Episode 3 - Planting & Establishing a Pecan Orchard

This episode separates the planning process from the planting process of establishing a pecan orchard. Hosts Andrew Sawyer and Dr. Lenny Wells of University of Georgia Cooperative Extension cover the necessity of site selection, pollinator placement, and tree spacing. This episode continues with proven planting techniques involving root protection, hole depth, at-plant pruning and deer management. The hosts include a season update for Georgia pecan in April of 2026.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Whether it's pecan or pecan, we cover it all. Orchard management, growth and development, pest management, economics, from extension specialists, scientists, county agents, industry representatives, and growers. Brought to you by the University of Georgia Pecan team. In a nutshell, the Pecan Podcast. Welcome to episode three. In a nutshell, the Pecan Podcast. I'm Andrew Sawyer, area agent in Southeast Georgia. And I'm Lenny Wells, Extension Specialist for Pecans at the University of Georgia. We are your host. So before we get started, we mentioned on the last episode that we would focus today on varieties. Dr. Patrick Connor does cultivars and the breeding for the University of Georgia. He is actually very busy in the orchard right now, going through pollination as part of this process, selecting the varieties. And this honestly, this is probably Lenny the busiest time for him.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Yeah, we need to kind of ask him about some of this because it's an it's interesting, I think, for most people to hear and kind of understand exactly what all goes into him making those crosses this time of year because it is extremely tedious work. We're going to be getting him on.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

So instead, what we're going to do is talk about establishing a pecan orchard. We got a number of points going into this. We share this information every year at the beginner's class, or every year that we have that. And you basically have a planning process involved in establishing an orchard. Then you have a planting process. And what we want to do is just go back and forth and talk about some of the stuff we used to do. Some of the stuff that we have learned over time is better than if we plant this way or look at pollinators from this perspective. All right. Now, interesting, Lenny, before we even start on this, what if we did an update on the crop right now? We talked about adding that to the podcast. What I see is most of the leaves on our trees have completely come out. Now, some of the later varieties, like the Excel, they're still coming out on my side of the state in East Georgia. So they're parachuting, they're pushing the leaves out. But now you can drive and you can see those light green leaves of the pecan trees either in the orchard or out in the hardwood stands. For growers right now, what should they be thinking about? What's like an update that you're seeing over there?

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Yeah, so we're seeing, you know, bud break occurred. We started seeing it, what, about a month ago? Pretty pretty well. And um, you know, right now we're we're at the pollination season right now. And you know, we've had great conditions for pollination. You know, it's been dry, which is has been a challenge, but that's good weather for pollination. We've had some wind to move it around. Everywhere I'm looking right now, you know, we had a really heavy catkin crop, which is always a good sign. It does not guarantee that there's going to be a good crop of flowers and then and then of course nuts resulting from that. But usually if you don't have a good catkin crop, you're not going to have a good nut crop. But it's certainly a good sign so far. Female flowers, you know, are showing up right now on a lot of varieties, and really it's looks really good starting out. So we'll we'll see how that goes. We'll see what kind of pollination we get and and see how the year goes.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

Well, the drought is definitely getting serious, and I want to ask you your perspective on this. Many growers at the end of our county meetings, they asked, you know, with it this dry, should we actually think about increasing our April irrigation? But Lenny, your thoughts on this?

SPEAKER_01 3:54

I think too to this point, there hasn't been much need because even though we're dry, those trees, you know, there's really not a lot of uptake until that canopy gets fully developed. And we're getting closer to that. So yes, they're gonna they're using a little more water now than they were two weeks ago. And we are very dry, so normally we've we changed the schedule to to be watering, you know, roughly about four or five hours a week in April. I think in the under the conditions that we're in and the stage that the foliage development is in, I think it may be okay to go up to twice a week now that we're in this really dry situation that we're in.

SPEAKER_00 4:34

You know, so bottom line, you kind of hit it to this. Looks like it's come from some of your work the last four or five years on sap flow. So I think it's important for the growers to remember too, you're keeping the soil moist as the feeder roots probably are starting to be put on, but the trees aren't really taking up a lot of water.

SPEAKER_01 4:53

Right. So any watering you do right now mostly is going just to keep those roots healthy and going. They're not really using a lot of that water yet for growth and nut production. Certainly, we're in a situation where they need some right now.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

The last update I have, probably considering where we're at, we're talking on April 20th and would be our first fungicide spray. We're gonna eventually have Dr. Clement Olivier as our new plant pathologist in PCAN on, but we might just mention this, Dr. Wells, because when you have the dry weather condition, you have an opportunity to increase the interval of a spray. However, is there a benefit to getting first fungicide application before maybe the inoculation of scab?

SPEAKER_01 5:37

Uh, yes. So you have to have that free moisture and rainfall for scab to kind of get going and sporate, and then those spores land on other tissue and start to grow and develop. But that can happen really quickly. And if you get behind on some varieties, uh like say desirable or pawnee, for instance, that are highly susceptible, if you wait too long and you wait on those conditions to start, this can all start changing and moving so rapidly that if you don't have one on beforehand, you can get in trouble really quickly. And especially, you know, right now, this time of year, we recommend using the phosphates. And phosphite is one of those materials that you spray it on and it's absorbed by the tree. And it actually stimulates sort of an immune response in the tree. So you really kind of need to get that on before you have a lot of pressure so that it can go ahead and get in the tree and start working. You know, for some of your other varieties that are less susceptible, you know, no big rush, but I would want to go ahead and get one on before the end of April because you want to also get your your zinc on as well with that as that foliage is developing.

