Weed your woods

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

It may sound silly at first, but, if you want to make your woodland (more) productive, just treat it like a big vegetable garden. You will grow the best crop if you cut the weed trees, thin the thick spots, and harvest the crop trees before they get too "ripe" to use.

But, let's start where we always should start, namely at the beginning.

A wood, even a forest, is to the forester the same as a field is to the farmer or a garden to the gardener and all of them need management if they are to thrive. The only difference between a gardener or farmer and a forester is that the latter often does not, except in coppice management, ever sees the harvest. He harvests often what others, long before him, have planted, and he manages and plants for the future, for harvests that are carried out by others, often after he is long gone.

Alas all too often there are people about who believe that Mother Nature does a better job than we could ever do and there are time when that is true. If the woodland, however, is to be of use to us and to wildlife and be a thriving ecosystem then management by man is required and this even more so if the woods have been managed before by the hand of man for our use, and this even more so if the produce of such woods are also to benefit us.

Even when managing a coppice woodland weeding certain trees out and doing selective cutting here and there is required and in stands where large trees are to be the result then thinning is a must and it must be repeated every couple of years and, if permitted, over time those cut trees may actually turn into coppice stools and a so-called coppice with standards will result and a good result that is too.

Your goals will greatly affect your management decisions and your management decisions will greatly affect the outcome and the produce. Of course, the existing conditions of your woodland may have an equally great effect on your decisions and the outcome.

A mature stand of timber may dictate a heavy cut to stop further decline while a mixed-age or middle-aged stand of timber is a likely candidate for a selective cut. Any young stands can be like a recently sown bed of carrots, nothing will prosper without a little thinning. When it comes to a woodland of mixed-age or middle-age stands of timber then, if it is hardwood, or deciduous woods, which, hopefully it is, of native trees then one of the best options is to create a coppice with standards and if it is a coppice woodland that was previously managed as such then you may find many an overstood coppice stool that needs immediate attention.

Once you've decided your motives, you need to find out just how saleable your timber is. Become “wood-wise” and learn to recognize the potential in a tree or a stand of coppice. Also the species that you have growing and which are due for cutting and then research the market. The original task of the professional forester was that of recognizing what every tree or part of a tree could become by way of product and use and this “eye” you, as a woodsman, will also have to develop. Once you know all that research your potential market and not, necessarily, people such as sawmills and the like but look at what you, actually, could make out of the wood yourself that could be sold to end-users rather than processors.

Selling to a sawmill or any processor will greatly reduce your income from your woods. On the other hand if you go into production of wooden goods yourself you will have to have the time for doing so, the tools and then a way of marketing them to the end-users. It is all a case of horses for courses. A sawmill or other processor may give you x for the whole tree but processed by yourself into a variety of products, and the same is true for coppice stems, will give you x4 it is obvious that you can make more, in financial terms, from processing most of the wood yourself. But, as said, it requires time, effort, and tools to do so.

When it comes to the felling, especially of larger trees, and you have not used a chainsaw before and/or felled large trees then please do not do it without any training even if it is your land and in all theory you can use a chainsaw there to your heart's content. Chainsaw take no prisoners and are extremely dangerous, as are trees falling. We are talking several tons in weight coming crashing down at a rate of knots. So, I say it again, learn felling of trees or get an experienced lumberjack to do the work for you. Do not take any chances.

Now, what are the weeds and what are the crops?

Well, a crop tree is any reasonably mature tree worth harvesting, or one that has the potential to grow into such a tree. Weed trees may just be species of low value, or may be damaged by rot, fire, lightning, wind, insects, etc. They could also be trees excessively lean or that are rather crooked. Removing those, and those that otherwise interfere with the growth of the other trees, is called thinning, and is much like thinning out a bed of carrots.

In any woodland for trees to develop to the full potential it is important that each of them has enough space to grow and develop. It is a little different in a pure coppice as compared with coppice with standards and a lot different in a stand of timber where all are meant to be single stems growing to maturity.

