With 17.681 seedlings planted in 24 hours, Timo Kloft now claims a new world record in forest tree planting. The record attempt took place near Malå in the north of Sweden and was done with containerized conifer seedlings planted with a Pottiputki planting tool.
Timo Kloft planted 17.681 containerized seedlings in 24 hours, without sleep, all by himself. This means he had an average pace of planting 12 seedlings per minute. This is the claimed world record that also has been sent to Guinness World Records.
The record attempt was done on a clear-felled area that likely were scarified before the planting took place. In the north of Sweden it is quite common to plant about 2.000 seedling per hectare. This means Timo planted nearly 9 hectares in 24 hours.
Swedish public service television company, SVT, was first to report from the record attempt. They also have a video of the record attempt posted at their newspage. Images above belongs to SVT.
Forest Planting in Sweden
Around 350 million seedlings is planted yearly in Sweden. 80% of them originates from Swedish trees and 94% of seedlings is conifer seedlings (50/50 pine and spruce). A majority of the seedlings is containerized, only a few percent is of bareroot type, planted with a planting hoe or pick. Nearly 100% of all seedlings comes from local nurseries in Sweden.
World Wide Forest Planting
Around 7% of all forests is currently planted. That means 93% is naturally breeded. If you want to dig deeper into this, Dag Lindgren (retired Professor of Forest Genetics) has posted an PDF in English with more information about this.
