By Brian Hefty

I know you are busy with lots of other things that make you money, and that’s great; but having a nice shelterbelt is often very helpful to your operation, too.  Here are a few tips to making your shelterbelt great.

  1. If you are putting in a new shelterbelt, we have learned after putting in several treebelts over the years that overcrowding is a bad thing.  In the short term it seems great, but 10 years down the road you wish you had the spacing wider.  I’ve got a new shelterbelt going in next spring, and here is exactly what we’re doing:

    Outside row – Alternating common lilac (purple flower) and late lilac (white flower) planted 8’ apart
    Row 2 – Amber maple planted 8’ apart
    Row 3 – Hackberry planted 30’ apart
    Row 4 – Native plum planted 12’ apart
    Inside row – Colorado spruce planted 30’ apart
    The rows will be 20’ apart, and each row will have 6’ wide fabric down

  2. Water and fertilize your trees.  If you are going into very rich soil, the fertility may not be necessary, but the watering is, especially in the first 3 years.  Talk to your NRCS office for their recommendations with each tree species, but during the first 3 years we strongly encourage you to water your trees on a regular basis.  If you ever have a bad drought year after the first 3 years, your shelterbelt will also greatly benefit that year from regular watering.  I know this takes time, effort, and a little money, as I have been the guy hauling water to the trees in the past, but 10 years down the road when you have beautiful, huge trees, you’ll be happy you did the work.
  3. Weed control.  Over the years we have used Casoron, Princep, and Prowl in shelterbelts to control most weeds.  We have also used Roundup sprayed in between the rows to keep everything black for the first year or two.  Once you get your shelterbelt established, we usually recommend having grass in between the rows, so 2,4-D is then a great option for weed control.  Our advice with 2,4-D is to apply before the trees get leaves in the spring (before April 15 on our farm) and after the leaves drop in the fall (after October 15 on our farm).  What usually happens is early in the spring or late in the fall you are busy or you don’t see many weeds, so the spraying doesn’t get done, and that’s not good.  If you spray 2,4-D when leaves are on the trees, you can see leaf-drop and slight tree damage, so we don’t typically recommend this, although you can certainly do it if you want to.
  4. Insect control.  Insects like pine beetles, webworms, and many others can attack your trees.  We have used products like Dimethoate or any labeled pyrethroid in the past, but you may need Safari (the same active ingredient as Gaucho seed treatment) to stop certain insects.  Check your trees; and if you can’t identify the insects, bring them to your local retailer or NRCS office for help.
  5. Disease control.  Just like in your crop acres, it is common to see some diseases show up in your trees.  Most are not too harmful; but here again, it is always best to identify the pest.  If a harmful disease is in your area (like needlecast) that may kill your trees, be proactive.  On our pine trees we sprayed a fungicide twice last spring.  We had never done that before, but after seeing many dead pine trees in our area we felt this was the appropriate step toward saving our shelterbelts.