Mekaniserad plantering med Eco-Planter i södra Sverige
This report is a thesis work for a B.Sc. in Forestry exam at the School for Forest Engineers, SLU. The work was an assignment from Södra Skogsägarna and the aim of the work was to investigate the economical and biological output after mechanical planting with Eco-Planter compared with traditional manual planting.
Eco-Planter is a tool for mechanized planting, fixed at the end of the boom on a conventional harvester.
The study confirms that manual planting is less expensive under normal conditions. However, the differences between mechanized and manual planting are not that big and with technical development and/or increased labor costs together with an improved work organization the system with Eco-Planter could be competitive.
The biological output, e.g. planting result and survival rate, seems to be quite good. On sites with dense grass cover or on soils with a lot of rocks on the surface mechanical planting tends to be less successful.