"len gardener" wrote in message
...
g'day rod,

almost sounds to good to be true hey, i'd say go for it maybe plant
along contours and plant for wind break capacity. trees will improve
the quality of pasture, saw mentioned that a 34% planting in a pasture
does wonders that sort of planting isn't a lot me i reckon hi 40's to
50's % will be great. our lushest grasses are around our eucalypt
trees the grass that doesn't get the shelter etc.,. provided by the
trees just isn't the same quality. we did our planting 6 or 7 meters
between trees and around 8 to 10 meters between rows.

i must say though i'm not a hybrid supporter would rather see indemic
native species, when they come to seeding age are the seeds viable?
and if so what sort of tree will they produce? maybe a couple of
questions to ask.

but outside of that mate you gotta do what you gotta do hey? and no
matter how one looks at it we need trees.

keep us updated

len

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Len,

It's a bit of an odd situation. The paddocks we would be putting them into
has always been treeless(has never been cleared - think open savannah), but
bloody Parkinsonias got a go on many years ago(used to be a boredrain run
though the paddock). As part of our woody weed eradictaion program, we
nobbled all the Parkinsonias. Now, we are noticing the livestock dont find
life all that good; they cannot find anywhere to get out of the sun!

We would be planting these trees not to provide any salt reduction (There
isnt any in the area) or asture improvement , but to provide shade cover for
the sheep & cattle. We will most likely be planting small groves of the
trees at strategic points, but wouldnt be planting in numbers to affect
pasture quality. Main reason for using the Hybrids is solely about the
water we can supply them. We simply dont have water of a quality on that
part of the property that we can grow local species. We would be mainting
water supply to these trees, which would be one method of controlling
propagation.

It will be an interesting experiment. We arent looking to grow millions of
them, but a few test plots of a few hundred trees all up might be worth
evaluating. I do intend finding out more about how they propagate(viability
of seeds) before taking the risk of introducing them. Mind you, some of
that country wouldnt be so bad if it did end up with lots of gum trees, but
I dont think the availability of water(or lack of) will allow them to
spread.

On the tree numbers thing, our property lost the most trees around 1900 or
so; feeding steam engines. I understand your average steam engine required
around 3 cords of wood a day, and most artesian bores took 2-3 months of
drilling to put down. That would seem to be a lot of wood! Most of the
timber cut was Gidyea and Boree, and many of the stumps are still standing
today. However, we have about 80 or so years of new trees having been
establishing, so I feel we are pretty much out in front...None of this
property has been actually cleared, but you can see some areas along the
creeks where they obviously took nearly every tree they could find...

Cheers,

Rod.......Out Back