SPEAKER_00 6:47

Yes, and this is something that county agents who are helping our growers in East Georgia, they've talked to me about, and and and this explanation is is kind of the way I think we need to look at it. It's the benefit of getting it on there before that scab sets in. So we got the temperatures, but when we get the next rainfall, we will have the second component in getting scab started. So, well, that's a good update for kind of where the crop is right now, you know, early season, leaves come out, so it gets everybody thinking about things. If we look at planting and establishing an orchard, I mentioned earlier it's a planting process, and then there is a planting process. Lenny, I want to start with planning process. You mentioned in the last episode, remember, you know, when we went through that really 10 years of just planting so many acres for in that period to meet that export market, really. And here's what I've seen since I've been with you and I cover East Georgia in the last six years. We're just still planting more orchards. It might not be at the highest amount, a number of acres that it was, but we're still planting. And so, from the perspective of planting, what would we think about in terms of a site that you plant on? What would you think about before we start?

SPEAKER_01 8:02

Yeah, so planting an orchard is something that you want to give a lot of thought to. The more planting you can have prior to planting, the better off that orchard is going to be. Kind of the old saying is the most important day in the life of an orchard is the day you plant it. You want to make sure you have everything right. And one of the first things to think about is the planting site. So where you're going to plant that orchard. And the key for that is you've got to have well-drained soil. Pecans do not like to be in standing water. Especially if it's a wet year and you you plant them in a low spot or a spot that has a high water table, those trees are going to struggle to survive. So you so well-drained soil is the first thing to be looking for. And sometimes you may have spots, you know, you may have a field that is well-drained soil throughout most of it. But like, for instance, in a lot of southwest Georgia, we have these what are called grady bottoms or grady depressions where you have, you know, good soil, and then all of a sudden you'll have this spot of grady soil that is really low and really poorly drained. And a lot of times, if you have that in an orchard, it's probably best just to don't plant that spot. Just leave it out. Use it to pile up limbs to burn or something like that. But but don't plant trees in it because they're just generally not going to survive. Only case I've seen that work is where you actually have had where you're in a situation like we're in now, and you've had record dry conditions and plant and you go and can plant through those spots, you know, in situations like we're in now. And if you get irrigation to it, a lot of times those trees can survive and actually do pretty well if that dry, if the that drought persists long enough and those trees can get established. And then they can actually help to dry that spot up a little bit too. But the trees have to get established first, and and getting them established on those sites is tricky. So most of the time where you have a low depression with a high water table, it's best not to plant that. So again, just to make the point, well-drained soil is something you've got to have and planting an orchard.

SPEAKER_00 10:13

Can I share one? I had uh in my first year being with you, there was one site that that actually had this problem. From my perspective, you know, thankfully we don't see this a lot, but I think it's because of the education. You know, growers know this up front and they're able to select that site. There's one place that I did go, and for anyone listening said, what does that look like? When you're when the entire orchard you plant has this problem, it's hard to see it because all the trees are the same size. But I was asked to come out to an orchard, take a look. Hey, can you help us with some fertilizer stuff? And Lenny and I got there, and the orchard, I promise you. I walked out, and in my mind, I'm looking at a two-year-old orchard. And as I kept talking to them, they had to stop me and said, No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're you're giving you keep saying second year, these are four-year-old trees. And I had to stop right there. And it was that was more a learning for me. Yeah. The trees were so small. So if you're listening, you say, Well, what does that look like? Well, the trees just never take off. So at four years old, they still look like they're at the end of their first growing season.

SPEAKER_01 11:15

Yeah, they got to get those roots established and up under them and growing before the top of that tree can grow. And if they're sitting in water, those roots just aren't going to grow.

SPEAKER_00 11:25

Linny all over Georgia. I mean, growers have been doing this for a long time. We planting, sometimes you plant, you know, behind row crop, sometimes it's pasture, but there seem to be less known when you we planting behind pine trees and hardwood. Is there anything that we need to think about in terms of that site choice?

