| Over the years, we have planted over 300 trees on our property. We purchase potted trees from the Colorado State Forest Service (CSFS). Click here to go to their web site.
When we moved here, our property had some cleared areas that we now realize were due to the pine beetle infestation in the early 1980's. We planted ponderosa pines in the cleared areas. Although 75% of the seedling trees survived, the sun is so intense, the trees are having a difficult time growing.
A west hill side was thinly treed so we planted douglas fir there. Jack has also planted douglas fir along our east and north property lines. We estimate the success rate would be about 90% had the seedlings not been eaten by elk. The elk have devoured at least 50% of our douglas fir.
Early on, we planted aspen. The elk soon learned that the yellow tree protectors contained tasty aspen seedlings and ate many of the aspens. The pocket gophers ate the majority of the remaining aspen. We have only 8 small aspen trees left. Due to the poor survival rate, we decided not to plant any more aspen.
On the next 3 pages, I describe how we plant the trees that we purchase from the CSFS (see link above).
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