fun I'll show you up here or the last the end product of what it looks like when we chip it out so here's the target plant these are select form of Colorado Blue Spruce that is extra blue okay it's desirable by the garden centers this load here is waiting for a truck to go to Arizona oh really mountainous zone of Arizona like the Flagstaff area sure up high higher and we uh we dug them and stuck them in the pots because Mark dust in Arizona is a rare commodity okay and uh they're all but that's over 10 years to get to there 10 years so a third of your career has gone into getting these trees ready to go to Arizona wow that's amazing but you liked it or most of your trees you grow big for wholesale this is my target this is your target this is this is where you like to be and are these going to Lowe's and Home Depot or these are going to high-end Gardens a high-end garden centers places like uh this is the higher quality yeah yeah and how many of this size do you sell in a year I mean thousands and thousands yeah yeah wow try to sell them by the truck sell them by the truckload well yeah thanks again Joe for the tour now the next part of the video is I gotta go put them in the ground see if they can go
2023-05-19 12:25
