Introduction Rapid successful establishment of forest tree seedlings has been a major goal for decades on private, state, and federal lands in the Pacific Northwest including Canada. Reforestation laws throughout the region have been amended over the years to ensure that lands ravaged by fire, insects, disease, and cutting are successfully regenerated within five years. Improvements in seedling quality through better nursery practices and advances in vegetation control methods have led to a long term successful record in reforestation in the region. It is not enough any more to plant trees and come back later to see if they are surviving.
Survival is a given for all practical purposes on most sites.
The current issue is how to attain the greatest growth out of a seedling within the first few years after outplanting. This urgency is the impetus for seeking new innovative ways to successfully reforest land. This project is the first of many such studies to take place over the next ten years that will observe in detail the relationships among differing applied and basic biological concepts as well as operational forestry aimed at developing reforestation systems to exceed regulatory requirements. The purpose of the study is to discover those combinations of seedling size, vegetation control, and fertilization that result in a two meter tall seedling in two years. Twelve treatments were tested resulting from a 2 x 2 x 3 factorial treatment design.