SPEAKER_01 11:44

Definitely, definitely there are. Um, but I thought of something as you were talking about that soil type that you're planting into uh as we were talking. So pecans being native to the Mississippi River Valley and kind of to the river valleys in in Texas and the tributaries there and down into Mexico even, they occur in river bottom. So you think, well, why don't they grow well, you know, in saturated soil? The reason for that is they're there in those river bottoms, there are sandy ridges. And those sandy ridges are where pecans grow uh in their native habitat. And what happens is those rivers flood seasonally, deposits some of that organic debris and all around that floodplain, but they're on those sandy ridges that drain well, and so they don't sit in standing water in their natural habitat very long, especially during the growing season. Most of the time that's going to happen in the winter when they're dormant. They can take that a little better when they're dormant than when they're when they're actually growing and putting on leaves and nuts and all that. So even in their native habitat, in those river bottoms, they prefer the the more well-drained soil on those sandy ridges. But you mentioned planting behind where you've cleared land versus where you are just planting into a field. We saw a lot of that, you know, during those years that that pecans were really being planted planted following that China boom. And one thing I would always notice uh going out and looking at these orchards, and I'd get a lot of calls on orchards that were planted behind cleared land that just didn't seem to grow as well. You know, they would be stunned or just kind of sitting there not doing anything. Sometimes you'd get some mortality of those trees situations that would happen a lot more frequently than just planting in a an old row crop field. And so we did some research on that a few years ago, and what we found was that it's a combination of things. So here in the southeastern coastal plain, our pH of our soils is naturally really low. So it's around five. We looked at that, and what we found was, you know, that that pH, that low pH in those soils made it difficult for those trees to get established. But along with that, anytime you have cleared land, whether it's pine trees or hardwoods or whatever, the cleanup process of that can be kind of destructive. So you're you're piling up debris to burn, so that all gets burned after the clearing process. And just the the movement of that heavy equipment over the soil sometimes can can cause some some damage, short-term damage. It's best to try to work that land and get it back into shape before you plant. So one of the problems that we have a lot of times is when you when all that debris is burned, you know, you get this pulse of nutrients that's released right at first for like a year. But then after that, all your organic matter, all the nutrients are gone. So we see a lot of trees in these situations that are end up being deficient in potassium, phosphorus, of course, zinc, and then even nitrogen, calcium, a lot of these things because that debris is burned and all that organic matter is gone and the nutrients leach out pretty quickly. So if you're clearing a site, it's best to go in and start liming that soil, fertilizing it, maybe even putting in a cover crop for a year. We normally recommend if you clear a site, you need to wait at least a year before you plant that. Now, a lot of people go ahead and plant it right back, but a lot of times those trees get stunted and they end up being a year behind anyway. So it's best just to go ahead and and amend that soil, get it back in shape, and then plant the orchard. You mentioned lime. Is there anything else that could be put out? You know, the most important things for pecans are gonna be, you know, phosphorus, potassium, and and zinc. Most most of the time. They're gonna get calcium and magnesium with the lime. So getting all that kind of up somewhat uh from what it was after the clearing uh is gonna be helpful. You don't see that as much in row crop fields because they're limed and fertilized for the row crop that's been there in the past. So uh that's generally not as much of a problem there.

SPEAKER_00 16:16

And Lenny, what I was thinking was um, you know, in the past we used some chicken litter, but I don't know if this is available today.

SPEAKER_01 16:24

Yeah, with with fertilizer prices like they are, poultry litter is in high demand, and uh a lot of that is being used right now. But if you can get it, that's probably one of the best things you can put on those depleted soils.

SPEAKER_00 16:39

Changing gears, a big process in the planting stage, you know, for Pen is pollination. Can you explain, Lenny, how we need to think about this because you know, does pollination do we need to give more credit to pollination?

SPEAKER_01 16:55

Yes. I mean this brings up the whole point of what cultivars or varieties you plant in the orchard, and that needs to be something that really needs to be given a lot of thought. We won't go into specific varieties now, but but you know, you need to think about what you want out of a pecan variety. Do you want early production? Do you want good scab resistance? Or do you just want the best percent kernel, the best quality nut that you can get, regardless of what it costs to grow it? You know, these are choices you gotta make at the beginning. And what I see it happen a lot of times is that that growers will, you know, say decide they're gonna plant an orchard and then they'll wait until like January after the nurseries have started digging trees and call up to try to put in an order and get the varieties they want. And most of the time, if they wait that long to do it, if they're able to get trees at all, they may have to just take whatever the the nurseries have available. And that's a common mistake I see a lot of people make because you really need to put a lot of thought into exactly what you want from that particular tree that you're planting, or what variety you're planting. And you need to plant more than one variety for the reason you just mentioned, pollination. And yes, it's something that a lot of growers sort of dismiss down here in South Georgia because we have a pecan tree around every corner, seedling trees growing in the fence rows and in the woods and yards and everywhere else. And so a lot of people that plant pecans here generally think that, oh, well, there's enough pecan trees around, need to worry about pollination. And pecan trees will actually some of them can self-pollinate. But the problem you get into with self-pollination or pollination from a variety that's not exactly suited, is that it affects your quality, it affects the ceiling of your maximum production can be. There's a lot of things that pollination is important for. We often see, as I mentioned, growers kind of dismiss that, and it's one of those things you won't really notice unless you have something to compare it to. Because the trees, oftentimes, as I mentioned, they will self-pollinate to some extent. And a grower may think their production's fine, but they're not comparing it to what it could be if it was being pollinated. And the research on this has shown time and time and time again that you get an increase in quality, you get an increase in nut set, nut retention, in the end, better yields when you have a pollinator. And oftentimes it's not how many pollinators you have out in the orchard, because it doesn't take, you know, it doesn't take many to get effective pollination because one tree will produce so much pollen. But the the problem gets to be the distance between the variety you want pollinated and your pollinator, and not just the distance, but what barriers you know are in between. So if you have, you know, we recommend planting about, you know, you want a pollinator no more than a hundred and fifty feet away from every tree. And the reason for that is when you got a lot of trees in that orchard, you know, as that pollen's moving through there, they're gonna grab it or it's gonna settle on those trees. And so it won't make it all the way through to the other side. So you need a pollinator about a hundred every hundred and fifty feet from every tree out there.

SPEAKER_00 20:26

You hit it. I mean, in pollination, many people do ask, especially that are new, is is this done by bees? How is it accomplished?