Thinning (weeding) is a valuable exercise even in a pure coppice where I have begun to referring to it as selective coppicing for here we can do it in two ways. We can either remove stems that are already harvestable for a variety of products and leave other, smaller ones, to grow to a decent size or removing those small stems that are and never will be of any use but which interfere with the growth of those we want to harvest in a year or four, those that are spindly, deformed, or otherwise of no use.

Our main aim, with hardwood trees, is to create, when working to rejuvenate a woodland, a sustainable coppice woodland, either as a pure coppice or a a coppice with standards, and the former is easier to maintain than the latter, in all honesty.

But the latter will make for the production of timber in size that cannot be achieved in a pure coppice and thus often that is the one to go for.

In that case weeding, aka thinning, will be required on a regular basis especially also as you will want to bring on new growth, natural regeneration, and encourage those young trees to grow to mature standards to eventually replace those that you will cut in time.

In order to help them grow, however, the area around them in the woods will need not just thinning but also in this case really weeding. But unlike in the garden you don't have to remove dandelion and such like but brambles and bracken and such vegetation that might encroach and smother the saplings or otherwise impede their growth. Protection from grazers too may be required and some wire-mesh or the chicken-wire variety held by some stakes will, more often than not, suffice. And then there is more weeding and thinning.

© 2015

For more on coppicing and why, etc. see “Managing our Woods”, a small book that explains the whys and wherefores of managing our woods in this way and calls for us to return to that way.

Habitat piles

Habitat piles have become an excuse for lazy forestry practice and most importantly a health hazard in the woods

by Michael Smith (Veshengro), RFA, EcoFor

I know that habitat piles, themselves, sound like a disease but it is not, though they can be a pain in the posterior of the professional forester and the agriculturalist concerned with healthy trees.

The idea of the habitat piles, leaving forest debris in the woods, came from misguided environmentalists and the practice was forced upon woodland managers, foresters and those responsible for woodlands in parks by said misguided people. They claimed and still claim that such piles are good for the environment and wildlife. The fact, however, is that neither is the case.

Habitat piles are not only not all that beneficial to the environment and wildlife, they are in fact a threat to the woods and to the global climate.

In the first instance, the threat to the woods, they are, as said, a hazard to tree health, as they harbor all kinds of dangerous pathogens and also dangerous fungi that attack standing living trees.

In the second case the fact that the wood in those so-called habitat piles decays and by doing so releases two greenhouse gases of which one if CO2 and the other methane. The latter is a gas that is reckoned to be many times more dangerous to the climate than is even CO2 and this is where the piles again are not beneficial at all.

Therefore the habit of habitat piles – pardon the slight pun – should be ceased forthwith, and the the Forestry Commission also appears to agree with this and appears to, in fact, call for the very cessation of this practice. This cannot come soon enough and a great majority of the not too old piles should be removed as well before they do any more damage.

However, this practice has now become widespread even among woodsmen and foresters believing, having been more or less brainwashed, that they do good for the environment, in that they leave almost every pile of branches as habitat piles. It is so much easier also rather than having to burn the stuff or do anything else with them and it amounts to nothing more now as lazy forestry practice in the guise of environmentalism.

Properly created habitat piles are of use but not the heaps of branches thrown higgledy-piggledy together and left in the woods. They should be created with care and ideally be logs set into the ground in a fashion. All else is just a pretense and rubbish, and also, as said, lazy woodland- and forestry management practice.

In years past, before the idea of habitat piles, woodlands and forests generally had a “clean floor” policy, which means that all debris from thinning and felling was either burned on site or made use of in one way or the other.

Very little in the way of debris and even fallen dead branches were left laying. Fallen branches belonged to the estovers who had the right to collect firewood, including by hook and by crook, from woods and commons. Still, however, the woods thrived and so did the wildlife, from invertebrates to fungi and everything in between.

In those days of old when there was the “clean floor” policy there were also fewer diseases in the woodlands and forests that there are today. Could this, just maybe, have something to do with that practice?

