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2K views 6 replies 4 participants last post by  mgipson 
#1 ·
Future wood score

In the northeast of Thailand I am busy growing my future wood supply. We have 10 rai (about 4 acres in English money) of 3 year old rubber trees. That's a total of around 1,000 trees. We are growing them for the latex of course but after 20-25 years they no longer produce and can be sold for lumber, I'll probably keep some of them for myself!
Latex cutting starts once the trees reach a certain size, it's generally between 6 and 7 years. In the meantime we remove the grass around the trees and apply fertiliser twice a year, they are not high maintenance. We are hoping to get some more land in the next couple of years, I am thinking of splitting that land 50%-50% between rubber and teak trees.



 
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#2 ·
this is pretty cool. will you sell the latex to an end user, or does it go through some type of broker? I've always wanted to grow trees that were beneficial during use and then could be used for lumber after their useful life. Here in the states, that would be apple, pear, walnut, cherry, maple (syrup) and birch (another syrup). Someday, someday…
 
#3 ·
There are a couple of choices for selling the latex. You can either sell every day to a broker that drives around the villages and collects or you can process it yourself into latex sheets. The sheets are worth more and you can keep them to sell at a later date if the current price is a bit low.
 
#6 ·
That a pretty quick trip to making lumber. If we plant a tree here, we would die before it matures to be good lumber- especially and oak or walnut tree.
I had some rubber tree wood once that were aprons from a table that I cut up for a guy and made his counter tops out of. I got to keep the aprons and the wood was beautiful when turned.

..............Jim
 
#7 ·
Oh wow this was an old post. These trees are much bigger now and producing latex nicely. We have since planted another 3,200. That's a lot of tables worth of lumber once they stop producing latex!
We planted trees that produce good amounts of latex but don't grow very big. There are strains available now that don't produce as much latex but grow bigger and quicker. They can be sold for lumber much quicker.
 
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