I planted a new pecan orchard last week, two of them in fact, twenty-one years after I planted my first one. When I laid off the tree rows of that original orchard two decades ago, I did so with two 40-foot cables attached to metal rings at each end. At least one other person, usually my father-in-law, and I matched up the rings centered on where the tree should go. There we inserted a flag. As we moved across the orchard we marked the distance from one point to another running N/S and E/W. When we were done I had to walk the rows back and forth, over and over, to line up the stray flags with my eyeball and get them straight in every direction. I worked on it mainly on the weekends. It took weeks to get it right.
But technology has advanced significantly in twenty years. On a recent sunny January afternoon a friend of mine who leases our row crop land sent over a GPS guided tractor and someone who knew how to operate it. I told him I wanted to leave 45-50 feet around the edges and we’d make the trees forty feet apart in both directions. He punched in the numbers on the little screen inside the cab and the tractor did the rest. He only had to touch the wheel to turn around at the end of the row. I rode along in the “jump” seat as we talked about weather and crops, children, rumors of land that had recently sold, and hunting, all while the tractor rolled along imprinting the turned field with its tire tracks. Where the tracks met running N/S and E/W I would plant a tree at every spot where the northernmost and westernmost tracks crossed. But first I had to dig the holes.
The 18” auger behind my tractor (sans GPS) used hydraulics to punch a hole two and a half feet deep at the designated tire crossings. I dug 145 holes in the smaller, 6-acre field on the same afternoon we laid off the rows. A herd of wild hogs—19 of them to be exact, all sizes and shades of brown, red, and black—fed in my neighbor’s field to the south late in the afternoon, an ominous sign. A couple of days later I dug another 323 holes in the larger, 12-acre field in between planting trees.
It’s a fascinating experience for someone interested in soil to dig tree holes for a new orchard. There is no better way to truly learn about the soil you are planting into. Both fields were dominated largely by a single soil type—Tifton loamy sand, but the nuances as told by elevation and slope were apparent, and at the Westernmost point of the larger field, a sliver of Orangeburg soil reached out. On the Eastern side of the larger field, at the bottom of the slope, the soil is darker, greyish-black and loamy. The auger sank easily into the deep topsoil. Moving west, the soil toward the bottom of the hole turned a yellowish clay. At the top of the hill, where the soil turns from the Tifton soil classification to Orangeburg, the soil was more thinly layered on top with a greyish-tan sand that turned to red clay at the lower depths. The clay tended to cake together in chunks on the auger, stopping it from turning, and limiting the depth of the holes. When this happened, I was forced to get off the tractor and clean the clay off the auger with a wrench. Along the slope, where the soil transition occurred, a diversely chromatic palette of all these colors was pulled out of the earth, mixing together like some sort of abstract painting.
There’s something pleasing to the Western mind’s eye about the symmetry of freshly dug holes in a field as one lays out an orchard, and similarly to the rows of trees planted in those holes. There’s an order there that is strangely comforting and satisfying in appearance. An overlaying of pattern upon a canvas of earth.
The bare root trees are loaded onto a trailer at the nursery, their roots covered with wet sawdust and tarped for the drive to the orchard, where they are transferred 50 or so at a time to the bed of my truck. This is perhaps the most grueling part of the entire process. Pulling the bare root trees out of the sawdust can be like pulling a train down a track. The trees come five to a bundle. You search for the bundles on top but the position of the trees themselves lying on the trailer bed can be deceiving and you may grab a bundle only to discover the hard way that the roots are lying beneath another bundle within the sawdust. This can result in sprained wrists, strained backs and exhaustion as you pull and jerk to wrestle the bundles free. Dirt, sawdust, and mud fly, getting in your eyes and covering you head to toe. Great care is taken to wet the roots down and protect them from wind and sun, for if the roots dry out, all is lost. Once in the orchard, lined up on a row of holes, we start setting the trees in the ground. Sometimes I do this all by myself, but more often than not, I have at least one other person to help speed things along.
I like to put my hands on every tree that goes into my orchards, not because I am a perfectionist or a control freak, but because I feel this is the start of a relationship and I want to know these trees. I want them to know me. We are to be partners, going forward. I will be caring for them, and in turn, if all goes well, within a few years, they will return the favor in the form of pecans, which I will gather and sell. There’s an old saying that the most important day in the life of an orchard is the day you plant it. If you don’t get things right then, the mistakes can last a lifetime.