SPEAKER_01 20:35

Yes, that's a great point. For pecan trees, uh, they're not pollinated, pollinated by insects, they are wind pollinated. So the wind just blows it around and uh blows it from those male flowers to the female flower. Another thing, and we'll ask Dr. Connor more about this when we have him on too, because he has some really good takes on this that I want to get. You know, the variety that you're pollinating with makes a big difference. We have these pollination charts that Dr. Connor, we use the ones Dr. Connor puts together. But we have these pollination charts out there, and you look at these pollination charts, and they have these bars that may be like a yellow that shows when the pollen is released, and then the black bar shows when the pollen is accepted. And you've got these for each variety, and you try to line those up to where you have the black bar for this one is overlapping with the yellow bar for that one. The thing growers need to realize about this is that those pollination charts aren't set in stone. So the the data and the dates that you see in those pollination charts are based on a certain number of years of data. And you can see those windows shift when you add years to it. Because if you think about pollination when it occurs, it's driven by how fast. That foliage develops in the spring. And some springs are cooler than others. Sometimes we have warmer winters, which kind of kind of wreaks havoc on pollination because it will not only can delay bug break, but it can make it more erratic where it's not as uniform. So a lot of times the pollinators don't line up like they normally would. So when you average all these together from across the years, you get a certain set of data. And as you add more years to it, you may see those windows shift a little bit. There's really no other way to really do it. That's when you're dealing with Mother Nature. Things aren't set in stone. It's not always going to go according to a spreadsheet. You're dealing with Mother Nature, and a lot of factors go into that. And so we just kind of have to play along with her in that system. Pecan trees exhibit what's called dichogamy. So pecan trees have both male and female flowers on the same tree. Because they are dichogamous, which means that the pollen shed and the receptivity of that female flower on the same tree usually occur at different times. And they're usually separated like that so that it reduces the self-pollination. Because in nature, we know that's not a good thing. So we have type 1 pecans and we have type 2 pecans. Type 1 pecans are protanderous, which means that the male flower releases pollen before the female flower is receptive, or the or the male flower matures first before the female flower. And then you have type 2 pecans, in which the female flower is receptive before the male releases its pollen. So you need both types. You need type 1 and type 2 in the orchard. Sometimes type 1, different type 1s can pollinate each other, sometimes different type 2s can pollinate each other, but most of the time it's best to have a type 1 and a type 2.

SPEAKER_00 24:09

Lenny, from a grower perspective, that's what they need to hear, the difference in type 1s and type 2s, the mixture that you've got to have for pollination. There's something else that I think about in pollination where the greatest reduction of pollen comes from obstruction. And of course, since they are windblown, Pecan's pollination is windblown, that obstruction comes from what? Other trees. How does this concept help us when we put those pollinators in an orchard?

SPEAKER_01 24:42

So this is another key point in planning of the orchard, is if you're going to have multiple varieties out there, where do they need to go? So normally the best thing to do would be to choose a main cultivar that you're going to have out there in the orchard. And then you choose a pollinator or possibly two pollinators. Usually the more pollinators you have, the better. You choose your main cultivar and your pollinator cultivar. And your main cultivar, a good way to do it is to have usually about four rows of the main cultivar, followed by one row of a pollinator, and then another four rows of your main cultivar, and then another row of your pollinator. And what this does is all the everywhere out there in the orchard, it gives you a pollinator, usually within that 150 feet of every tree out there. And then another way you could do it is to plant your pollinator. So make your the majority of your orchard out there your main cultivar, and then put a pollinator on every fifth tree at every fifth row. And again, this places a pollinator every 150 feet. Depends somewhat on your spacing, but on the spacings that we generally recommend, you know, 40 by 40, 30 by 50, 30 by 60, you're going to have a pollinator every 150 feet with this arrangement. A lot of growers prefer planting in blocks, like the four rows of a main variety and then one row of your pollinator, because that just makes it easier for harvest. You can keep the varieties separate when you harvest and also in managing them. So if you've got a really highly resistant variety as your main cultivar, but your pollinator is a little more scab susceptible, you want to be able to spray those separately than that main variety. If you have variety two, you know, if your two varieties that you're using, or three or whatever, but if your main variety and your pollinators all have sort of the same management type, you know, so if they're all susceptible to scab or all resistant to scab, or if they're you know similar in size and percent kernel and all that, the more similar they are, the more you can get away with that every fifth tree, every fifth row. Otherwise, I'd probably do four rows of a main variety and one row of a pollinator, just to be able to keep things organized a little better.

SPEAKER_00 27:33

You just made an incredible point because when you say every fifth tree and every fifth row, you know, we're we're sticking to that fifth row is that pollinator row, but within that row, the pollinators are actually every fifth tree. So it's hard in that fifth row to treat the trees differently from one another. So when the nuts are the same size and shape or the management is the same, let's say both your varieties don't get susceptible scab, then that makes it a lot easier. One of the things the growers always talk about is when you select those pollinators, there's so many things to think about because you go through all the type ones and all the type twos and mention up on the chart, but then once you get down to actually selecting Lennya, it's very common that your pollinator that you're selecting is pretty different either in management or in the shape size of the variety that you chose to plant. And um, you know, that changes how a grower has to manage. And in some cases, the growers just kind of have to focus the management on the main cultivar that they want. And the pollinator may not get as many sprays or something like that, but it's there to pollinate as well.

SPEAKER_01 28:46

Yeah, I mean, a perfect example of that is say pawnee and lakota. They pollinate each other perfectly. You can also pick the lakota up the second time you go through to shake pawnee. But the problem is they are both on extreme ends of that whole scab susceptibility line. So you got lakota, which is highly resistant to scab, you got pawnee, which is highly susceptible, and so if you are interplanting them every fifth tree, every fifth row, then you know you basically got to spray that whole orchard for the pawnee because it's the most susceptible. And you're not really getting that advantage that Lakota gives you in that situation of being highly resistant. So, in that situation, it's best to do four rows. Say, if pawnee was your main variety, do four rows of pawnee, or probably better, do four rows, make make the resistant variety your main variety and plant four rows of lakota, one row of pawnee. Then you can just go through, say, and spray the pawnee rows, uh, when a lot of times you won't have to spray those Lakota rows and be able to keep them separate. So there's a lot of a lot of things like that to think about when you're deciding what varieties that you do want.

