Container seedlings are probably best used in situations where you wish to:
As material previously presented has indicated, reforestation in British Columbia is strongly oriented toward use of container-grown seedlings without regard to micro-site. However, in other areas the following guides have been developed.
Container seedlings are probably best used in situations where you wish to:
1. Maximize seedling return from genetically improved seed. (This is applied where the seed availability is very low.)
2. Maintain seed source identification for small seed lots.
3. Make up for production falldown in outdoor beds. (This is not very common due to cost and timing.)
4. Produce seedlings on short notice for areas denuded by fire or off-schedule timber harvest. (If the timing is right, this can be done)
5. Provide large stock for shelterbelts and specialty purposes. (Usually these are container seedlings that are grown for transplanting. Sometimes the seedlings are grown and put into larger containers.)
6. Grow species that do better in containers than in nursery beds—hemlocks, true firs, spruces and some hardwoods. (This depends on the location and the soil type available for bareroot. Many bareroot nurseries grow these seedlings successfully.)
7. Reforest rocky, debris-covered area where dibbles are easier to use than hoes (however, in such locations it may not be possible to increase production by using containers since the actual planting time
may be relatively short and containers are frequently more bulky and difficult to transport than are bare-roots).
8. Extend planting season into early fall or late spring (however, any time this is done the forester should be very sure of the growth regime employed to raise the seedlings because proper conditioning of seedlings is essential to success of this procedure).
9. Replace bare root seedlings wherever cost per surviving seedling is less or growth is better for container seedlings.
10. High elevations. (Timing is the key element in this case. Container seedlings can be made readily available in some instances.)
Container seedlings should not be planted where:
1. Site supports heavy plant competition (or the potential for heavy plant competition) unless provision may be made to control same.
2. Site is characterized by populations of browsing animals.(The problem is that container seedlings do have enough branches and leaf area.)
3. Hot, droughty sites.(Container seedlings, do under some circumstances, grow well on hot dry sites, but experience has shown that 1-1 transplants do consistently better.)
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