19 Years Old Tree

[00:00:00]First time when I came here is about 20 years ago.

[00:00:05]It's one of the most weird place in my life that I ever seen because it's so big area.

[00:00:14]But there's no trees.

[00:00:16]And it's interesting to see most of the house here no tree around the house.

[00:00:23]Even most of people love trees, but there's no trees around the house.

[00:00:29]I use ask people why there's no trees.

[00:00:33]They said it's too hard to grow trees.

[00:00:36]They try for a long time.

[00:00:39]But they never success.

[00:00:41]There's only a few house that they can grow trees, but mostly there's no tree around the house. It's very interesting place because if you look at the mountain nearby above the mountain, you can see a lot of forest, a lot of trees growing in the mountain.

[00:01:01]But in the flat area, there's no trees at all.

[00:01:06]Here is a small town they call Jefferson. It's about 20 miles before Fairplay in Colorado.

[00:01:15]This area is about 9,000 ft from the sea level. It's on Rocky Mountain range.

[00:01:22]This area is so big but nothing grow in this area. But if we hike on the mountain, it will be more than 16,000 ft from the sea level. Normally it have a lot of snow, but this year there's no water, no snow.

[00:01:44]This is the tree that our neighbor plant them more than 20 years ago. They never grow.

[00:01:51]They are the same. They don't die, but they never grow. They are still the same until now.

[00:01:58]I love aspen trees a lot because they're so beautiful.

[00:02:03]The trunks of the trees very straight, white color.

[00:02:07]And then when the leaf change the color so beautiful.

[00:02:12]19 years ago I plant many aspen trees.

[00:02:17]And if we include pine tree, different kind of pine trees, it's almost 100 trees.

[00:02:24]But only these trees survive.

[00:02:28]This tree is only about two or three meters height only. This is 19 years old.

[00:02:36]Compare to the tree that I plant in Thailand, this one only six seven years.

[00:02:43]But each tree taller than six meters already.

[00:02:49]Look at each trunk, each tree is more than five uh inches diameters.

[00:02:56]It's so big, so tall. It's very different.

[00:03:01]This tree I do not water. I do not take care them at all after I plant them beginning of rainy season. I just leave it like that.

[00:03:12]So they grow by themselves.

[00:03:14]Compare to this aspen tree 19 years, now there's about three meters height and then the diameters about two inches.

[00:03:26]They're so slow.

[00:03:28]So every year when I come, I will try to pull the grass around the house.

[00:03:35]This grass they're native here, they grow very well. This is only kind of mulch that I can harvest in this area.

[00:03:46]So I collect the weed, the grass around the house to make mulch around this tree.

[00:03:55]I dug holes around these trees and then I add compost in the holes.

[00:04:02]But because of this I did not stay long each year, so I did not have a lot of compost.

[00:04:08]What I did is I just collecting piece every time when they come and water maybe 10 L 20 L per year that I used to water this has been tree and I harvest some weed or some grass around the house to make mulch. That's what I did for this tree.

[00:04:32]The rest of it I did not do anything with it. And maybe that's why they cannot survive.

[00:04:39]So, it's very hard to grow trees in this area. But I want to learn more. How can we make them survive and grow well? How can we propagate them more?

[00:04:57]This is a choke cherry that I plant, but they did not grow well, too.

[00:05:03]The plant that grow the best here is chive. Chive I did not do anything with this plant. I just plant them the first time and then they last more than five or six years already. I don't need to do anything with it. When the snow melt, they just come back and then have a lot of beautiful flowers.

[00:05:26]They have some Portulaca and some wild flowers that they grow okay in this area.

[00:05:35]But trees never grow well. So, I'm learning. I'm trying to experiment more. So, if anybody have some suggestion uh for growing tree in this kind of land, please give me some advice.

[00:05:57]I love to have big trees like this around the house.

[00:06:00]So, thank you so much for your advice.