What to plant?

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Rayleigh_Scattering

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I've got a few dozen acres of open woody southern slope to work with in central Alberta.

The soil is poor and the current cover is mostly older poplar, but the odd pine is making a good go of it (a few of which are quite majestic).

What's good to plant to encourage the wildlife and liven things up in the scale of 5-10 years.

Saskatoon Berries? Raspberries? A few hundred pine seedlings?
 
Try the Evans cherry, developed in Fort Saskatchewan for the Alberta climate, we pick them in Sherwood Park every year, they also make fantastic sour cherry pies. Fruit trees always seem to be a hit. Saskatoon shrubs are a good idea, my friend has them and they always get hit by the deer and moose, bears as well.
 
Alfalfa. Some European Plum trees and some hardy full sized apple trees.

I'd be hesitant to plant raspberries and saskatoons, these are widespread and native, so why aren't they growing there now?
 
MiG25 said:
Alfalfa. Some European Plum trees and some hardy full sized apple trees.

I'd be hesitant to plant raspberries and saskatoons, these are widespread and native, so why aren't they growing there now?
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Alfalfa for sure, it’s pretty low maintenance. I watched the local hay and alfalfa fields last year, with no rain for 3 months the alfalfa grew fine on its own with no irrigation. Grass hay didn’t grow at all without irrigation of some sort. Deer love alfalfa as well.
 
I remember saskatoons growing in among the trees in Cypress Hills park. They looked tasty.

I've got some apple trees in the the backyard which still need pruning. It's late, I know, but life. With some attention I could root a few dozen of them for transplanting next spring.

If I buy orchars saskatoons I'll get orchard-optimized saskatoons, which isn't what I'm looking for. I'll need to find some wild ones growing in the area and get the seeds the old fashioned way (num-num-ptooie).

Alfalpha is more an open-bright-sun plant, isn't it? I've never seen it in the understory.
 
If the soil is poor, Alfalfa, or Red clover can build it up in time in the more open areas. Their roots are deep, and the plant pumps nitrogen into the soil.
White pine need a competing group of trees until they get well established, or you end up with what we call 'cow pasture pine' That's a pine that is poorly shaped, and useless for lumber. We have a few of those on the back of our property here.
You didn't state what you were aiming to hunt.
 
>aiming to hunt

The short answer is whatever is legal and catches my interest, which changes in the time scale of decades, of which I likely have a couple left before I really fall apart.

I'm trying for variety, by exerting effort to make local changes in the system state.

Replacing some of the poplars with pines gets me better wood in the 10-20 year time frame, although as pointed out they don't grow right without competitors.

Apple trees are not native forest, which means that I can get them to grow in the short term but in the long run they will be out-competed by other things. Still, as Mr burry-bags-of-money said, the long run is just a series of short runs pasted end on end at the end of which you die.

Tree planter dude I chatted with once tells me he plants about 2k seedlings on a good day. That's only 60x33 pines on a grid, but it'll move things along the time line without getting on the wrong side of the native-forest zoning.

I must get a better understanding of how such systems work. Time to hit the books again.
 
Pine forests support very little game, only thing deader than a dense pine stand is a cedar stand.

Depending on how much you have/want to spend, I'd be tempted for fence a square 320'x320' with 8' fencing, wire comes in 330' rolls. This would equal 2.5 acres. Then kill it with herbicide and plant with European plums, hardy apples, and pears like the golden spice, in 10 years when the trees are bearing and large enough to not be browsed down to nothing, remove the wire. European plums are hardier than apples IMO and can be grown from seed, I've done it, plant the pits in pots in the fall and leave them out all winter, sometimes it takes 2 years for them to sprout, if the area is fenced/sprayed no reason the can't go direct in the ground. It is absolutely necessary to protect young trees from browsers. Apple trees can live for hundreds of years and the saying is plant pears for your heirs. Full size trees are 40 to the acre, so you'd have 100 trees. Don't waste time and money on dwarf rootstock.

Not sure when chokecherries ripen in your area, here they are late August and black bear is open on private land, bulldoze a few strips and sow the seeds in the fall. This won't attract deer though, I've never seen any sign that they eat them or even browse them.

Agroforestry Solutions from Indian Head, Sask has Ussurian Pear seeds for sale $25/1000.
 
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A few enjoyable days in the bush later...

The quiet was uncanny. I could hear vehicles coming long before I saw them. I could a hear gust of wind rolling toward me by how it changed the sound of the aspens.

The nice thing is that I saw no bear signs. No scratches on trees, no broken up moldy logs, no piles of poop, holes dug etc. I saw no sign of the cougar who's presence I infer from the skeletons under the big tree.

There are many tress. Some of them are downright majestic, but some thousands of them are just close-packed aspen tent poles.

A few really glorious aspens overlook the cleared field adjacent, and are just begging for a stand. The slopes are fierce, though.

A considerate neighbour piled up large field stones at the fence line. Raw materials.

The water from the springs (of which there are two) is cool, but tastes like absolutely nothing. Almost the vaguely-dusty feeling of distilled water.

Question:

What should I do, or what should I avoid doing to (at the least) not get off on the wrong foot with the neighbours? Other than the usual recipe of "Don't make a mess and keep your mouth shut." which seems to work in most situations. Does one call them up and introduce oneself? Tape a "Howdy" note to a fencepost?
 
I was in the wooded back corner of my lot this weekend... only think I heard was the mosquitoes, almost needed a blood transfusion.

been in my new place a month now, and have only met one of my neighbors, they were close to the fence while I was working on removing some trees, so I said hi.

the other side I have only seen them a few times, too far away to talk but they waved back. I'll meet them sooner or later, no hurry.
 
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