© 2013

Forest restoration and thinning operations

Forest restoration initiatives reduce wildfire risk and produces responsible timber

by Michael Smith (Veshengro), RFS, RFA, EcoFor

Forests that are overcrowded with small diameter trees are more susceptible to devastating wildfires, as smaller trees act as kindling to fuel the blaze and as veritable ladders that allow flames to reach the forest canopy. In addition to that the misguided practice of leaving tree crowns and branches as “habitat piles” (for the wildlife, as the greenies keep crying) creates even more fire ladders and thus danger of such fires. Furthermore those “habitat piles” also are a source of tree diseases.

Since 2010, high-intensity fires have burned more than 5 million acres of forest lands across the western and central United States. But prevention of forest fires spreading is only one issue that is being dealt with by thinning and other proper forest and woodland management measures. The other is to allow light in and also stop trees damaging each other.

What is forest thinning?

Thinning of woods and forests has nothing to do with clear-cutting, as some people think, and it is also not harmful to the woods and forests. The opposite rather. But often it is very difficult to get misguided greenies to understand and comprehend this because they have read and read books and such that claim that cutting down any tree of any size and age is bad for the environment.

Nobody wants to clear-cut the forests, as that would be rather counterproductive. But there is a way to thin the forest that is healthy for the habitat, healthy for the forest and protects the forest from catastrophic fires and also to create valuable habitat for wildlife.

A woodland or forest whose canopy is too dense does not allow enough light to penetrate for other things to grow and the same goes for too much undergrowth. Both are not beneficial for the woods nor the flora and fauna. But this is something that people often do not understand in the same way as they do not understand that paper is not bad either.

So, what good does thinning do?

To put it simply, when a fire moves through an overcrowded forest, in which trees are spaced very close together, small diameter trees act as kindling to fuel the blaze and as veritable ladders that allow the flames to move up into the forest canopy, causing widespread devastation that can decimate thousands of acres at a time.

On another level thinning improves the environment of the woods and forests and thinning out the small trees allows the bigger trees to grow stronger, better and healthier.

The woodcutters of the future are not clearing the forest, they are creating it. They are really the artists of the future forest. Every decision they make about what tree to cut and what to leave is something we'll be living with for the next 50 years.

But this has always been the case in proper woodland and forest management in Europe, including and especially in Britain.

Britain was once an island of forests – despite the fact that some wish to claim that the woodland cover of the British Isles was but a small percentage by the beginning of the year 1000 only – and the foresters and woodsmen have always had the best interest of the forest and the woodland in mind. After all it was also what made them money, but never by clear-cutting.

Reusing all that wood

In America in the '80s and '90s, forests were managed for timber and woodcutters went in, took out all the big trees and what was left was burned. What was once piled up and burned needs to be made into wood products.

There has also been a similar management, as regards to thinning in recent decades in Europe, in that most of the thinned timber was simply burned on site. Not so much, I hasten to add, where coppice workers were doing the work of thinning as to them any wood is being looked at as a source of income and this is the way it should be. Nothing, as far as possible, should be wasted.

Through partnerships with local businesses, small diameter trees like those being thinned must be reused for loads of useful applications, including furniture and housewares, fencing, cabinetry, pallets and even prefabricated homes and bridges. And where all else fails there is always firewood and charcoal.

In the USA thinned trees are also used to create oriented strand board (OSB), a popular building material that is also used for furniture and other applications. Wood pieces that are too damaged to reuse for these purposes are made into mulch, sawdust and pellets for wood-burning stoves.

We all have a stake in the future of our forests and our woodlands, but not everybody recognizes it. So, we help people understand the importance of that, but it's not enough just to create a sense of urgency. We want people to feel an understanding of what needs to be done, and provide them with an opportunity to learn.

Personally I have encountered misguided greenies who do not understand nor wish, it would seem, to understand that woods and forests need to be managed to thrive and this is a shame and with some of them even the best intention of enlightening them are, unfortunately, unsuccessful. But, we must continue this effort in the same way as we must manage our forests and woodlands in the proper manner for the benefit of everything and everyone.

© 2013