[Fleecewife]

We have various trees we want to manage by coppicing and pollarding, including a recently planted group of ash and hazel.  In the past we have had successes and failures - the failures mainly when the sheep have got to the new shoots at a vital stage (unbelievably that was willow which should grow from a moribund stick but had no life left after the sheep had been at them).


My question is, what diameter do the trunks need to be for the first coppicing?  The new ash is about 2" or so across - too small I'm sure - and the hazel is even smaller, but I'm impatient to know when we can start. 


We have some much larger trees to coppice as well which I'm confident to do.  I believe birch can be coppiced but has anyone done this successfully?

[Fleecewife]

I have been doing my own research into this and have found some answers.

On a larger scale, 10% attrition rate of new plantings is expected, so my one dead from about 60 or so newly planted treelets isn't bad.

Seems I need to wait a few more years before I can coppice or pollard the new trees, until their root systems have grown large enough to cope with the effects of these treatments.

Birch can be coppiced but is not a strong-growing tree.  The new growth can be used for faggots ie bundles of brushwood for fires.

We had to do some emergency pollarding today as some of our large willows had split in the gale and were threatening to topple onto my new wool shed - which isn't finished yet although it's coming on apace.  We will have to go back and tidy up the willows we dealt with today and give the branches to the sheep.  The trunks are large enough for firewood - I know willow isn't the best, but if it's there we use it.  Some of these will have to be cut down to coppice height as they have split to the ground. It was quite a battle in the wind so still ragged.   Must remember to protect them from gnawing sheep with some wire netting so they can regrow.

[spandit]

I bet the willow grown in 10 years would keep you a lot warmer than the oak from a similar period!

It does burn quite quickly but, like any wood, if it's dry, it's good to burn.

Hazel is on a 7 year rotation but I think you are supposed to cut it early to encourage multiple stem growth. Have heard different things about birch but ash coppices well.

I'd look into pollarding rather than coppicing - will help with the sheep (and provide "tree hay")

[Fleecewife]

We mostly do pollard the willows, but the ones which split have done so to the ground so the only repair possible is coppice.   I like the idea of sheep hay, but we give the whole branches to our sheep as they love the bark as well as the more delicate stems.  Once the bark is stripped we can use the wood for stakes and firewood - we like our sheep to work for their keep 
For the new trees, interestingly I found that apparently Scottish hazels usually grow as multistems on their own, whereas in England they need to be coppiced in the first place before the multi stems appear. I'm not sure of how true this is. Of the hazels we've planted over the past 18 years, some are multistemmed and some on a single trunk.  Not one has borne a nut though    The pollen is probably whisked away on the wind.
The new trees are well fenced from the sheep - ash and hazel, with willow on each side (not within the fence hence the sheep nibbling).  It's very windy up here so for tall poles, esp the ash, coppicing seems safer, but some will be pollarded to improve the windbreak effect, which is what they were originally planted for.
We have a tiny piece of new mixed woodland planted up 8 years ago which now needs thinning, so we will be doing a mix of coppice, pollards and leaving the taller trees.  We will also plant more wild flowers.

I grew up in Norfolk with my Dad's land backing onto ancient woodland which had been coppiced for 1000 years.  Last night I searched to see if it is mentioned online, only to find it's well known and a nature reserve now.  When I was a post war kid I had the whole place to myself and liked to practice getting lost and finding my way out again    I love woodland and am so enjoying the little bit we are making here.



https://www.google.co.uk/#q=foxley+wood+norfolk+images


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxley_Wood

[spandit]

I'd love to see pictures of your 8 year old woodland - will give an idea how ours might look when I'm 29... 

[Stereo]

Hazel down here in the SW seems to coppice at pretty much any age apart from very mature when you get a higher rate of mortaility. Same with ash. I would suspect with ash that you might want to pollard and wait for 10 years or so to get a nice trunk diameter to start with. Another thing we have found pollards well is sycamore but that's by accident rather than design.

[Fleecewife]

I'd love to see pictures of your 8 year old woodland - will give an idea how ours might look when I'm 29... 

I'll try spandit but it's looking all bare and broken at the moment after the storm we've had for the last 24hrs.  I'll try to put up some recent hedgerow pics too.  We started planting those at least 15 years ago and have even layed a short stretch (til RSI got my OHs elbow)

[Fleecewife]

Hazel down here in the SW seems to coppice at pretty much any age apart from very mature when you get a higher rate of mortaility. Same with ash. I would suspect with ash that you might want to pollard and wait for 10 years or so to get a nice trunk diameter to start with. Another thing we have found pollards well is sycamore but that's by accident rather than design.

One of the things I read somewhere said that if you coppice or pollard ash in the winter, it may well look totally dead for a whole season then spring back to life after another winter.  We have an ash we are trying to bump off.  It's growing right into the base of the stone walls of our house.  While it will never damage the foundations because they're solid rock and go down to the bottom of the Earth's crust, the tree is a pest and blocks the light.  We have chopped it down to below the ground every winter then torn off any new shoots which appear in spring, but still it's fighting fit  Got to admire it really.

Is pollarding better for ash then?  That would fit in well with our new planting as the willows will be half coppiced, half pollarded, the hazels will be coppiced and if the ash is pollarded then we will fill two different layers and spread the available light better.  We have a number of ash in our hedgerows and the idea was to pollard them just at the max height of the hedge, so their new rods are above the hedge, but not too tall to shade our neighbour's crops.  I love ash and am worried about ash dieback disease.  I wonder if it's still spreading.

