We're in the middle of a nineteen-year-old pecan orchard. This was
an orchard that was planted at high density.
Trees were spaced 35 by 35. However in your 17 shading became an issue and at
that point in time we need to start removing trees. Behind me you can see
that. If we would look straight ahead at the blue flag tree,
that is the permanent tree. But you'll notice on both the left and the right of
that tree there are stumps where the temporary trees have been removed. You
can also look diagonally down there and see from those stumps, that entire
row has been taken out on the diagonal on both the left and the right. The blue
tree will stay as our permanent tree then you can see alternating yellow
trees. Those will be taken out in the next several years as shading becomes an
issue on the permanent tree. Working with high density pecan orchards, one of the
hardest issues a grower will have to address is when to thin the trees and
how to thin the trees. We talked about how to thin the trees - they can come in
with a chainsaw and cut down 17-18 year old trees. However the damage that is
done to the remaining trees is significant. The time it takes to fell to
cut up and remove those trees is significant.
Another option is to come in it and use a piece of lumber equipment. You can see
some pictures, here it's a feller buncher it comes in and grabs the tree, cuts it
off the base, takes it back out and sets it in the middle of the row without affecting adjacent
trees. And a third option is that you can come in and move the trees - come in and
use a 90 inch Big John tree spade and spade those trees up and move them,
whether you sell those to a landscaper or you double the size of your acreage
by going into acreage that has not been planted and putting in trees that are 15
to 17 years old. Doesn't really matter which option you use it's what best fits
your management strategy. One problem that many people see in their pecan
trees especially when they only have several, is the holes, and many times there
will be concentric rings of holes around the tree and some people say "what
kind of borer is it?" but it's not actually a borer, it's a bird. The
yellow-bellied sapsucker is known to come in and to peck the holes in the
tree with the understanding that the SAP would come out of those holes and would
attract insects and then the SAP suckers would come back and eat the insects for
food. Nothing can really be done about that. In North Carolina the yellow-bellied
sapsuckers considered a migratory bird so there's
no control options for that so we just have to live with it and many times
you'll see trees that are seriously affected by this but it's not
really a major issue on the productivity and growth of the tree. In Eastern North
Carolina there's a great need to irrigate our pecan trees. We know the
pecans are a river of bottom tree and have a fairly high demand of water usage
In our light sandy soils here we cannot use a trickle system which puts
out a single drop of water that goes down because that reaches only a very small
portion of the root system. In this part of the state we're gonna use micro
sprinklers. Micro sprinklers come up approximately a foot here and wet a large
area approximately 25 to 30 foot diameter. By doing so it's a very large
portion of the root system of a pecan tree. It's also out of the way for our
harvest equipment that can be an issue during the fall. In addition to using
irrigation to maximize tree growth we also minimize the competition from the
vegetative cover under the tree. We maintain a herbicide strip of
approximately eight to ten foot on each side of the tree to maximize tree growth
as well as to aid in harvest when we can blow the pecans out of that herbicide
strip instead of having to to rake them or sweep. This is an example of a tree
that was planted too deep under heavy winds. You'll notice that there are no
surface roots within approximately the first eight to twelve inches all the
roots are at the bottom of the tree so that's why we encourage planting our
trees high enough so that we do get that surface root to get the buttressing
effect to support the tree under high winds. I thank you for your time in
watching this video. Hopefully I've increased your understanding and
knowledge of growing pecans so you may be successful in growing pecans. For more
information please look at the North Carolina Pecan Growers website or look at
North Carolina State University's Cooperative Extension Service website as
well. Thank you and good luck with your endeavor.