Some of us joined the Nth Canterbury Farm Forestry Group’s field day to the approx. 20 year old Redwoods growing from sea level to about 400m in a rainfall of about 1200mm.
There were some great messages.
First, plant cloned not seedling material. The photo shows cloned on right, seedlings – with average to worse form. Clones were amazingly uniform and vigourous.
The plantings struggled with broom competition in the early days. The owners did not know whether the redwoods would grow well, so they planted douglas fir and redwood – which for the first 15 or so years grew slowly and pretty much the same.
However, the photo below, shows how in the last five years, redwoods have grown remarkably well, beating the douglas to the point that many douglas fir have died.
Mike Davies, at Hororata (top end Downs Road), 800 mm rainfall on better, deeper soils than the Silverwood site has a 22 year old (planted 2000) single shelter belt row of giant redwood (Sequioadendron giganteum). They are growing very well.
When cut beyond the green with a hedge cutter – they do green up.
Redwoods in a shelter belt resist fire.