SPEAKER_00 30:09

And as we talk, yeah, we're able to kind of go through and help that be more practical for people. You mentioned, I want to transition because you just mentioned earlier about your tree spacing. Can we talk about tree spacing? This could be a good little bit of information. And I don't know, Lenny may have a little bit of historical. Look, if I open up the Southeastern Pecan handbook, I'm gonna read a block, 40 by 40 tree spacing. But then if I go out into an orchard today, anywhere in Georgia, I'm gonna see a number of differences. So, how does a person, especially new to this, say, how do I wrap my mind around this?

SPEAKER_01 30:46

What actually matters? So tree spacing is is kind of like pruning. It's one of those topics that you're gonna get as many different opinions on it as the number of people that you ask. What our job is to try to give people the best information to make good decisions for. And a lot of times as growers, we want to be in control and we want to feel like we can get these trees to do what we want. And but at some point we have to yield to Mother Nature. Pecan trees, by their very nature, want to get big. You think about where their native habitat is, they're growing in those you know, floodplains in the Mississippi River Valley, and there's a lot of competition there. And so pecan trees have to try to get big to outgrow that competition. And if you look at things like apples, most apples now are grown on dwarfing rootstock. As far as we know, that doesn't exist in pecan. The genetics for dwarfing has not really been found. So this plays into tree spacing. Another thing is really to be able to bear the crop loads that we really want to get off out of pecans, those trees have to reach a certain size. For our own purposes, you know, we want to plant these trees at a spacing where we can understandably want we want to get the most return as quickly as we can. And a pecan tree, you're gonna have to wait. Usually, you know, you'll get some production year five, six, uh, but for most varieties, it's gonna be year eight before you're really getting any kind of decent yields. And a lot of people, you know, that you got a lot of money invested in planting these orchards, so you want to get some return coming in as quick as you can. But with pecans, there's a limit to that. So, what we saw a few years ago, especially when pecan prices were really high during the years China was buying, we saw people going in and planting orchards at a lot higher densities than they had historically. So they would reduce those tree spacings down from say 40 by 40 to 25 by 25, 30 by 30, with the idea that you're getting a lot more trees per acre doing that. And so at a younger age, on a per acre basis, you're going to be able to gather a lot more nuts. And theoretically that's true, and it it does happen, but it only really happens for a year or two. So, in the meantime, it costs more money to plant that orchard at a higher density, it costs more to irrigate that orchard at a higher density because you've got your rows are closer together, you've got more irrigation lines. You have to use more, say, herbicide when you're spraying those herbicide strips. Everything you do is magnified, and so you're increasing your expenses, even though you got more trees per acre, and you say, Well, I'm gonna get them into production faster, and it'll offset that. Well, problem is let's say you get to year five or six, and those trees, yeah, they're starting to produce, and you can get more per acre off of them, but they're also getting bigger during that time. A you know, six-year-old tree on 40 by 40 has plenty of room around it, but a six-year-old tree at 30 by 30 is starting to get crowded, and what we see happening is that you get good production year six. Year seven is decent, but it you may kind of notice it start to drop a little, and you may say, well, that's just you know, little alternate bearing starting there, but it's okay. And then a lot of times what we see is year eight, that production drops off to nothing. And the reason is an eight-year-old tree at 30 by 30 is crowded. And when that happens, you start getting a lot of dead wood in there. It affects the alternate bearing because those trees are more stressed, and so you get all these problems that come along with it. And so then you have to start hedging those orchards earlier. If I was planting 30 by 30, I'd probably start hedging that orchard about year five or six. Um, you won't have to be cutting a lot off of it, but you will have to cut some. And so that takes care of that, you know, year six, seven, eight, maybe nine. And then you start getting past that, and you start noticing that, you know, I'm hitting these yields, but they're not really improving. And normally from year eight to fifteen, your yields have a lot of times more than doubled on a 40 by 40. But at these tighter spacings, you're having to cut those trees to keep them in that tighter spacing and get good sunlight in there, you're having to cut cut them so often and so hard that you're cutting off all your fruit and wood. So your yields kind of plateau, and they don't ever get to where they really need to be. So you really need to give a lot of thought to tree spacing when you're planting the orchard. You know, you need to think about how much time do you have to invest in this, how much money do you want to invest in this? Because if you're planting at these high densities, 30 by 30 or 25 by 25, even 20 by 40 is a little tight. If you're planting at these high densities, you have to start managing that crowding a lot earlier. There's a cost to that. And even with hedging these high density spacings, at some point you're gonna have to go in and remove trees. And it costs a heck of a lot more to remove trees than it does to plant trees. It's a lot more time consuming, a lot more aggravating. And most growers don't think about that on the day they're planting. Because when you go out and you plant 40 by 40, yeah, it looks like there's a ton of room out there. But within six or seven years, they're gonna fill in pretty nicely. So you need to give a lot of thought to all this before you do any planting.

SPEAKER_00 36:56

Well, and I'm thinking the whole time it's like a summary. You know, we drive around now, there's there's a lot of tight spacing, and um, we started planting tighter for the market, and then we realized, well, we're only helping ourselves for just a few years. Well, then Lenny, we started hedging. And so then it was like, well, great, we'll hedge them. The hedging is looking like it's a great thing for these trees. And then now we see that even in the tightest spacings, that's where we're cutting off our fruiting wood. And so there's some reason in thinking that even considering back to the 40 by 40, even under hedging systems.

