VARDAMAN VIRTUAL FORESTRY COMPANY

LET US TEACH YOU TO THIN YOUR PLANTATION

By Paul D. Teter

Recently a retired peanut geneticist in south Georgia asked us how to thin his ex-CRP pines.  To his surprise, we advised against row-thinning and advocated leaving all defect-free trees above a certain size, with complete disregard for spacing.  He inspected such a thinning we had marked and sold near his land.  We challenged him to find a pulpwood-quality tree left in the stand.  He hasn't pointed one out to us yet.

His stand contains 56.4 acres, and our detailed cruise showed a stand completing its 13^th growing season now worth about $773 per acre.  As a scientist, he was concerned about careful management of a natural asset worth $43,597 and still growing rapidly.

Using PTAEDA2V, we forecast the growth of his asset with two different treatments.  One is an operator-selected thinning.  In it there is no prior sampling and analysis; the operator cuts all trees in every 5^th row plus trees that he selects in the other four rows to improve spacing.  The stand would have about the same pulpwood-quality rate after thinning as before (about 30-45% because they were planted during the early days of genetic improvement).  The second is a thinning that removes all trees except those of sawtimber quality and at least 5.6. DBH, these being conspicuously marked with blue paint.

Our analysis of the difference in cash flows from these treatments is as follows:

Method           Estimated Thin Income          Estimated Harvest         Total

Operator                     $340                              $2032                   $2372

Marked                      $334                                         $3560                    $3894

The detailed cruise of the stand cost him $1,500, and he paid us another $300 to spend a morning with him and his son teaching them how to mark a sample acre of the stand.  We supplied him with a steel tape marked for the 5.6. DBH cut-off point.  They soon became experts in marking the correct trees to leave.

Using our detailed cruise, we also furnished him a detailed schedule of the trees to be cut showing number of trees by one-inch DBH classes, heights, and weights so that he could obtain per-ton bids from timber buyers.

If our growth-and-yield program is as accurate as we think it is, he should be able to increase his total cash flows from $133,781 to $219,622 over a ten-year period.  This will be his reward for not settling for a conventional thinning, investing $1,800 for data and instruction he could not obtain otherwise, purchasing a paint gun and paint, and putting his son to work.

We would love to teach you to mark your plantation too.