Growing teak trees

[backtofront]

How many teak trees can you plant on one rai? What soil conditions and climate is required? Is it worth waiting for?

[grollies]

Bout same as rubber, 70 trees per rai. Spacing 3m x 7m.

 

They'll grow in pretty much any crap ground.

 

Worth waiting for? Bout 20 years for a decent sized tree. You have to prune lower branches annually to encourage height. You also have to clean them of vines when they are young, stop them getting strangled.

 

If commercial crop you might want to add fertilizer once a year, don't know, we never have.

[Borzandy]

Some Thais told me (they owns teak plantations) to plant 1 tree each 2 meters. 4 trees per 4 sqm.

Cause, like this the branches cannot grow, but the trunk develops better. If you are growing the trees for money...you'll sell only the trunk.

[Generalchaos]

Trees can be planted at 2 metres apart, but will be slow in growing and spindly. I planted mine 4 metres apart about ten years ago from 6" saplings - , some are almost 100 feet tall already, never added fertiliser, soil is poor and clay like.

 

One thing I would point out To all those people that tell you that these trees are immune to insects - THEY ARE NOT! Especially when young and in the first few years, they are vulnerable to insect attack.

 

The next thing is the termites (Bluak) do not be fooled that they are immune here either. Even large trees of 10 years can be destroyed by these pests. They will eat all of the bark from ground upwards to over 4 metres in height. This can weaken the trees. Secondly, bluak can attack the roots where they enter the soil and even a 40 foot tree can be weakened at root level to the point where the tree will simply collapse in wind due to weakened root structure.

 

One more pest is a burrowing maggot like insect - about 2 inches long and about 3/4 inch in diameter, it enters the younger branches and eats its way through the soft pulp centre into the main body of the tree and effectively kills it.

 

They are hardy compared to many trees here, but not nearly as tough as Thais make them out to be.

[Timebandit]

There are teak tree investment farms in Central America and the first culling is at 25 years with a 20-26 cm diameter trunk. Good investment for your children if you can prevent tree rustling for the last 5-7 years and security requirements go up from there. Previous posts indicate they may be a high maintenance crop. 

[charliebadenhop]

What gets done to save the trees from termite attacks, etc.?

 

Just for noodling around, would anyone be able to estimate how much money a Rai of well grown teak could bring in after 20-25 years?

 

Is security necessary in Thailand as well?

[bazza73]

1 hour ago, Timebandit said:

There are teak tree investment farms in Central America and the first culling is at 25 years with a 20-26 cm diameter trunk. Good investment for your children if you can prevent tree rustling for the last 5-7 years and security requirements go up from there. Previous posts indicate they may be a high maintenance crop. 

Tree plantations are one of the oldest tricks in the scam artist's bible. Whoever gets the "investor" to stump up the capital then has 20-25 years to funnel the money elsewhere. In addition, the "plantations" are located where travel to verify their existence is nigh-impossible.

[grollies]

You thought about mahogany? Ours grows better than the teak.

[Stevemercer]

Don't plant teak in areas subject to floodwaters during the wet season. Anymore than 2 or 3 weeks standing water will kill them. As noted above, they will grow in crappy soil, but fertilise and water well for the first 3 or 4 years for the best growth.

[playboy]

One thing to remember is when you want to cut it, you need to get permit from government forest official in your area since the trees are protected by the law to cut it.  Even it grew in your own land.

 

[backtofront]

2 hours ago, charliebadenhop said:

What gets done to save the trees from termite attacks, etc.?

 

Got the wife to go down to the Agricultural Extension office with both the small black biting ant, as well as the large pink (pink grapefruit colour) ant and was assured they were resting up and don't do any damage. Which one is the Bluak and how does one "manage" them?

 

We also have white ants and a timber house we have just fixed. How does one keep them all at bay?

[thoongfoned]

scotbev that posts in the rubber tree pinned topic at the top end of the page has said in the last 2 years that he has sold-cut down some trees of about 20-25years old.... maybe good to ask him some info....

i used to buy finished teak produces from Indonesia awhile ago, they used to fell the trees at around 50 years or age.....

over the years have also planted many teak trees around the wifes land, they do grow quick even with out vits, if you were to care for them i would expect very good growth.

[grollies]

On 2017-6-22 at 3:02 PM, Generalchaos said:

Trees can be planted at 2 metres apart, but will be slow in growing and spindly. I planted mine 4 metres apart about ten years ago from 6" saplings - , some are almost 100 feet tall already, never added fertiliser, soil is poor and clay like.

