Experience in the Creation of Forest Plantations Using Container Seedlings

Intensification of forestry requires the use of modern methods of reforestation, which include the introduction of container planting material. The purpose of this work is to evaluate the survival rate and linear growth of spruce container seedlings depending on the planting site location and the agrotechnical tending. The studies were carried out at the test site located in the Tomsk district of the Tomsk region. It was found that many planting containers store not 1 seedling, but 2–4 pcs and therefore approximately the same quantity of seedlings as in the traditional planting of container planting material. It was revealed that the height of 30–35 % of seedlings fails to fulfill the standard values, which was observed, as a rule, in the planting containers with several plants. According to the autumn inventory data, the height of plantations created by planting seedlings in the furrow bottom (Kruskal-Wallis test, p = 0.0001 > 0.05) reliably differs from the height of plantations of “mound” and “untreated soil” options. In terms of height growth, the options “mound side” and “furrow” have the best performance, also significantly different from the options “mound” and “untreated soil” (Kruskal-Wallis test, p = 0.0001 > 0.05). Survival rate below 85 % was observed in the plantings of the following options: “untreated soil”, “furrow bottom”, and “mound” with agrotechnical tending. The 3-fold tending decreased the survival rate of plantations except for planting in the mound side. Thus, the most successful option of planting is planting in the mound side. For citation: Debkov N.M. Experience in the Creation of Forest Plantations Using Container Seedlings. Lesnoy Zhurnal [Russian Forestry Journal], 2021, no. 5, pp. 192–200. DOI: 10.37482/0536-1036-2021-5-192-200