Forest nurseries in Finland

In Finland, forest tree seedling production has shifted between 144 to 207 million seedlings during the last decade. Currently 7 enterprises own 24 nurseries which produce about 85% to 90% of the total number of seedlings. The main tree species in Finland are Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris), Norway spruce (Picea abies) and European silver birch (Betula pendula). About 90% of the seedlings are grown in containers. Hard plastic containers like Plantek(R) (Lannen) and Blockplanta(R) (BCC) have nowadays almost replaced the former widely used Ecopot(R) (Lannen). Container Scots pine and silver birch seedlings are usually 1 year old and spruce seedlings 1 and 2 years old when shipped. During winter, seedlings are stored either in the nurseries outdoors under natural or artificially made snowcover, or seedlings are packed into plastic-laminated cardboard boxes and placed in freezer storage. A minority of the seedling production is bareroot, and that is mainly Norway spruce. It is likely that seedling production will become more centralized, meaning that the amount of seedlings produced per nursery will increase while the number of nurseries will decrease. Other new challenges to seedling production are the extension of the outplanting season to cover the whole growing season from May to September, and the development of seedling types suitable for increasing machine planting.