For Immediate Release

Woody Quail Cover "The Easy Way"

Fields, grasslands and prairies can be enhanced with good woody cover is added

Illinois - December 11 -

Trees and shrubs play an important role in quail habitat. Essential escape cover is typically made up of trees, shrubs, berry bushes, blackberry briars and other bushes and vines. This type of cover is a must for a covey's winter range. Research has shown that quail spend most of their winter within 70 feet of woody vegetation.

Agricultural fields, large grasslands and prairies can be made much more desirable for quail if good woody cover is added within 100 feet of the center of open land. So, if your property is located in a wide open area, and you're signing up for CP33 or CRP, you should really consider adding the optional shrub components to your management plan. It may be just the thing you need to create a sustainable quail population in your area.

Planting trees and shrubs can be a real time consuming job with a low success rate, unless all of nature's conditions are just right. However, with Forrest Keeling's RPM® trees and shrubs, that may not be the case any more. RPM® stands for Root Production Method. Forrest Keeling's technique is to expose the plant's taproot to air through the bottom of three-gallon growing containers. This process air prunes the taproot and forces the tree to grow a massive side root system. The end result is a tree with a denser, more fibrous root mass that absorbs and uses more oxygen, water and nutrients than conventionally grown trees and bare root stock.

Due to the extremely high survival rates and regeneration of native hardwood trees in hostile, competitive growing environments where maintenance presents a severe problem, many agricultural offices are beginning to approve the use of RPM® trees for farm programs and wetland restorations.

QF Habitat Specialist Gary Laurent has done several program plantings with them in southern Illinois. "They are my tree of choice," he claims. "With the use of a three point auger and a tractor to dig the holes, I can take a crew of three people and plant over 20 acres of trees a day. It's a piece of cake, and their success rate is well above 95 percent. You can't come close to that with rootstock. Last season, I did a 13-acre planting of hardwoods and was worried because we had some real dry weather over the summer, but to my surprise we only lost two trees on the whole project."

With the RPM® tree's accelerated growth of three to five feet the first year, they are above browsing deer, floodwaters and competition for sunlight. Instead of taking 15-20 years to produce acorns, species like the RPM® white oak will bear fruit in the fourth year, providing more wildlife food earlier and a much better chance the trees will reproduce.

To find out more about RPM trees, visit Forrest Keeling's Nursery on the web at www.fknursery.com or contact your local QF habitat specialist.