Introduction
Rapid successful establishment of forest tree seedlings has been a major goal for decades on private, state, and federal lands in the Pacific Northwest including Canada. Reforestation laws throughout the region have been amended over the years to ensure that lands ravaged by fire, insects, disease, and cutting are successfully regenerated within five years. Improvements in seedling quality through better nursery practices and advances in vegetation control methods have led to a long term successful record in reforestation in the region.

It is not enough any more to plant trees and come back later to see if they are surviving. Survival is a ‘given’ for all practical purposes on most sites. The current issue is how to attain the greatest growth out of a seedling within the first few years after outplanting. "Green-up" laws have made it necessary to prove that cleared lands adjacent to land about to be cut must have seedlings at specified sizes or ages before cutting can commence. This urgency is the impetus for seeking new innovative ways to successfully reforest land.

This project is the first of many such studies to take place over the next ten years that will observe in detail the relationships among differing applied and basic biological concepts as well as operational forestry aimed at developing reforestation systems to exceed regulatory requirements. The purpose of the study is to discover those combinations of seedling size, vegetation control, and fertilization that result in a two meter tall seedling in two years.

Treatments
Twelve treatments were tested resulting from a 2 x 2 x 3 factorial treatment design. Two stock sizes, 2 vegetation control treatments, and 3 fertilizer treatments were tested for a total of 12 different treatment combinations (Table 4).

Table 4.Stock dimension, vegetation control, and fertilizer application treatments. There is also a zero fertilizer control treatment.

Fertilizer treatments	none	year 1	year 1 and 2
Vegetation Control	years 1 and 2	years 1, 2, and 3
tree Size	small	large

Stock Size. The appropriate nursery beds were randomly sampled to assess the diameter distribution of trees to be planted into the different study areas. A distribution curve was generated from this data for each site. Two 2-3 mm diameter groupings were identified (small and large) each separated from the other by at least 1 mm. At lifting the seedlings were sorted and separated into these different size groupings.

Vegetation Control. The two vegetation management treatments were complete vegetation control for 2 years and complete vegetation control for 3 years. The vegetation control was achieved by using pre-emergent herbicide applications (oust or velpar). The herbicide used varied by site. At sites where there were species resistant to the herbicide used, additional applications of either accord or garlon were used.

Fertilizer Application. Three fertilizer treatments were applied: a no fertilizer treatment, a one year fertilizer treatment and a two year fertilizer treatment. The fertilizer treatments consisted of a 70g teabag of Scott’s slow release fertilizer, 10-22-6 formulation. The one-year treatment consisted of placing a fertilizer teabag in the hole at planting. The two-year treatment was year one fertilizer teabag in the hole treatment and then a dibbling of the same fertilizer teabag formulation in the winter following the first year of growth. The fertilizer was formulated from Scott’s Forestcote fertilizer with added coated MAP and uncoated triple super phosphate. Each tree will realize 7g N, 15.4g P2O5 and 4 g K2O4 from each year of fertilization. The fertilizer used has an eight month release period.

Plot Size. Each plot contained 36 seedlings planted on an 8 by 8 ft spacing. The study has 12 plots per block requiring 432 treatment seedlings for each block. Each plot is surrounded by a buffer row of trees. The number of buffer trees required varied depending on plot layout. Different colored pin flags were used to designate large and small seedling treatments by plot. A 20 ft buffer strip was installed between plots and buffer trees were planted in the center of this strip. The buffer strip has been included to allow for better control of ground based herbicide spraying and to provide a transition zone between treatments. Plot size is 60 x 60 ft (3600 ft2). Installation of a minimum of 4 blocks of the 12 treatment plots was required and if possible 5 blocks was preferred. The installation of 5 blocks required a minimum of 6 acres of land and 2,160 treatment seedlings and approximately 1,300 buffer trees.

Progress and Results as of 6/1/98
Six repetitions of the above study design were installed 3 in the winter and spring of 1997 and 3 in the spring of 1998 (Table 5). Two additional sites will be installed in spring 1999, one using coastal redwood near Ft. Bragg CA and the other using ponderosa pine near Glenwood WA.

Table 5. 2 in 2 sites, species of interest and initial diameter size classes used.

Site	Tree Species	Large Size Class	Small Size Class
Rainier WA (Champion Land) 97’	Douglas-fir	10-12 mm	6-8 mm
Belfair WA (DNR land) 97’	Douglas-fir	8-10 mm	5-7 mm
Drain OR (Lone Rock Land) 97’	Douglas-fir	10-12 mm	7-9 mm
Forks WA (Rayonier lands) 98’	Western Hemlock	7-9 mm	4-6 mm
Cathlamet WA (DNR lands) 98’	Western Hemlock	5.2-7mm	3-4.8 mm
Mossyrock WA (Rayonier lands) 98’	Douglas-fir	9-11 mm	6-8 mm
Ft. Bragg, CA (Timber Co. lands) 99’	Coastal Redwood	Styro-8 plug	Styro-20 plug
Glenwood, WA (DNR)	Ponderosa Pine	?	?

Rainier
This site is located at an elevation of approximately 1700 ft on the western slope of Mt. Rainier. Site index is 123 ft (base height 50) and soil is a deep loam and relatively well drained. The site was harvested the spring prior to the study installation and slash was piled and burned. Only enough suitable ground on the site was found to install 4 complete blocks of the 12 treatments instead of 5.

