ZLV Online

Abstract

Construction of portable earth augers, which can be relatively easily and safely used for fast and cheap planting of forest trees, has been enabled due to the technological progress in recent years. Earth augers can be efficiently used to make planting holes for common-sized planting stock. However, these augers can drill also quite large and deep holes suitable even for the planting of semisaplings and saplings. This way of planting has naturally its limitations: it can be only used on light (sandy or loamy) soils without excessive presence of stones, roots and grass turf. For example, sandy soils of natural pine stands can be considered suitable for the use of the earth auger. Despite the growing popularity of earth auger drilling among forest workers in some regions, the manual planting (with hoes, planting bars etc.) has been dominating so far. For that reason, there are almost no available data concerning the time consumption of the mechanized planting (or work standards). The aim of the paper is to bring some initial outcomes of the research on the time consumption of the mechanized planting with earth augers. On the basis of the results it can be concluded that total time required to complete the planting of one sapling is ca. 69 sec (related to one worker). The work costs with the device depreciation of one sapling are approx. 4 CZK (0.16 EUR) (excluding the price of planting stock).