I quite like sycamore although it shades everything else out if allowed to reach its full potential, but there's none round here, just field maple which is small.

[Stereo]

I just think ash is very tasty for animals so pollarding might keep some of them off the re-growth. Certainly deer or sheep will decimate ash coppice given half a chance.

Sycamore now seems to be seen as non-native but it grows prolifically around here, like Alder and both coppice really well so we are encouraging them as a fuel crop. Alder of course fixes N as well so is a great fuel and great for preparing land for other species such as ash.

As for ash looking dead, all the ones we have ever attacked have been right back in the spring but then I guess it's generally warmer down here.

One thing I want to do is start an oak coppice for production timber. I'm in my 40's so probably won't ever reap the rewards but I think it's a shame that my grand parents and parents didn't keep up with oak production as there is none for my generation to use. So we have to by these horrible cheap softwood fence posts etc. We still have old square oak fence posts that Dad says were put up just after WW2 and they are still holding up wire today. It's about time we started thinking long term again as I would like whoever owns the land in the future to have a useable and sustainable crop. I'm planning sweet chestnut too which we have a small amount of on the farm and that may give me some posts / structural timber in my life time I guess.

[Fleecewife]

I love the idea of planting for the next generation, and generations beyond that.  One of our neighbours says, looking wistfully at our new plantings, that he wishes too that his father had planted new oaks where he felled mature ones.  I have noticed in storms that many trees come down but hardly any are planted to fill the gaps.  So short sighted.  In fact that neighbour is just hot air as he has lost a number of mature beech in a small woodland, but hasn't planted a single tree.
Another neighbour had an avenue of beautiful giant ash.  Most had gone by the time we moved here 18 years ago, but a few were left.  One he has had really badly cut back, all stumpy cut off branches in the wrong place which are dying back, and another he smashed down with the front bucket of his JCB because he thought it would improve his chances of getting planning permission to grow some houses on the site    He didn't get the PP but that beautiful tree is now a broken stump    Fortunately so is the JCB 
We have a few oaks around the place and being much older than you, we have no chance of a harvest from them.  Hopefully someone will benefit, even just those looking at them.  The oldest is about 15 and was grown from an acorn by a friend 

[Stereo]

Problem I have is Dad really. He thinks it terrible to cut down any tree. We have many lime kilns around here and lots and lots of hazel coppice, presumably used to fire them years ago. It's all overstood now but he can't seem to get his head around bringing it back into use. This year a few of them have finally given up and fallen over so that's a virile, useful plant finally gone after maybe hundreds of years of growth and re-growth. I've even shown him some of the ones I have done after a year that are 6 foot plus in new shoots but he prefers to walk through the wood and see all the overstood clumps. I've told him about the benefits to the plant itself, to wildlife, especially in a dormouse hot spot like here. The useful products we could be harvesting in 7-10 years time. But nope.

All the big standards in the wood are starting to fall as well and not much is coming through to replace them and probably won't until enough fall to open up the canopy. What does thrive in the understory seems to be sycamore which while useful, can dominate. So it's all a bit depressing.  I hope I'm lucky enough to be out with a chainsaw like him at nearly 80 and I would very much like some of the timber I am harvesting to be the product of my own planting and management.

Like your neighbour, he hasn't planted a tree in his life. If only his dad had planted out an acre of oak or sweet chestnut and he had coppiced it, we would never have to buy another fence post again. It may be a once in a generation harvest (for oak) but when the product lasts nearly 100 years even in the ground, that's not too bad. It's really not rocket science and what a lovely place a young coppice would be for picnics, for kid's adventures, for wildlife and so on? You can even still claim SFP on it!

[pgkevet]

I'm the local nutter - I bang on (in the pub) about chestnut, oak, hazel, walnut, monkey puzzle, frost tolerant pecans and hickory nuts, almonds etc and have a number of seedlings in pots which will go out when then can stand the competition. it's mostly going to be a generation for a crop and two generations for timber. But if no-one does it.....

[Bramblecot]

My Oh used to talk about a book  telling the story of a man who spent his life planting acorns over a hillside.  When he was an old man, the oak wood was his legacy to future generations. Can't remember the title. 
Back to coppicing - we are bringing back the hazel along our boundaries that has not been touched for 25 years.  It does look a bit brutal at first, and takes 3 -4 years for it to grow again.  7 years in and we feel we are making a difference.  And we have planted our own min-wood .  The sheep will stop any regrowth, even blackthorn

[Stereo]

Bramblecot, how did you tackle overstood hazel? All in one go or as I am advised, take off a bit each year so it's not too brutal? Problem we have got is a lot of ours are now at a different angle than they were 2 months ago. I think the roots are starting to lift so I'm tempted to go in hard and take them off at the base, hoping the roots can recover their hold in the soil. But would this be just too much stress? I can't leave them as they are just going to fall over.

[Old tree man]

Our coppicing is done on a 5 year rotation with hazel and ash but willow we have done on a 2 year rotation, willow usually takes when the whips are the size of a finger (mine are rather large) just give them a helping hand when planting by dibbing with a rod the same size of the whip and the ground is moist, hope this helps.