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.
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