Thinning oak stand

[organic guy]

I have an acre of oaks planted in 2000 which I have trimmed as high as I can reach with a chainsaw.

Some trees are starting to struggle and it obviously needs thinning. 

I have taken out anything that I can use as rails but still need to remove more but the next level are too big for rails but not big enough for posts.

I now have a pole saw so could prune the main timber trees and smaller ones to 4-5m. Would this be feasible to get more light to the smaller trees to get them to useful size?

 

TIA

 

OG

[dumper]

What spacing were they planted at?

 

[slack ma girdle]

The smaller ones will never attain their potential,  and reduce the growth of the surrounding (better) trees.

You have to be ruthless when thinning

[openspaceman]

I agree with @slack ma girdle, the final crop oaks will benefit from having free crowns.

 

I am surprised at needing to use a motor saw for formative pruning as it risks compromising the branch collar compartment boundary.

 

I always aimed to prune branches less than 1" diameter and before the main stem at the branch was 4" diameter. Pruning to 20 foot and always leaving a crown length of 40% of the height.

[organic guy]

10 hours ago, dumper said:

What spacing were they planted at?

 

3m

[organic guy]

14 minutes ago, openspaceman said:

I agree with @slack ma girdle, the final crop oaks will benefit from having free crowns.

 

I am surprised at needing to use a motor saw for formative pruning as it risks compromising the branch collar compartment boundary.

 

I always aimed to prune branches less than 1" diameter and before the main stem at the branch was 4" diameter. Pruning to 20 foot and always leaving a crown length of 40% of the height.

Should be ok on the 40%, I guess I am a bit late with this pruning.

I was planning on thinning but have some nice clean timber which will not make final crop(like me) but not really big enough to be useful.

I guess I should have taken them out earlier as rails.

[openspaceman]

What size are your rails? I cannot remember doing any oak rails but chestnut, which has far less sapwood, needed to be 9" before we cleft rails.

 

When it comes to thinning oak is a bit different from other woods as it needs to reach a large diameter to have a usable width of heartwood. This means conventional thinning and a long stem, as practised in France, takes the rotation length well past the maximum mean annual increment.

 

This lead to the practice of growing standards with an understorey of coppice in order to grow short fat butts in as short a time as possible. A consequence of this is the tops being very coarse with large limbs and the large branch unions which made jowl posts and ships bends.

[organic guy]

Was not thinking of clefting them, we usually use ash as a straight pole, so ideally 15ft, 5in to 3in.

My wife suggested splitting them😅

The heartwood at present I guess is not big enough for a strainer.

Driven past some of the tall oaks in France, they look stunning. Saw some standards with coppice at Reading many moons ago, likewise looked great.

At the end of the day I am not going to harvest the final crop so it is fairly irrelevant but having planted them , it would please me to leave something that hopefully will be used when I am gone.

Have already harvested some ash poles and have guards around the stools to keep the deer off.

[Spruce Pirate]

9 hours ago, organic guy said:

3m

 

3 meters is massively wide spacing for commercial oak, 3 feet is more like a commercial spacing.  With that in mind I might be inclined to suggest high pruning as high as you can and a delayed thin.  BUT, I don't know the wood, don't know what the soils are like, what aspect it has, whether it's sheltered or exposed or how well the trees are growing.

 

Do you have any pictures?  In the absence of visiting the site they might help people give a more informed opinion.

 

As a slight aside, there is a long tradition of growing trees for someone else to harvest.  I wouldn't consider looking after a future crop for your children, grandchildren or somebody else altogether as irrelevant at all.

[Big J]

20 minutes ago, Spruce Pirate said:

 

3 meters is massively wide spacing for commercial oak, 3 feet is more like a commercial spacing.  With that in mind I might be inclined to suggest high pruning as high as you can and a delayed thin.  BUT, I don't know the wood, don't know what the soils are like, what aspect it has, whether it's sheltered or exposed or how well the trees are growing.

 

Do you have any pictures?  In the absence of visiting the site they might help people give a more informed opinion.

 

As a slight aside, there is a long tradition of growing trees for someone else to harvest.  I wouldn't consider looking after a future crop for your children, grandchildren or somebody else altogether as irrelevant at all.

 

It's not 3ft. 2.5m x 2.5m is normal. Or 2.0m x 2.5m. Sometimes it's 3x3m but it tends not to produce very good quality trees.