Berry’s Picks

Tree Orders and CCLA Show and Sale

Texas A&M AgriLife Extension in Comanche County will again make available to homeowners and landowners a chance to purchase tree seedlings for establishment on your property.

You can purchase either evergreens or hardwoods to dress up your landscape, improve your property value or improve wildlife cover and food.

These trees are grown by the Texas A&M Forest Service located in Idalou, Texas.

They are offered to landowners as a conservation tool, but they also make excellent trees for any landscape. The final date to order seedlings is by 5:00 p.m. on Thursday, February 20, 2020 and delivery date will be around Friday, February 19, 2021. The seedlings will be delivered sometimes around February 25th.

Trees offered from the nursery include containerized species (plastic tubes) or bareroot species (bundled). The containerized species include Afghan Pine, Austrian Pine, Oriental Arborvitae, Pinyon Pine.

These trees are available in boxes of 30 for a price of $60.00. The bareroot species include Bur Oak, Shumard Oak and Chinkapin Oak. These trees are available in bundles of 25 for a price of $40.00.

If you need to replace some oak trees, the Burr oak and Chinkapin are excellent choices for our area. Once established both are very hardy and can withstand droughts and our local soil conditions better than most trees. The very best thing about these two oaks is that they are not known to die from oak wilt. This is the disease that has killed so many nice Live oaks in our region. Both trees have good mast crops for deer and other wildlife, but the burr oak does have large acorns, this is something to consider if planting where you have to mow with a lawnmower.

With the current La Nina conditions I am a little reluctant to encourage folks to plant trees this year.

The first year or two the trees will require the most attention, after that they can stand a lot of abuse and neglect. In our area, especially with potential drought conditions you need to be set-up to water your trees about once every two weeks. This is a good deep watering, not just wetting the top of the ground. In more remote plantings you can do this with a barrel or square tote with a hose attachment. If you do not have the time to water and have to rely on Mother Nature at $40.00 for 25 seedlings you will not be out that much.

Comanche County Livestock Association Show and Sale

This year has really stunk for youth livestock events and about everything else, early on many major shows were cancelled.

The CCLA is committed to making sure the local youth are able to show at our local county show. However, this will require some cooperation from everyone.

To decrease the number of folks in the barn at a time, the group has worked to spread-out the schedule so not too many events are happening at the same time.

There will be some other requirements like face mask and limited admission to name a couple.

While you may or may not agree with some of these requirements, please keep in mind these things are being adapted to not only ensure everyone’s safety, but to be sure the youth will be able to show and sale their livestock. Please be patient and let us all hope we can get back to normal soon.