SPEAKER_01 37:33

I think one of the things, one of the ways that really got pushed during those China years is we had a lot of people say from out west, say California, that were growing almonds. And we saw during that same time that with the water situation out there, there were a lot of almond orchards out west being pushed up. And we started seeing some of those guys come into Georgia and planting pecan trees. But they brought that way that they were growing almond trees to growing pecan trees, and they were, of course, they plant almond trees a lot higher density than we plant pecan trees, and so that a lot of there was a lot of that done, and then growers start to see that, and they think, oh, that's the way it needs to be done, because these these guys from California who are making tons of money growing almonds, that's how they're planting pecan trees, so we need to we need to follow that lead. And the environments are completely different, the crops are completely different, and it just doesn't work out as well. And honestly, I think if you're hedging, and say you plant 40 by 40, you probably need to start hedge pruning year 12 to 15, somewhere in that range. Yeah. Um, but I think with hedge pruning, we can hold uh 40 by 40 spacing pretty much from now on with hedge pruning. And you know, prior to hedge pruning, even at a 40 by 40, once we got to about year 20, 25, you know, somewhere in that range, it was time to start removing a few trees to open up more sunlight in there. But hedging allows us to keep that 40 by 40 um you know where it is, keep those trees in place.

SPEAKER_00 39:21

And you get the benefit of the hedging as well. So you get both. And in considering the planning process of planting and establishing an orchard, what we control most is varieties. And since, and I'm kind of hinted at this before, but we would like for Dr. Connor to come on and talk to us about varieties. So we're gonna kind of walk over that, not really get anything specific on varieties, Lenny, and we could just shift gears into the planting process.

SPEAKER_01 39:58

Yeah, I think that's a good idea. So here in Georgia, we usually plant bare root trees, and so the way these are grown in the nursery is the nursery will plant that seed, grow that tree for a year from seed, and then the following year they'll come in and graft whatever variety they want onto that seedling rootstock. And then they grow those trees for another year, sometimes two years, uh, and then sell they'll dig those trees that come up out of the dirt, you know, the dirt comes off of them as you pull them out, and they're selling a bare root tree. In a lot of places, in other parts of the country, I see that that a lot of people use container grown trees, and that works fine as well. But for us, I don't know if it's just traditionally I've tried to do uh a study comparing container grown with bare root, and we really just didn't see a whole lot of difference there. I think you have a little bit more built-in cushion with a container-grown tree, uh, because you don't have that bare root, it's not going to dry out as fast. And that is the number one key to the success of an orchard is preventing that root from drying out, especially when we're planting bare root trees like we do. All the way from the time that tree is dug out of the nursery until the time it goes into the ground in the orchard that's being planted in. The number one most important thing is to protect those roots from drying out. When the trees are dug, most nurseries are going to get them quickly to a uh a pile, they'll usually put them in a pile of sawdust or or or something and get some water on them and keep those uh trees with plenty of moisture on that root. And then when you pick them up at the nursery, uh you need to, if if you can, say if you've got a trailer and you're putting the trees on a trailer, have them dump a little of that sawdust or something on those roots and then cover that with a tarp. And if you can't get them to dump something on those roots to cover them, make sure you wet them down good and cover them and wrap them up good with a tarp. And then when you get them home, undo that tarp, water them down again, and wrap them back up, and make sure you keep them wet until they go into the ground. Um, because that is the number one killer of newly planted pecan trees. Uh and sometimes you won't notice that until you know you plant the tree, and you notice that whole year that tree's just not growing well, or it grows a little bit and then it dies back. And a lot of times that's from the root just getting dried out at some point during the process. Of course, the person that has planted that orchard wants to blame the nursery, the nursery wants to blame the grower, and it's it's impossible most of the time to really tell where the problem occurred. Um, but just make sure you keep those roots wet.

SPEAKER_00 43:21

You've established protecting those roots is the most important. Now, we have if you come back from getting your trees and you're not able to plant them the next day, you may have to go a week. You may have to go a little bit. There's a few options on what you can do with those trees in a more long term. Can you help us out without maybe healing them in?

SPEAKER_01 43:44

Yeah. Healing them in, uh, which means basically you kind of get a dig a little trench and you lay them in that and put dirt back over them. That's fine to do, but you don't want to be the one digging those trees back out of that in that situation. Um A lot of times having some kind of sawdust or something that you can can dump on those roots and and keep them keep them covered and be able to keep that wet. You know, put a sprinkler. Say if you got a trailer there and you're not going to be able to plant for a few days, cover them up with sawdust, put a sprinkler in there to wet the roots down and or just wet them down good with a hose a couple times a day. Anything you can do to keep them wet. Now some people will I have seen people put them, you know, put the bundles. Usually they come in bundles of five or so, and I have seen people take those and put them in a pond. And I'm sure you have run across this as well. A lot. And so yeah, that that can be done. The biggest problem I've seen with that is if you happen to have beavers in that pond, you'll get up the next morning and you won't have any trees left. I've seen beavers take take trees that were left in a pond like that until you could get them planted.

SPEAKER_00 45:05

I'll add this uh even those who say, My pond does not have a beaver, so I'm safe. Many of those find out that there actually was a beaver in that pond after they set their trees in there. So keep that in mind.

SPEAKER_01 45:22

And if you're gonna get them planted, you know, pretty quick, uh, you could probably just, if you had to, just leave them in a tarp, even if you don't have any sawdust on there. But you know, you want to come back and and wet those roots multiple times uh during the day to keep them to keep them wet.

