Something Learned #1: Coppicing

can’t help you on this one.

-- - Debbie, SW Ontario Canada (USDA Hardiness Zone: 5a) http://www.execulink.com/~yohan

Having lived mainly in countries of the ‘new’ world, I haven’t actually spotted a real coppice. Coppicing now, of course is considered obsoleted by forestry manufacturing methods, plantation foresry, clear cutting etc. However, I also am fascinated by this old method and believe it is the way of the future again. The other advantage of coppicing is that there is no splitting of firewood required. For burning, you coppice when the wood is the ideal size and just cut to lengths.

it’s easy to get started with coppicing, just plant some trees. You can worry about the rest in several years time!

I essentially have a young coppice of Australian blackwood(Acacia melanoxylon). It tends to grow reasonably densely and so it grows straight and tall. It coppices readily. I’m considering coppicing this to produce materials for chairs and supplying to some local woodworkers ( as well as myself ). I am probably several years from a first harvest. Any Thinnings for now just go back to the forest floor. My only activity at this point is actively pruning for clear straight trunks.

This is the best pic I could get of a small section of my young blackwoods taken Jan, 2010 (I’ve always had difficulty photographing trees!):

-- Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves. - Thoreau

Thanks for the photo and the extra information. Your Australian Blackwood trees look dense, straight and tall, just what you want. From what I have read so far, coppicing seems pretty straight forward, as long as you keep up with it. I believe preparing the ground ahead of time for the trees will make a big difference in how well they grow. I am thinking about doing some sheet mulching and planting a nitrogen-fixing cover crop where I want to plant the copse this spring/summer to eliminate the grass and improve the soil. Then I plan to plant five or ten trees come fall. Hornbeam looks like a good tree option too, although it grows much more slowly. Maybe I will do a mixture of the two trees.

I am also trying to plan the best placement for the copse before I act. Where I would like to plant them, the water table is too high. I can either try building mounds to raise the trees above the water table, plant them up the hill closer to the house, or I can try to find a species that coppices readily, burns well and grows in swampy areas. With snow currently covering the frozen ground and an icy wind that makes the air feel even colder, now is my time to plan and imagine.

-- Robin, Massachusetts - "Live simply so others can simply live." M. Gandhi

I’m doing a little surfing while football talk fills the house.
I found a website for a magazine about Permaculture.
One of the articles that they have posted on the website is on coppices.

-- - Debbie, SW Ontario Canada (USDA Hardiness Zone: 5a) http://www.execulink.com/~yohan

Great article on coppices, Debbie. Thanks!

-- Robin, Massachusetts - "Live simply so others can simply live." M. Gandhi

I hope it’s helpful. I didn’t read it all .. I did notice that there was a second technique mentioned.

-- - Debbie, SW Ontario Canada (USDA Hardiness Zone: 5a) http://www.execulink.com/~yohan

Pollarding is similar to coppicing. The main difference is that you cut the stump a few feet high instead of a few inches high in order to keep the tender new growth above the reach of browsing animals.

-- Robin, Massachusetts - "Live simply so others can simply live." M. Gandhi

Very interesting.

-- jroot

That’s a good reference Debbie!

It seems like I have a good beginning, having some of the elements already in place, thanks to the previous owners. The other trees you see in my picture are pines ( pinus radiata) which is actually providing shelter and protection from frosts to the blackwoods.

I do no real active planting in this area or soil preparation – mother nature has done all of the work – the blackwoods reseed themselves and i just let them grow wherever. This part is just a small part of my 50 acres of pine. I see that I could plant some other understory trees and some ‘standards’ to replace the pines as they get thinned some more as they age (currently about 300 stems per hectare – age 26 ). Alders grow quite readily here in our climate and location, as does lime/linden. Hazel would be an interesting option. Hazel is a budding industry here in the S.Island but everyone is growing it in the open and complaining about how susceptible they are to late frosts! Seems they would do better under the protection of the pines and later some other hardwoods or natives.

Robin, it sounds like you’ve picked some good trees already. I would suggest finding a tree to suit the terrain you’ve got, rather than trying to modify the terrain to suit the tree. I wouldn’t bother with sheet mulching other than around the immediate area where you plant the tree but mainly to keep the weeds down and to give the tree a chance to jumpstart the weeds. Once the trees grow and the canopy begins to form, I think you’ll find the weeds manage themselves as they get robbed of sunlight.

-- Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves. - Thoreau

Steve, thanks for your thoughts about mulch and terrain modification. I am researching possible native species to plant as a copse down in the wet area. White Oak is looking promising. I think I might scatter a few Black Birch trees in the drier areas around the yard. Perhaps they would do well placed in my living fence garden. When they get to the right height, I can cut them down and let them grow again. I know that when trees are densely planted, they are more likely to grow straight. Other than that reason, do you know of any reasons why coppiced trees should be grown close together?

-- Robin, Massachusetts - "Live simply so others can simply live." M. Gandhi

Btw, Robin, willows will thrive on wet conditions. Here, we have grey willows which actually are considered a pest because they invade wet areas, river beds, streams clogging native plants and they are impossible to kill. They will reproduce from cut and split wood, fallen branches, cuttings, maybe even sawdust, who knows!
Definitely coppiceable and the wood is reasonable for burning, not to mention for crafts ( baskets, furniture and such).

There are of course many types of willows – there’s sure to be one native to your area – I believe the pussy willow is native.

-- Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves. - Thoreau

Just another thought – sorry didn’t see your previous post until now …

Trees basically compete for light. Planting trees close together means they compete against each other and shoot for the stars. You can thin to your strongest trees as they get older, much like a vegetable garden. However, in an established forest, dense planting is no longer necessary i f there is an opening in the canopy the trees will grow up towards the opening. So, if you follow what I am saying, a new planting should be more densely planted. As they grow, you can thin to your best plants and they will continue to grow up and straight. When you coppice, I would cut only small areas at a time. The regrowth should be reasonably straight and tall as the opening in the canopy is small.

..but straight and tall is desirable only if that’s what you want. For baskets and chairs, you might want that. For firewood, maybe you wouldn’t want that – maybe you would prefer girth to length..? By the time it gets thick enough for firewood, it might be so tall, that it is unmanageable and dangerous to cut down.

Another thought is that you might start off with fast growing trees, such as poplar, pawlonia or willow and then introduce your oaks and birches which are slower growing and might be better suited as your standards.

These are just my thoughts – I’m no expert by any means.

-- Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves. - Thoreau

Steve, I appreciate your ideas. I particularly like the idea of planting faster growing trees along with the slower trees to use as bean pole tepees and stakes. I want to try to plan everything well before I actually pick up a shovel or order the trees. Yes, willows thrive here! We have several pussy-willows in our living fence garden and also an enormous weeping willow in the “wild” part of our yard. The trunk is so large I cannot get my arms around half of it. Unfortunately, its wood is very soft and does not make good firewood. We lost about half of the tree branches in a nasty ice storm last winter and the branches rooted when we didn’t clean them up promptly. (Someday, I might want to plant some willows for wattle fencing.) Red maple, white pine and paper birch also grow well down there but none of them burn efficiently in our wood stove. So I have been doing a little research…

Most hardwood trees and shrubs will coppice if they are cut young enough; some are better suited than others. Here are a few native North American species that I think might produce excellent coppiced firewood:

Alders
Apples
Ash (White, Green)
Beech
Birches (Yellow, Black)
Cherry (Pin, Black)
Hawthorn
Hazel
Hickory (Bitternut, Pignut, Shellbark, Shagbark)
Hornbeam
Locust (Black, Honey)
Maples (hard)
Mulberry
Pecan
Sourwood
Sycamore
Oak (White Oak and Swamp White Oak are reported to be vigorous coppicers!)

The ones I am tempted to try include: Black Birch, Hickory, Mulberry, White Oak and Swamp White Oak. In reality, of course, I doubt that I will be able to try all of them. Stick around eight or ten years and I will let you know how the adventure turns out!

-- Robin, Massachusetts - "Live simply so others can simply live." M. Gandhi

I’ll check in about 2018, then :)

-- Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves. - Thoreau

The USDA’s plant database allows you to search based on specified characteristics. Here’s a search for fast growing trees that can be coppiced and can be used for firewood – http://plants.usda.gov/java/AdvancedSearchServlet?coppicepotind=Yes&grwthratecd=Rapid&fuelwoodsuitcd=High&dspvernacular=on&dsptemptolrminrng=on&dspfrutbodysuitind=on&dsppalathuman_ind=on&Synonyms=all&viewby=sciname

A very interesting topic.I could see how much fun it would be if I had the acerage to grow them.So many nice choices.Good luck with it.

-- Bon,Hastings,Ont.....zone 5a....Always room for one more

wow

i planted quite a few maple trees in my life, some to promote my prosterity?

most, after 10 to 12 years old barely leave a shadow across my wrist, they all look anorexic…....I dont know what zone you live in but where I live trees take forever to get half as big as my gut, in fact, there is no way that a tree can get as fat and as wide as me in the same amount of time…..........not possible. Not even Miriacle grow could do that?

You have a list of trees, that where I live, ...........odds of getting bigger then me in what is left of my life is slim to NIL. I burn wood that is 35x’s older then I am…....and just a tad wider.

-- Central northish Ontario

HMike, thank you for the link to the USDA database. I did something similar to choose the trees I finally selected but I started with a website that rated the quality of firewood and then selected trees that would grow well in my climate and soil conditions. Many from my list showed up in yours too. Then I looked at ease of growing and eliminated a few others. Sycamore, for example, is susceptible to disease where there are cool, moist springs. Our springs are cool and moist, so I removed Sycamore from my final list to try.

Greenthumb, in growing a copse, I am definitely gardening for the future. Right now I buy firewood from a local man who cuts down local trees. He brings it freshly cut early each spring (usually this week but we are under water from so much rain), we stack it, the sun dries it and we burn it in the winter. My hope is that I can replace some, and if I do multiple year plantings to plant a relatively large grove, most of the firewood we burn in about ten years time. The good thing about coppicing is that you don’t have to start over after the tree is cut. The roots are already established, ready to grow multiple new trees. You cut the trees on rotation. I am not looking for trunks that are as large as we now burn. Using younger trees will eliminate the need to split the wood. I can just cut it to the length that will fit in the stove. Another good thing about coppicing is that it only requires hand tools, such as felling and bucking saws. I believe that in ten years time, fuel for heating in this corner of the world will become scarcer and more expensive. I am trying to plan ahead because trees do take years to grow.

-- Robin, Massachusetts - "Live simply so others can simply live." M. Gandhi