The Lower Loup Natural Resources District is now accepting orders for conservation tree and shrub seedlings. These trees are sold across the District to landowners seeking to implement windbreaks, wildlife habitat, buffer strips, and a variety of other purposes. Each tree or shrub is a two-year-old bare root seedling and measures between 10 to 18 inches tall.
All 2012 conservation trees and shrubs will cost 75 cents per seedling plus sales tax. Each species must be ordered in lots of 25. Property owners can hand plant the trees and shrubs or request the NRD machine plant them. The Lower Loup’s machine planting charge is $55 per one hundred trees. The minimum charge is $100 plus sales tax. The District also provides a spraying service. The charge is $35 plus $2 per hundred feet of row.
Federal or State cost-share funding may be available for conservation trees. Application for cost-share should be made at your local Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), Farm Service Agency (FSA), or the Lower Loup Natural Resources District office. More information is available from the Lower Loup NRD or from your local NRCS office.
Several species will be available for planting in 2012, including these conifers: red cedar, Southwestern white pine, concolor fir, ponderosa pine, Austrian pine, Colorado blue spruce, Black Hills spruce, Norway spruce, Scotch pine, and jack pine. The hardwood species available include hackberry, honey locust, hybrid cottonwood, silver maple, black walnut, green ash, Kentucky coffeetree, red oak, bur oak, black cherry, catalpa, McDermond pear, gambel oak, swamp white oak, and native cottonwood.
A variety of shrubs will be available including cotoneaster, lilac, serviceberry, chokecherry, Nanking cherry, Manchurian apricot, American plum, skunkbush sumac, sand cherry, Arnold hawthorn, caragana, buffaloberry, elderberry, American hazelnut, Midwest crabapple, amur maple, golden currant, red osier dogwood, false indigo, diamond willow, dwarf Russian almond, highbush cranberry and McKenzie black chokeberry.
Supplies are limited and seedlings are sold on a first come, first served basis. Conservation tree seedlings are not guaranteed. Contact the NRCS office in your area to get the planning process underway. Getting an early start will ensure you a good species selection.
For more on the Lower Loup NRD tree program, contact Richard Woollen, North Central District Forester for the Nebraska Forest Service, at the LLNRD Headquarters office, 2620 Airport Drive, Ord, or call (308) 728-3221. A newly revised edition of the booklet “Conservation Trees for Nebraska” is also available upon request.
The Lower Loup NRD Tree Order Form can be filled out on line, printed, and returned to the NRD Headquarters or your local NRCS office.
A booklet, entitled “Conservation Trees for Nebraska,” is available from the Lower Loup NRD and NRDs statewide. It provides detailed information on each variety of tree and shrub sold by NRDs across the state, including a description, planting information, and the area of the state for which the tree is best suited. The information in the booklet is available at the Nebraska Association of Resources Districts' Conservation Trees web site here.