SPEAKER_00 45:40

So let's say uh we got our trees out. Now my kind of jumped over this one, but it it comes at it can be answered at any time. Can you explain like when we're planting trees?

SPEAKER_01 45:52

Yeah, so normally our nurseries start digging trees in January, and most people here will plant trees anywhere, you know, from January all the way through uh usually mid-March. We have people that will plant even after mid-March, and that as far as I'm concerned, is a definite no-no. I don't even really like to plant past February. Earlier you can get those trees in the ground, the better off the trees are gonna be because they get a chance to get, you know, that soil can get, you know, if you plant them, say, in January to mid-February, they're gonna have plenty of time for that soil to settle in those roots to kind of get settled into that new spot. And and maybe, you know, if you start getting some warmer temperatures in March, you may even start to get a little root growth as that soil warms up. And so the sooner you can get them in the ground before bud break, the better, because there's a lot of transplant shock on that tree. When you dig them out of the nursery, they're losing a lot of roots, and then even if you're keeping them wet, there's going to be some stress there, and then you plant them in that hole in the orchard, and you know, they've got to overcome what we call transplant shock. And if you're waiting until say mid-March to plant them, well, you may have bud break in a week or two, and in some years, and that tree is not gonna be ready quite yet. And so it's gonna undergo a lot more shock, a lot more stress, and then guess what that brings in? Ambrosia beetles. And then they're gonna hit those trees. So the earlier you plant them, the better. So I I like to try to get mine planted anytime from January as soon as the nurseries dig to mid-February. Um, that's kind of the window I prefer planting in.

SPEAKER_00 47:50

So I'm thinking now from the actual uh planting process, you know, I like hands-on, all right. So our book talks about that planting hole. So let's say, Lenny, we've we've come out of the nursery, we've protected our roots, we've done everything right now, they're on the back of the truck, we're walking through the orchard. Tell us about that planting hole. That auger, it the book says three or four feet, and you know, it's about the length of your leg. So, how deep do you like them to be set?

SPEAKER_01 48:18

And that's another thing. I mean, you know, the old saying is you don't want to put a $20 tree in a $2 hole. Um, so you want to make sure you you give that tree what it needs when you're planting the hole itself. I mean, most of our growers plant using an auger. And when I first started, that was an 18-inch auger, was what most people had. And then we went through that, you know, a lot of things changed in that period where we were planting and the price was high, and they were getting a lot of planting. And a lot of people during that time switched to 24-inch augers. I don't really see much difference as far as the tree is concerned. An 18-inch auger, 18-inch wide hole, is just as good as a 24-inch wide hole. The tree doesn't seem to have much preference there. Uh, I have I do know of one particular grower that they dig their trees with a or dig their holes with a a backhoe. And that's fine. It it makes a big hole, and so you've got a lot of loose dirt there, the roots can kind of start growing and exploring in, but I think a backhoe is a little overkill for for uh for digging the hole. But usually, as I mentioned, an 18-inch auger, 18-inch wide auger gives a plenty wide enough hole for that root to start get established, getting established in. We used to, when we planted, we didn't want to prune off any more roots than we had to to get that tree in the hole. Uh, you wanted to preserve as many of those roots as possible. And then Dr. Mike Smith out of Oklahoma State had a study where they removed part of the taproot, so they cut part of the taproot off, and then they cut all the lateral roots off and planted those trees and compared them with trees that they didn't prune. And what they found was that the trees that they had root pruned grew significantly faster than the trees that they did not prune the roots on. And so, based on that, we started changing our recommendations to you need to prune the root. And so we'll prune that tap root to about a length of 18 to 24 inches, and then we'll prune those lateral roots. I still have a hard time pruning off all those lateral roots just psychologically. It's it I can't really make myself do it, but I do cut the root, those lateral roots back by at least half. Yeah. And so I'll I'll put them in the hole like that. But um so based on this, you know, when we're trying to when we used to try to keep as much of that root there as possible, we were digging three and four, you know, three-foot hole, three and a half foot hole, you know, to get that root in there. Now that we're cutting those roots to 18 to 24 inches, there no, there's no need to have a hole that big. So I usually only dig them to about 24 inches now. And usually that that tree will sit right in there, and and easily you can get the the the depth of that planting right uh with that. So about 18 inch, 18 to 24 inch hole is what we recommend now for for planting trees, and and that planting depth that I mentioned, that is usually the number one mistake made in planting pecan trees. You dig these holes, say if you say if you do dig them three three feet, three and a half feet, and you sit that root or that tree in there, uh, you've got a lot of dirt or a big hole there. And so a lot of times as you get rain on that after you've planted, that soil's gonna settle more, and that tree will kind of sink into the ground. And this can result in planting that tree too deep. And this is the number one problem that we see out of out of tree plantings. And they always used to say, Oh, you want to plant that tree about the same depth that it grew in the nursery. Well, if you've ever looked at a tree uh that that that comes out of a nursery, a bare root tree, it's kind of hard to tell exactly where that soil line was in the nursery. And a lot of times you'll see the graft line. And and this, you know, a lot of times growers will use that as the line. And that's not really the depth they were planted in the nursery. Usually they were planted or the graft is is above the soil line. And years ago, the graft used to be they they'd graft it and then cover that back up. That's not done so much anymore. But it's hard to tell on that bare root tree exactly where that soil line was in the nursery. Now it's better to plant too shallow than too deep. And the reason for that is uh if you plant too shallow, and so even if you have a couple of lateral roots sticking out of the ground, it's not that big a deal. Because that those lateral roots will die back that little portion of the tap root that's above ground, that tissue will turn from basically root tissue to trunk tissue without much problem. And you won't as long as you've got enough root under the ground too. You can get it too shallow, but it's rare. So when I'm planting, I like to look for that uppermost lateral root coming off of that tap root. And I usually make that uppermost lateral root no more than an inch below the soil surface, and sometimes right at the soil surface, but but certainly no more than an inch below the soil surface. And this allows you to plant them at the right depth and get good root establishment because if you plant too deep, what happens is all your lateral roots will be too deep down into the soil. And when that occurs, they don't get enough oxygen, they don't get enough aeration. Also, another problem can be this is more of a problem, is if you don't have good brace roots or or lateral roots near the surface to hold that tree in place, and all your lateral roots are say a foot and a half under the ground, those trees are gonna blow over a lot easier uh when they get to be older. They're gonna rock around in that uh hole and they'll kind of wallow out an area right around that trunk, and then that's gonna make it more susceptible to wind blowing it over later on. So keep that lateral root, that uppermost lateral root when you plant no more than an inch below the soil surface. And that's the easiest way to make sure you're planting at the right depth.

