Perfect rows?

[Andrew7dg]

So I am helping someone in the country with their grove and it is the important north facing grove (Minnesota). I have a plan on what trees to lay out but he brought up a really good question.

"I want the rows going East and West perfectly. Can we make them straight with the house and road?" Now the old rows were just Eyeballed by the old farmer. and a little crooked it looks.

I need thinking caps here. How do we get each row straight? And straight with what? perfectly East and West, with the house? with the road (road runs north and south) assuming that the house is straight with the road...

Here is the farm.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=wells+minnesota&sll=42.747012,-94.361572&sspn=2.299328,4.416504&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Wells,+Faribault,+Minnesota&ll=43.710362,-93.843702&spn=0.00442,0.008626&t=h&z=17

The house is a little square but just imagine driving in the driveway to the north and the house would be the first thing on the right.

I realize that this is a lawn mowing site but there has to be someone here who has to be really picky on how straight the mowing stripes are;)

[picframer]

I would make them perfect with the house which I can see is not perfect to the road in the image. It's quite simple to do, run a plumb line the length of the area you want to start the trees, you will be able to tell very easily when it is straight with the house, take a compass and see how far you are off East to West, ask for the customers feedback then go for it.

[Steve]

Yea that would work great!

How are you going to dig the holes and plant them? All manually?

What kind of trees will they be?

[Andrew7dg]

I am using a Minnesota SWCD Tree Handbook which lays out how to do a grove in a pretty straight forward manner. I am not planting the trees myself. My understanding is that there is a county service for planting new trees in such quantity. So I have to design it and have it approved by the county.

Just so that we are clear about which road it is, it is the county road, not the road that is in front of the house that I am trying to get this straight with. When you drive by, he wants all the rows pretty straight.

We are going to be removing these in sections so that there is a little growth time in between planting. The row to the north is going to be taken out first. That is going to be replaced with a hedge of lilacs.

http://www.pheasantsforever.org/media/image/1/sbeltsection.jpg

Here is the basic design of what I am trying to accomplish

I would have thought that there would be an app for this or something with GPS. A friend of his has a GPS on his harvester/tractor and drives with the rows. I was trying to figure out if I could use that for this or something.

[Steve]

What is the purpose of a shelterbelt?