There probably aren’t many ag-related businesses that are born because of a new baby with big lungs, an empty stomach and dirty diapers. However, in a roundabout way, that’s how K & L Forest Nursery came to be.
“Lucas was born in September, and after six weeks of maternity leave, I had to go back to work,” Lehanne Singleton says, the L in K & L Forest Nursery. Ken, her spouse, was in manufacturing and had to be at work at 4:45 a.m., after a 45-minute commute. That left Lehanne with the night shift with their son Lucas. “By Thanksgiving, I said something had to give.”
The Buena Vista, Georgia, couple even talked about Ken turning into a stay-at-home dad while Lehanne continued her career as a high school teacher. Fortunately, a timber company offered Ken a job in one of their seedling nurseries. “I took a big pay cut, but the commute was only 10 minutes, and we didn’t start until 7 a.m.,” Ken says. Along with being able to share night duties with Lucas, he learned the seedling business.
In 1998, he had the opportunity to start his own seedling company with a partner, and in 2009, bought him out. Now, the 45-acre tree nursery is a more than full-time business for Ken, Lehanne, Lucas and his younger brother, Beau.
High inputs
To a casual observer, it may look like pine trees grow on their own, and some do. However, the K & L crew make sure their seedlings never have a bad day. The result is vigorous trees that take off and grow as soon as their new owners plant them.
The Singletons start in March, as soon as harvest is complete, by bringing in a specialty fumigation company. They typically have 15 acres a year treated, which means the whole field is treated every three years.
“That’s $3,500 an acre,” Ken says. “We’re scared not to do it. There’s no way you can visibly see the diseases.”
Next comes land prep. The bed is made with 6-foot centers, wide enough to accommodate eight rows of trees. Like more traditional crops, they also apply a pre-emergent herbicide and fertilizer.
Planting is a precise operation. Their PowerStar™ 90 tractor pulls one planter while one of their three TN75 tractors pulls the other. The specialty planters come from the Northwest and typically require a year on a waiting list before they’re available.
The planter is a precision vacuum sower. The tiny seeds come out of a drum and are placed in an indent but aren’t covered up. “Think about it,” Ken says. “When a pinecone opens, the wings take the seed to the ground. It gets covered up by pine straw or leaves. It can’t push like a grain of corn or a peanut seed.”
Unlike volunteer seeding, though, precision in the nursery is a big deal. “If you get the seed placement too thick, the seedlings grow tall but won’t have enough diameter,” Ken says. “Depending on the germination test, we drop 120 to 125 seeds per linear foot and shoot for 106 seedlings per linear foot at harvest.”
There’s also the fact that pine seeds are wildly expensive. Ken says they spent more than $300,000 on seed alone last year. The planter even has an extra seat built in so a worker with a grid can hop off and count seeds during planting. They shoot for two counts per bed.
Once again, to mimic nature, they spread a thin layer of very fine mulch on the seed. Big chunks will keep the seed from coming up, but the fine mulch helps hold in moisture and keep the soil temperature down. The mulch also starts to decompose rapidly and adds nutrients to the crop.
Planting takes around three days, but they crank up the center-pivot irrigation as soon as the seeds are covered by mulch. If nature doesn’t provide the moisture, they shoot for 1”- 1.5” a week, spread out over the week.
“By the end of July, they’ll be wilting every day if the weather is really hot,” Ken says. “We can’t cut back on the water until late September or October.”
Like almost any other crop, there’s spraying for insects and weeds. Starting two weeks after planting, they spray once a week for 12 weeks to prevent insect damage. Lygus bugs are one of the worst offenders because they sting the main stem and create scar tissue. In September, they spray once or twice for red-headed sawflies to keep them from eating the needles.
Weed prevention continues with a weekly spray for six weeks. “By the end of August, the seedlings are bigger, and we can monitor them,” Ken says.
Ken favors his PowerStar 90 for all the chores. “The PowerStar 90 has high clearance tires and I can see off of it a lot better. It’s real fuel efficient, too.”
Fertilization is an ongoing process, too. The combination of sandy soil and frequent irrigation call for spoon feeding eight or 10 times until the end of September.
Then there is clipping and root trimming. They use a modified rotary mower to keep the seedlings at seven to eight inches of height, until the end of July or the first of August. “It makes the crop more uniform and encourages root growth,” Ken explains.
However, they must keep the roots in check, too. They use an implement with a blade that cuts the tap root at six inches, which increases survivability at planting. This is one of those times a person walks behind the tractor to make sure the blade is at the correct depth.
In September, October and the first half of November, the seedlings explode with growth and aren’t quite as fragile. “The diameter fattens up. They get needles. The tops are 12 inches tall and the roots are trimmed to six inches deep,” Ken says.
By Halloween, it is time to trim the lateral roots so they don’t mat up. “They’re the key to survival of the tree,” Ken says. “One of the things people have gotten accustomed to with our trees is the strength of the lateral roots.
“There is something to do every day until October,” he adds. At that point, the crew works on equipment maintenance and projects, and maybe, maybe, Ken and Lehanne can take off to the Florida Panhandle for a quick fishing trip.
Harvest frenzy
By Thanksgiving, the orders are starting to trickle in from customers from Mississippi to South Carolina to Tennessee to Florida. By the first of January through February, work is non-stop, other than Sundays. Since their land is so sandy, the K & L crew works right through rain and only stops for lightning or a deep freeze.
At harvest, once again a specialty implement places a blade under the trees and lifts the seedlings from the soil. A crew of 22 migrant workers puts the trees in tubs and loads tubs on a wagon. Seedlings go to a building where they are graded, sorted and roots are dipped to preserve moisture. Next, seedlings are put in the bundle box, wrapped in coated paper and fastened with plastic straps in bundles of 1,000 and put in the cooler.
Though it is out of their control, Ken says they hope the trees are shipped out in three days or less from the time they come out of the field and planted within a week.
“We try to get them harvested in February before they break dormancy,” Ken says. “We don’t want growth on the plant. That means the sap is up and the mortality rate goes up.”
Challenges, challenges
While it sounds like smooth sailing, that’s not the case. In 2016, there was a severe drought from August until December, then it rained for two weeks straight. The Singleton’s customers couldn’t plant, so even when they did start planting, there were fewer acres total and K & L had trees left over.
The worst, though, was the winter of 2020-21 when COVID-19 hit and their customers’ migrant workers couldn’t enter the country. Planting screeched to a halt. Even though customers had placed orders, they couldn’t plant. “We had a million trees in the cooler and a million in the field,” Ken says. “We used them to fill up washes.”
Happy ending
Even with the hectic race to raise a pine tree seedling, Lehanne is glad Ken listened when Lucas hollered. “The boys got to grow up with their father. After school, they’d go to work with him.”
Now that she’s retired from the local school system, Lehanne says she’s also glad to be a full-time member of K & L. “I’m able to work with Ken and my boys.” However, some things never change from her earlier night duty. “When somebody mashes their finger three times in one day, I hear about it.”