SPEAKER_00 55:11

And as far as planting that tree, setting it in the ground, the last thing that comes to mind we've actually pruned some of the roots. So certainly we've got to cut some of the top. I mean, some of these trees are really tall coming out of the nursery. How far back do we need to cut them?

SPEAKER_01 55:27

Yes, I mean, whether you're trimming the roots or not, you've got to cut the top of that tree back. So what we probably the best size tree to plant is going to be like a five to seven foot tree. And then you would, after you plant it, you would cut it off about maybe four foot high, three and a half to four foot high. What that does is it brings the portion of that root system that has been lost in the digging process and the planting process if you're printing roots, it brings that top of that tree back in proportion with what that root system can support. And the larger tree you plant, the more of it you need to cut off at planting. Because if you plant, say, a 10-foot tree and you don't cut it off, it's lost a lot of root system in that digging and planting process, and it's going to make it harder for that tree to get established because it's having to feed that big old 10-foot tree. And a lot of times that root system can't keep up with what the top of that tree needs because that root system's been compromised, and the tree will end up being kind of weak growing. Sometimes they'll you'll get some dieback, sometimes they may not survive at all. In some situations, I've seen trees sit there for over a year before they actually start the growing. And what's happening is they're waiting for that root system to get established enough to support what's in the top of that tree. Most of the time, they're just going to sit there and and struggle and be weak, not really grow off as effectively as we'd like in that first year. So cutting that tree back is another big key.

SPEAKER_00 57:15

Lenny, I still see so many orchards planted, then they leave it as tall as we stand. Actually, a little taller, they'll leave it close to six feet. Probably one of the biggest reasons, if if somebody wanted to leave it high, they're going to talk to you about, they're going to say, Look, the deer are just really pressure on me. So now the question is, from a risk or survival perspective, you know, what would be more that we need to focus on? That tree height coming back down. Or there are orchards where the deer just really hammer those orchards. So maybe there's something we can do about that that we just don't talk about.

SPEAKER_01 57:56

Yeah. I mean, deer pressure in our area, whether you are, you know, whether you cut that tree off at four feet or or six feet, deer are still going to get to it. You know, they'll stand on their hind legs and and get to, you know, the six-foot tree in a lot of cases. So you want to do what's best for the tree, which is cutting the top out. And then whether you're cutting those tops out at four feet or six feet, you're still going to have deer pressure. That's another big, big key that first year is protecting them from deer. There's a lot of different avenues to dealing with that. Most of the time, there's there's there's a lot of options for you know what you can do, you know, with spraying onto that tree certain products. There's some garlic oil things you can buy, little tubes that are filled with garlic oil that you kind of attach to the tree. Those have worked well. Melorganite, which is basically processed human waste from the Milwaukee uh sewage system, I guess you could say, but it's composted, so supposedly clean and all that. That's one of the best things for keeping deer away. You can use uh any any repellent that's got animal fat in it tends to work fairly good. But in my experience, what I've noticed is it doesn't matter what you use, a lot of times it may work for a while, and then the deer kind of get used to it and say, ah, that that's not that bad. And they start to feed on those trees. So a lot of times you kind of have to keep changing what you're doing. You know, I've used all of that, and they all can work for a while, but uh you usually enough at some point have to change it out. But you usually have to protect those trees for at least the first two years, and you'll have to kind of put some type of deer repellent on it, whether you spray it on or something you attach to the tree to keep them away. Some form of that is gonna be required.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:04

You know, at this point, I think, Linny, and when you talk about planting and establishing, I think at the point which we set that tree, cut the top off, and thought about the leaves coming out, that's gonna be the deer, that pretty much covers actually planting and establishing. The next thing that you're gonna deal with pretty much moves into what we call the young tree management. So that might lend itself to the next podcast or Yeah, how long we've been going? I'm trying, I was actually trying to figure that out. I uh on here, let me see if I can figure it out on here. I'm so scared to push a button that it might shut the whole thing down.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:44

Yeah, 9 30 is 1052. Yeah, so we probably that's probably kind of what I was thinking. So yeah, I think I think we've covered planting pretty well and and uh I think the care of it, care of the trees that first year may be a whole episode to itself.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:02

So stay tuned for that. Stay tuned for Dr. Connor Varieties, and you know, we're still gonna bring in um our other extension scientists with the university, and then we'll continue on from there as well. Yep. That sounds good. Thank you all for listening. Stay tuned for the next episode. You can get more information on the University of Georgia PCM blog in a nutshell, the PCAN podcast.