Minnesota tree nursery plans big expansion to meet demand
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The Minnesota State Forest Nursery near Akeley started operations in 1931 and some of the original buildings are still in use. Some of the specialized gear inside has been patched together for decades.
“Some of these pieces of equipment are so old that if they break you can’t get parts for them anymore,” said nursery supervisor Sarah Ebert as she pointed to outdated machinery used to sort and clean seeds.
A brand-new seed cleaning machine sits on a pallet waiting to be installed, a sign of the changes coming to the state’s only large producer of conservation grade bare root native tree seedlings.
There are two new tractors parked outside, also purchased with $2.5 million in state funding over the last two years. The nursery is expected to pay for operations with tree sales and Ebert says the staff is adept at working with a bare bones budget.
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“When we got that first $2.5 million, everybody wasn't really sure how to spend it because they’re like, ‘I don’t know, we’ve never had that much money to kind of improve anything’,” said Ebert. “So I’m kind of changing that mindset, you know, don’t band aid it, let’s just fix it the right way.”
In the next two years the nursery will spend $10 million in funding approved by lawmakers to replace and upgrade outdated buildings.
The state nursery now grows 3 million to 4 million seedlings a year. Just over half are sold to private citizens and the rest are used in large scale reforestation projects.
Annual seedling production will increase to 10 million over the next four to five years if demand keeps growing. A resolution approved last year by the Minnesota Forest Resources Council calls for doubling seedling production again by 2032.
The state nursery cannot meet the growing tree demand on its own said Ebert, and Tribal and private nurseries will also need to expand production.
The nursery started taking orders on Oct. 25 for trees that will be planted next spring. The minimum order is 500 trees, but Ebert said orders can be a mix of several species.
Growing more seedlings will require more seed. That’s another challenge. The nursery relies heavily on volunteers who collect pine cones or acorns and sell them by the bushel.
The number of seed collectors is not meeting current demand and Ebert said increasing seed collection is a significant hurdle to expanding seedling production. There‘s a new effort to recruit seed collectors and a new staff position will focus on ways to gather more tree seeds.
The state is also considering starting more seed orchards, but that’s a long term solution.
In an old wooden shed, pine cones are stored on wire mesh trays waiting for workers to extract the seeds starting in November. The room is lined with hundreds of trays.
This shed can hold a couple thousand bushels of pine cones. It’s regularly raided by hungry squirrels.
Critter control will be greatly improved when the building is replaced in the next two years, said Ebert.
Across 180 acres of land, a variety of seedlings are grown in nursery beds. Oak trees can be ready for sale in a year. Some pine species take as long as three years.
After the soil cools late in the fall, workers use a modified potato harvester to lift tree seedlings from the ground.
“They’ve already shut down to take their winter nap,” explains Ebert. “We cull out all of the ones that aren’t suitable for sale. And we put them in the cooler and keep them dormant for the winter.”
In the spring the bare root seedlings are shipped to customers for planting. The nursery tracks where seeds were collected and ships seedlings to the same part of the state the seeds come from whenever possible.
There will likely be millions of additional trees shipped in the next few years as this long neglected operation updates and expands to fill more orders for trees across Minnesota.