 

One thing I would point out To all those people that tell you that these trees are immune to insects - THEY ARE NOT! Especially when young and in the first few years, they are vulnerable to insect attack.

 

The next thing is the termites (Bluak) do not be fooled that they are immune here either. Even large trees of 10 years can be destroyed by these pests. They will eat all of the bark from ground upwards to over 4 metres in height. This can weaken the trees. Secondly, bluak can attack the roots where they enter the soil and even a 40 foot tree can be weakened at root level to the point where the tree will simply collapse in wind due to weakened root structure.

 

One more pest is a burrowing maggot like insect - about 2 inches long and about 3/4 inch in diameter, it enters the younger branches and eats its way through the soft pulp centre into the main body of the tree and effectively kills it.

 

They are hardy compared to many trees here, but not nearly as tough as Thais make them out to be.

 

On 2017-6-22 at 1:38 PM, Borzandy said:

Some Thais told me (they owns teak plantations) to plant 1 tree each 2 meters. 4 trees per 4 sqm.

Cause, like this the branches cannot grow, but the trunk develops better. If you are growing the trees for money...you'll sell only the trunk.

If you plant teak on a 2x2 plan and you reckon they'll get to 20" (0.5m) diameter in 20-25 years that means only 1m between trees.

 

Pretty tight stocking density.....round here they don't plant the euca that tight.

[grollies]

1.5m between trees, maths never my best subject.

[charliebadenhop]

I would LOVE to have someone make a calculation as to what a Rai of teak would yield after 25 years.

 

Also, have the prices gone up quite a bit over time?

 

[grollies]

Start here:

http://www.thaitimber.org/journal/teak_forest_garden_in_thailand.htm

 

Estimating number of board feet per tree:

http://ohioline.osu.edu/factsheet/F-35-02

 

20" x 32ft tree = 300bf

 

Price bf (USA) = $25

 

http://www.woodvendors.com/index.php/lumber/s-t-hardwoods/teak-lumber.html

 

Per tree = $7,500

 

Per rai = 70 x $7,500 = $525,000

 

Or, per m3

Tree 20" dia x 32ft = 2m3

 

Price per m3 (Kerala) = $1,564 so 1 tree = $3,128

 

Potentially 70 trees per rai = $219,000 after 20 years.

 

Probably a load of rubbish but for back of a fag (cigarette) pack calculation .......

[thoongfoned]

if i were to plant the tree for sale later on X amount of rai i would plant them like they do the rubber, approx 3/4metre apart in rows and the row spacing 6/7 metres. say so about 70 a rai like said above.....  with an excess road running through somewhere, so expect 65 tree per rai.

not sure how much it would cost to register said land/tree.....

 buy sampling 20 ish baht each, land prep, planting then 1 bag vits per rai per year... on going maintance, as they grow the fire danger also grows.....  X money

then the problem of selling them. could be loads could all be for very little..... would need some heavy machines to cart all that wood in the end. would expect the tree to be about 25cm around the base at this sort of age, maybe more if you live in a heavy rain area.

the plantations that i looked at years ago were kept till they were around 50cm around the base -  indonesia 50 ish years.

alot of other fast growing tree out there that can be harvested in a ten year cycle, from what i remember grown in vietnam/loa/china ect.... alot of these farms would be sort of contracted to the saw mills - finishing companies. the company that i used to work for would keep many  of these sorts of factorys fully booked year in year out, each one could/should produce 200 plus 40ft container loads of finished furniture, we used to call it poor mans mahogany as the grain is not that tight - because of the fast growing. hence cheap furniture...

you would need to talk with people who have sold in the past.... to get an idea of price/value/yeild.

[charliebadenhop]

Thanks so much for this info guys!

 

Interesting to look at as a LONG TERM possible investment.

 

And NOT necessarily easy!

 

charlie

[backtofront]

On 6/22/2017 at 2:19 PM, backtofront said:

 

Got the wife to go down to the Agricultural Extension office with both the small black biting ant, as well as the large pink (pink grapefruit colour) ant and was assured they were resting up and don't do any damage. Which one is the Bluak and how does one "manage" them?

 

We also have white ants and a timber house we have just fixed. How does one keep them all at bay?

I understand that the pinkish red ant is a weaver ant and that they are beneficial, as they feed on other bugs. Is this correct? We also have small black ants scurrying up and down some of the trees. They shred the leaves? Then there are small red ants  on the chilli bushes which have a nasty bite. Finally there are termites that infest the soil. But I assume these are different to the white ants.

 

There appear to be many types of ants. How does one figure out which pones do damage and which don't? Is the Bluak that red biting ant on the chilli bush?