How are large amounts of trees planted? Where do you get them in the first place?

Question

I’ll read articles about either a country planting billions of trees to combat climate change, or a story about a husband and wife taking it upon themselves to plant thousands of trees. Are they planting seeds or saplings? Don’t they need to be watered and fertilized?

In: 8

Answer 1

Trees used for reforestation are almost always started from seed in bags. It only takes a few weeks for a seed to sprout and a couple months for most trees to be ready to be planted. There are sapling supply farms for these projects. Large reforestation projects are usually done by machine planting, where the saplings are loaded in a device that bores into the ground, breaks up the soil, and then inserts the tree while compacting the soil. Reforestation projects are usually done with native trees accustomed to the climate where they are being planted so that watering/fertilizer is not necessary, although there always will be some plants that don’t make it.