In hindsight I wished I had payed the extra and planted Loblollies. Fertile ground that was in cultivation makes it really hard to manage the competition for the first 3 or 4 years. It takes forever for those things to get 4 foot tall. This is a problem when a briar patch can grow that high in 4 months. And going into it with no experience and relying on my local office for advice was not beneficial to the trees at all. I was advised to allow the native habitat grasses to do their thing for a couple of years and by the time they did there thing a bunch of trees got choked out. Had I bush hogged the rows like I wanted to ( and eliminated the planted grasses for wildlife which stood no chance from the beginning) , I'd have a LOT more tress. If you grow longleaf on a mountain or chirt pit they will take off. On farmland not so much. Didn't mean to side track but thought someone might be saved the trouble i went through.