[Stereo]

Not sure if this fits here or in Land Management but has anyone done this? We've got 5 or so acres of native woodland on our land, some hazel coppice and miles of hedges etc. so never really short of wood but I'm thinking of planting out hybrid willow especially for firewood. I don't want to get into an argument over the value of willow as a fuel vs ash etc.etc. Yes it's lighter and burns faster but it also grows and dries much faster. So that's not really the question.

I've been reading up on it and it seems a 5 year rotation should give you something like 5 tonnes per acre. So, to get 10 tonnes a year, I would need to plant out a couple acres. Given all the steep, boggy and marginal bits of land on our place, that might be a very good use of land. Also great for wildlife while it's growing. Anyone got any experience of this? I imagine I would be looking at a pollard system and waist height rather than coppice as I'm knocking on a bit! Better for rabbit protection too.

[MAK]

Sounds very sensible and a good use of the land you describe. I have no exprience of planting willow for logs but I want to watch this space and maybe copy you. I am a couple of years into a 7 year cycle of sweet chestnut cutting but want to plant more trees on some marginal land.

[Louise Gaunt]

I put in willow slips in spring 2011, out of 100, 85 took, and then when I cut the first years growth back to start them making lots of shoots, I put some more in to fill the gaps, most of which have taken. The largest are now about 12 feet high, and getting quite thick. I think it will be at least 3 more years before I can think if cutting them. Hope this helps! They were really easy to grow- the arrived as 1 foot long slips that we just pushed in to the ground, with plastic guards round to keep the rabbits and deer off whilst they got established

[cloddopper]

Stereo,
 When i was fit & small holding we were looking to grow willow and hazel close together in long rows  about 6feet apart over 20 acres so we could get a small tractor down the middle .
 Like you we had thought about staging the plantings into a five year production cycle .
 The first full 5 year cycle would not have been as productive as subsequent ones due to the saplings  needing to develop a decent root system .

 We were going to use well rotted farmyard manure to fertilize the plantation doing one years timber crop at a time in year three .  So that the  high nitrogen would tend to give lots of quick boost growth to the saplings.

 The tractor was to be fitted with a high speed rotating cutting disk like a big brush cutter as these can slice through a telegraph pole in one swipe without pausing for breath .. The idea was so that we could easily harvest the coppiced at the ground wood  .
 Collecting it would be using a tractor mounted back actor type grab to pick it  and drop it on a trailer towed by a big quad or a hired in tractor .
 If the row is say six feet wide  collecting can be done with the tractors straddling the cut stumps

One thing we did take into account was that the area was well known for shooting game  So a natural add on to the small holding would have been rearing poults, selling some , releasing some  and renting the wood land out to a shooting syndicate about two years after it had started being planted up.
 Sadly it didn't happen as I got crippled , though if you look up PE134BJ on Google earth you can see whats left of the couple of thousand of willows , hazels and other trees I planted in 1994 as a way of making game cover on the old railway bank to the South of the Old Gate Keepers cottage 
 We were hoping to buy the adjacent 20 acre field to the East if the price was right and that is where the coppicing/ fuel growing  would have taken place

[Stereo]

Thanks all. I've done a bit of coppicing with a boggy old alder wood we have. The felled trees have mostly started shooting but I'm thinking ten years to a decent harvest.

[regen]

Hi Stereo,

Success may depend upon where you are.  All I can say is that at 800 ft in West Wales Vilminis slips were a total waste of time and did not achieve even 50% of the growth rate achieved in the Midlands.  Ash planted at the same time did better as did alder and sycamore.  Rowan, hazel and thorns are much slower but the star for us was Eucalyptus, which after 12 years are nearly 15 metres high with 250mm diameter trunks having outgrown the local sitka.

For firewood I was looking at larch but this has been knocked on the head by Phytophora and with ash dieback attacking ash the fire wood choices are reducing rapidly.