First Year Results
As would be expected the large trees are still the largest after the first year of growth. More interesting is the large fertilizer response measured after one year. Both the large and small trees responded positively and significantly to the fertilization treatment (Figure 5). Both the 1 year and 2 year fertilizer treatments differed significantly in stem volume from the no fertilizer treatment. The 1 and 2 year fertilizer treatments did not differ because the second year fertilizer treatment had not yet been applied. There was not a significant fertilizer by seedling size interaction and thus data can be pooled across the fertilizer treatments and across the two size classes. First year fertilization resulted in a 61% increase in stem volume regardless of initial tree size (Table 6). Planting a large seedling versus a small seedling resulted in 75% more volume after one year of growth.

Mortality was low across the entire site (2.5%) and did not differ by any of the treatments. A relatively large percentage of the seedlings were browsed (25%) across the study site. The percentage of browsed trees did not differ by treatment but did vary by block.


Table 6. Rainier mean stem volume, stem caliper, height and height diameter ratio by tree size class and fertilizer treatments.¹

	Stem Volume(cc)	Stem Caliper(mm)	Stem Height(cm)	Height Diameter Ratio
Tree Size
-Large	4.71 a	10.1 a	63.0 a	64.3 a
-Small	2.51 b	7.9 b	51.4 b	67.0 b
Fertilization
-No Fertilizer	2.57 a	7.95 a	54.3 a	69.9 a
-1 Year Fertilization	4.31 b	9.61 b	60.3 b	64.4 b
-2 Year Fertilization	3.96 b	9.5 b	57.1 c	62.8 b

¹Means for the tree size treatments or for the Fertilizer treatments followed by the same letter (a or b) are not significantly different (p < 0.05).

Belfair
The Belfair site is located on a glacial outwash soil and is expected to have dramatically poorer soil conditions than either of the other two sites. The entire site was heavily impacted by machinery during harvest. Soils on the site were consequently heavily compacted.

First Year Results
Results at the Belfair site were remarkably similar to those at the Rainier site. Large seedlings continued to be the largest and there was a highly significant response to the fertilizer treatments (Table 7, Figure 5). A significant fertilizer by tree size interaction was detected for stem volume but not for seedling diameter or height. However, the f-statistic for the main effects of tree size and fertilizer treatment are an order of magnitude larger than for the interaction and thus the interaction will be ignored for the rest of this discussion. The fertilizer treatments resulted in a 129% increase in stem volume after one year. The larger size class trees were 100% larger that the smaller size class. Deer browse was unusually low at Belfair and varied significantly with size class. 5.1% of the large seedlings were browsed versus 2.9% of the smaller seedlings. Mortality was low across the site, 3.6 %, and did no vary among treatments.


Table 8. Rainier mean stem volume, stem caliper, height and height diameter ratio by tree size class and subsoiling treatments.

	Stem Volume(cc)	Stem Caliper(mm)	Stem Height(cm)	Height Diameter Ratio
Tree Size
-Large	6.9 a	12.7 a	59.7 a	48.6 a
-Small	4.4 b	10.4 b	53.7 b	54.3 b
Subsoiling
-Yes	6.2 a*	11.8 a	59.0 a	52.4 a
-No	5.1 b	11.3 a	54.4 b	50.5 a

¹Means for the tree size treatments or for the subsoiling treatments followed by the same letter (a or b) are not significantly different (p < 0.05)
²p-value=0.078, which suggests a marginally significant difference.
*Significantly different at the p=0.1 level.

Forks
The Forks site is located on an alluvial plane 2 miles west of the town of Forks, WA on lands owned by Rayonier Timber. This is prime western hemlock, sitka spruce ground. The previous stand on this site was composed of a mix of western hemlock, sitka spruce and Douglas-fir. The hemlock seedlings were planted January 27th ,1998. The first year of vegetation control on this site consisted of a fall oust site preparation spray. Second year vegetation control will be achieved with either a fall oust spray or spring application depending on how vegetation responds after this first year of growth.

Cathlamet
This site was planted with western hemlock the 17th of February, 1998. It is located approximately 15 miles north of the town of Cathlamet on WA Department of Natural Resources lands. The previous stand was principally western hemlock located near the top of a ridge. First year vegetation control was applied by backpack in mid April consisting of a tank mix of oust and velpar.

Morton
This is another Douglas-fir replication, installed on relatively high quality site western Cascade ground, 15 miles south of Morton, WA. This is a higher elevation site than the Co-op generally works on, ~2,000 ft. It was planted March 17th, 1998 and has received the first year of vegetation control, an aerial oust application. There was a high level of thistle rosettes, which were controlled with a clorpyralid ground broadcast application in late May.

Ft. Bragg
This site is scheduled to be planted spring of 1999 on The Timber Co. lands near Ft. Bragg CA. The study protocol has been altered for this replication. Instead of using bareroot stock we will be using either stryro-8 or styro-20 redwood plugs. The fertilizer treatments have also been altered. We will be employing slow release fertilizers incorporate in the plug media plus dibble fertilizer in year two.

Glenwood
This site has not yet been identified but will eventually be installed in 1999. The WA DNR will provide much of the energy required to install this replication. The ponderosa pine seedlings to be used will be sorted as in previous experiments.

• Herb I
• Herb II
• Germination Study
• Phytotoxicity Study
• Autocology Lit Review