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Shelterbelts, Windbreaks, & Hedgerows

What's the difference you ask? I'm not really sure. From looking at the way these words are used, if it's in a field it's a shelterbelt. If it's around a house, it's a windbreak. If it divides two properties or is along a road, it's a hedgerow. In all cases it's one or more rows of trees or shrubs planted with the intent of reducing the force of the wind, stopping wind erosion, trapping snow, reducing noise, providing wildlife corridors or food or shelter, or keeping the neighbors from looking through your windows when the curtains are open.

Whew!

The PFRA has some wonderful information about shelterbelts. Go spend an hour there first. Then come back here. (See the links section for references)

Planning your shelterbelt

The trees you plant, and how you plant them depend on what you want your shelterbelt to do, and how much room you have. For me, one concern was to habitat for birds. For that I wanted a variety, not just a monolithic shrub row. Every 5th shrub was a chokecherry. Every other block of space between cherries were 4 sea buckthorn. Every 4th block was redosier dogwood, and the last spaces were lilac. The net effect was CddddCssssCllllCssssC... where C was chokecherry, d was dogwood, s was sea buckthorn and l was lilac. The row next to it alternates clumps of Ure pear and hawthorn, with the occasional Siberian crabapple.

I've got some gaps in this now, due to tractor blight (a leading cause of death in shelterbelts.) and poor weed control. But you'll notice that all of these shrubs provide berries at some time of year. Both the buckthorn, chokecherry, crab, and pear provide nesting trees.

The third row is green ash alternating with Siberian crab. This provides the bulk of the wind breaking.

When planning, consider the needs of the trees. Some are pretty tolerant of a wide range of conditions. I lost a lot of dogwood at one end of the row because it was too dry for them, and some hawthorn because they couldn't grow fast enough to keep ahead of the weeds.

If wind protection is your main goal, PFRA suggests multiple rows, with the tallest species in the middle row, and tapering down on either side. This also spreads out the trapped snow so you don't get a huge drift that takes two extra weeks to melt.

If you are short on room, a double row of spruce will do the best job of blocking wind. However the leeward side will be very turbulent (gusty)

If you're protecting a house, and are in the open, you may find that the shelterbelt works all too well as a snow trap. You'll end up with twice as much snow in your yard as you have anywhere else. PFRA recommends 50 meters from the house to the nearest belt. My opinion: As long as you have trees 50 mters from your house, it doesn't matter which edge it is. That is, you can plant forest out to 50 meters from your house. It will stop most of the snow, especially if half of the trees are conifers.

Land Preparation

PFRA mentions that you should keep your strips weed free the summer before.
Believe me, this is a MINIMUM. You want to work hard to exhaust the weed seed bank where plan a shelterbelt. I suggest that you cultivate it as soon as possible in the spring, then go over it every time there is a new flush of weeds. This may mean every two weeks. Unless it rains hard and dries out, you probably can get away with just using a harrow for this, which makes it fast. If you let the weeds get big you'll have to use some form of sweeps.
Don't let them bloom and go to seed.

If you aren't a farmer with all the traditional cultivation equipment (Or you have it, but it's just too wide for shelterbelts) a rototiller on a garden tractor works. After the first time, you can set it to just skim the surface.

Weed control in a shelterbelt is hard. Get too close to the trees, and you take out the tree. (Tractor Blight) Don't get close enough and you have a wide strip of weeds. I didn't do this. I spent an awful lot of the second summer with a hoe.

I've found that using a garden tractor and rototiller can reliably get me within 6 inches of the tree. If you are going to cultivate or mow for weed control this will have an impact on your spacing. That rototiller was the best buy of my life. I have a total of 7 rows of trees in my shelterbelts, at about 1800 feet per row. To think I did 2.5 MILES of weeding with a hoe.

Spacing.

PFRA's web site gives some info about spacing both in row, and between row for shelterbelt planning. Some of those spacings are designed for a climate that is drier than central Alberta.

PFRA recommends 5 meters (16 feet) between rows. My opinion: This can be reduced to 3 meters (10 feet) for conifers and shrubs. Two rows of shrubs could be 2 meters (6-7 feet) apart. In general rows can be as close as twice the in-row spacing.

But whatever it is it should be three feet wider than whatever implement you use to cultivate with. If you are going to use a 12' set of sweeps, then 15' is the minimum. If you are going to use a 3' rototiller, then 6' is the minimum.

I had one spot on my first row of my shelterbelt where it was 8' from the fence. Running a seven foot wide tool bar cultivator was just a bit tricky. And I took out a few trees and scared a few fence posts doing it.

If you use plastic mulch, add another 3 feet to your spacing.

PFRA recommends 8' spacing in row for a lot of trees, with less than that for shrubs.

Again, consider how you are cultivating. I found that with garden tractor and 16 foot spacing, I could do a slalom course down the row, and get about 80% of the inrow stuff. With my utility tractor (Deutz 6250) I could slalom pairs, but just barely. In general I make trees IN the row further apart, but make the rows themselves closer together.

After you have done your first cultivation for the future shelterbelt, go poke sticks in at your planned spacing. Now try to cultivate the spacing within the row. You may find that increasing your spacing just a bit can make it much easier to cultivate. This is something you want to discover with sticks instead of trees.

After planting

PFRA in general recommends that you keep bare dirt near the shelterbelt while the trees and shrubs are getting established. If you must grow something, grow sheep's fescue.

This is especially true if you are going to use plastic mulch. You can't cultivate close to the mulch with tearing it out of the ground. Which means instead of having one narrow strip of weeds between the trees in the row, you have two strips of weeds on either side of it. While this puts weeds further from the trees, it's not an overall improvement. My recommendation:

Do your prep the year before to exhaust the seed bank.

If there is another flush of weeds in the spring, cultivate again.

The day your trees arrive, plant the strips with sheep's fescue. You have a few days before they germinate.

Now plant your trees.

If you are going to use plastic mulch, lay your mulch. Ideally the mulch has buried edges, and sits about two inches below the dirt on either side. Making one more pass over the edge of the mulch with a truck may work. But do 50 feet, then check. The last thing you need is to rip the full length of your plastic.

If you have a blade for your garden tractor you may be able rework edge by the plastic to make sure the plastic is out of reach of the mower later.

Sprinkle some more fescue seed where you have uncovered soil that you disturbed.

Go over it with a packer. (You can tow a small roller behind a garden tractor or quad. Be inventive.

When the grass gets long enough mow it. You are trying to develop a thick turf that will strangle weeds.

If you've done the plastic mulch right, you can overlap the edge of your mower over the plastic without tearing the plastic.

If you didn't use plastic mulch, you'll need to make 4 passes with the mower, one on each side, and two weaving in and out between the trees. You'll be left with little diamonds of grass/weeds around each tree. If you can't stand it see the advice on mulching.