Crop Tree Release

Trees need room to grow at their maximum rates. If too close together, they compete for water, nutrients and sunlight, which cause them to grow more slowly. A young stand of trees start with 4,000 to 6,000 stems per acre. At maturity, when they measure about 20 inches in diameter, less that 100 trees per acre will survive. Most of the young trees die before that are large enough to harvest for sawlogs.

This is a normal selection process and it is slow, requiring 150 to 200 years or more to complete. Thinning hardwood stands when they are young hastens the process by preventing the more desirables trees to grow rapidly throughout their lives. Removing competing trees by frequent thinning enables the stand to produce larger, higher quality trees. This promotes a greater volume of wood per acre in a reduced period of time, much less than 100 years.

The best way to thin a stand is the crop tree selection method. This is a simple method for thinning stands to the greater advantage of the best trees in the stand.

The crop tree release is performed by cutting trees whose crow touch that of the crop tree. Occasionally the crowns of 2 crop trees close to each other can be treated as a single crown and be release as such.