Regen

[Stereo]

I'm in the SW and our land is hilly and in places wet as we have 2 streams intersecting on our land. We get a lot of alder so I'm thinking the ground must be good for willow as it likes similar terrain. Another thing I am coppicing with success is sycamore. Excellent firewood and grows like weeds around here. It's not encouraged as not seen as native but it's a really good fuel and is easy to split etc.

[regen]

I am actively encouraging and coppicing sycamore. I know its not native but neither are the thousands of acres of forestry commision softwoods.

Sycamore provides a food scource for several caterpillers which in turn feed the nesting passerines. As they mature the trunks provide natural nest sites for hole nesting birds as big as owls so i feel it fits into my scheme of things very well- nearly as good as ash.

Regen

[Stereo]

Interesting. I haven't studied it but was always told it had little benefit in terms of bio-diversity. The one thing I do find is you get that blue mould on it if it's logged and left in a damp place. I assume that is something to do with the anti-septic properties of the timber. Seems counter-intuitive but I know the Romans used to use Sycamore for bowls and eating implements as it has natural anti-bacterial protection. Although you would have thought this would inhibit fungi growth, maybe it encourages it in some way.

[Steph Hen]

I have a plot of naturally seeded ash. About 2/3 acre, about 8-10 years old. they were to be thinned last winter, then the rest left to grow on and then be coppiced. But with ash die back in the area, figured I'll just leave them (just incase they're a resistant strain) and when they start to die, cut the lot down. Although this hasn't cost me anything, but a bit of time thinning some bits, I would be wary of planting a mono crop at the risk of loosing the whole lot to some new disease.
I like the idea of pollarding up a bit, at least to keep the new growth out of the rabbits reach.

[ScribbleUk]

You mentioned Hybrid Willow.  Do you have a specific type in mind and a supplier lined up?  Our local forestry supplier has a few different types of Willow, but it's hard to find out if/how they compare to a hybrid, and presumably worth the extra cost.

[cloddopper]

My brains just had a leapfrog and a clear out  session    ..

Silver birch is known as the weed of the wood, for a very good reason ..just under a quarter of Canada and Russia is covered with it ,  it can grow in very damp cold conditions.
 
You can use 200 mm dia logs ..it is a great fire wood when seasoned as it has a lot of heat in it but not too higher a tar production .

If you look up propagating silver birch or taking cuttings from silver birch in the RHS  website ( royal horticultural society  ) you can find how to take cuttings from many many valuable fire woods and other plants that my be of interest to you.

[regen]

Silver birch, alder,and larch can be easily grown from seed as it only needs 6 weeks in fridge prior to sowing.  All seem to have good germination rates producing at least 100 seedlings per £1 worth of seed.  Sycamore, ash,hawthorn need up to 6 months in fridge.Cuttings give you atleast a years start if they take.

When i planted the willow about 10 years ago i also put in 20 poplar (special hybrid) slips. These grew apace for about 5 years and then started to dieback- had they continued to grow I think they may have been a better bet than willow but I dont think they can be coppiced.

Regen

[Stereo]

You mentioned Hybrid Willow.  Do you have a specific type in mind and a supplier lined up?  Our local forestry supplier has a few different types of Willow, but it's hard to find out if/how they compare to a hybrid, and presumably worth the extra cost.

I'm pretty close to Bowhayes Trees so I was thinking of popping over to have a chat with them. Have not looked into varieties yet.

I think you can coppice Poplar but it doesn't take all that well. It's not a bad firewood despite all the naysayers. It just needs to be dried well and kept dry as it will soak it back up if left outside over winter. I was thinking of planting a long row along a hedge with a view to having a nice easy timber crop in 20 or so years time.

[regen]

Hi Stereo,

Bowhayes supplied both my willow and poplar.  Willow no good as season is too short but the poplars grew vwey quickly until they got some form of diebck.  Form memory the poplar slips were about 6ft tall and about 20mm in dioameter.

Regen