Not every tree we pull out of these bundles will go into the ground. A small handful of them bear the symptoms of root problems, most notably the round nodules on the roots that indicate the presence of devastating microscopic worms called nematodes. These tiny beasts devour the root systems of trees. Their presence on the roots is largely a death sentence and it is best to cull such trees rather than to place them in the ground to doom the tree and possibly infect the rest of the orchard as the little devils can spread from tree to tree in the soil over time. Similarly, a couple of trees were covered with the tell-tale sign of crown gall, large wart-like galls, up to the size of a baseball which developed at the base of the trunk where the roots begin. This unsightly growth results from infection by a nasty, but naturally occurring soil bacterium that infects the tree through a wound—usually a pruning or grafting cut. The bacteria elicit a gluttonous release of growth hormones by the plant cells which go haywire and swell up into gnarly masses. The galls weaken the young trees and can disrupt the flow of water and nutrients to the tree. Thus, any tree showing signs of this malady were immediately culled as well.
We cut the orange twine holding the bundles together, one at the top and another at the bottom, where the roots begin and pull them from the bed of the truck five at a time. We walk ahead five holes, dropping a tree in each one, and work our way back to the truck, planting. I prune the lateral roots of the tree back by half and prune the tap root if it is too long for the hole. This pruning doesn’t damage the tree and in fact, stimulates new root growth and thereby, better tree growth. I hold the tree in place, positioning it in the hole and we begin kicking the dirt back into the yawning, earthen cavity, mounding it up around the tree trunk, but not packing it.
When we are done planting these trees, at least until the leaves emerge in the spring, they will look like nothing more than sticks speared into the field. We cut the trees off at planting at about chest high (roughly four to four and a half feet in height). This helps to bring the top of the tree back in proportion with the root system that has been pruned both in the nursery at digging and in the planting process. If too much top is left on the trees the roots cannot keep up with the tree’s demand. As a result, they grow poorly, or worse, are attacked by ambrosia beetles. The DBH (diameter at breast height) on most of these trees is the equivalent of a broom handle or larger. Some are as big around as a baseball bat. These are a bit larger than I normally like to plant, mainly because they are so difficult to handle at this size but also because such large trees can more easily exhaust their remaining roots.
Normally, I like to have a water tank on hand to fill the hole about ¼ full of water at planting, to eliminate air pockets and reduce settling. However, I am pressed for time and we have only a two-day window for a two-man crew to plant 468 trees before the weather and the work schedule of my day job make getting them in the ground during this planting season impossible. Rain was forecast for the day after we planned to finish so I decided to forego the water tank on this planting. When everything works out right, I have seen trees planted without water added to the hole grow perfectly fine. I hope that will be the case now. Just as foretold by the weatherman, we had a good, slow, settling rain of about 2” the next day.
I have learned that planting a pecan orchard from scratch at the age of 54 is much different than it was at 34. The body is more weary, obstinate, less forgiving. The horizon seems closer. But, I have grown in knowledge and experience and that makes the process run a little smoother. I may plant more replacement trees here and there through the years as the normal rate of attrition occurs in the orchard, but in all likelihood, this is the last full orchard I will plant. I have heard it said that people plant pecan orchards for their grandchildren, and to some extent this may be true. But, I have reaped great rewards from the orchards I have planted, both financially and dare I say, spiritually. Planting pecan trees has added a measure of blessing to my life that I would not have known otherwise, helping to provide for my family and giving me a direct, tangible relationship with the land. Indeed, these trees have filled my days with pleasure and a strange sort of taxing beauty.
Tree planting has largely been a family affair around here. One of my cousins helped me plant that first orchard over 20 years ago. I have had the help of my father-in law, my wife, and children, and various friends in the orchards I have planted over the years. Occasionally, I have had to hire help to assist me in getting the job done. For this latest planting, my wife and I planted the small field, together. I hired a young man from our church to help me with the larger field. At the end of each day we were back-sore and tired, but at least for me, it was the good sort of tired, when you can feel the strength in your body both expending and honing itself at the same time. It’s nice having work that you can turn around and look at when the day ends to immediately see the fruit of your labor. All of a sudden, at the end of the day, a new orchard is born. Your mark, and that of those who helped to establish the orchard, is stamped on the earth itself in a lasting way that, if done correctly, will be a small contribution to making this world, which can sometimes seem so harsh and cruel, a place of just a little bit more beauty and peace.
Thoughts From The Orchard 