My First Time

Before the new Trees for Life growing season kicks in I thought it would be nice to share some details from my first season.  Keep reading for a brief overview of the season and some of the lessons I learnt.

Brief summary of the 2009/2010 growing season

• September 2009 - Register as a grower with Trees for Life.  Checked out the website to see what is involved. 
• November 2009 - Pick up supplies.  6 boxes fit in the car boot (glad our car is a station wagon).  Read instruction booklet.  Watch grower videos on you tube.
  Grower video 1 - Filling the tubes and sowing the seed 
  Grower Video 2 - Transplanting, thinning, grading and quality control  

• December 2009 - Plant first batch of seeds.  Took a bit longer than I was expecting to fill the tubes.  3-4 weeks after planting the seedlings emerge.  I got excited when I saw what I thought was the first shoots, later I discovered they were some weeds.
• January 2010 - Plant second two batches of plants.
• February 2010 - Keep raising the seedlings.  Watering, thinning out, transplanting.
• March 2010 - Take plants to Trees for Life Depot near Adelaide Airport.  

What did I grow and who for

Project: TFL upper south east

Plants Grown:

1 box of Melaleuca Lanceolata (planted approximately 24 Nov)


Melaleuca Lanceolata



2 boxes of Eucalyptus Fasciculosa (planted approximately 29 December)

Eucalyptus Fasciculosa

3 boxes of Eucalyptus Camaldulensis (planted approximately 26 January)


Eucalyptus Camaldulensis

Lessons I learnt from my fist time

• I can do it.  It was not as hard as I thought it might be.
• It was fun.  I would like to do it again.
• Filling the tubes is the hard part.  Not difficult, just time consuming.  Take a break and don’t try to fill all the boxes in one day/night.  Allow about 90 minutes per box including mixing the fertiliser with the soil and filling the tubes.  Allow even more time if you are sowing the seeds at the same time.
• Watering 6 boxes of tubes (360 plants) takes some time each morning.  Need to get up a bit earlier to allow enough time to not get to work late in the morning.
• If you go away for Christmas or other holidays you can take your plants with you.  Especially if like I had, you only have 1 box of plants that were planted prior to Christmas.  Not sure what I would have done if all 6 boxes were planted before going away.
• Transplanting the small seedlings is tricky.  Not hard but a bit fiddly.  Not all the seedlings will transplant successfully.  I transplanted about 3 into each tube hoping that at least one would take.  Often all took then I had to thin them out again a few weeks later.
• Get yourself a garden trowel (small hand spade) that is the right size.  I found one at a hardware store and it is just the correct width to fit into a propagation tube.  Plus the handle end is a nice size for compacting the soil down.  And as a bonus it was cheap.

Garden trowel for filling the tubes

• Seeds are light.  If it is windy when you sow the seeds be very careful or they can blow away.
• Thinning out the plants is (emotionally) hard to do.  After raising the plants from seed to then thin them out and throw them on the ground is hard to do.
• Eucalyptus grow quickly.  River red gums that start as a tiny little spec, end up as a massive 30m (or bigger) tree.  In under 10 weeks they went from a tiny seed to 15cm tall.

All up I think I had a successful year and learnt a lot.  It was fun and I am keen to grow some more seedlings this coming summer.



Plants in the car boot ready to go to the TFL depot at the end of the season


Cheers Simon