Thinning oak stand

[organic guy]

1 hour ago, Stere said:

Free Growth of Oak silviculture event at Crumblands Plantation — Woodland Heritage

WWW.WOODLANDHERITAGE.ORG

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Free Growth of Oak - a sell-out Woodland Heritage event, which included a field visit to the Forest Research long-term...

 

Anyone being here would be interesting to have more details of there management?

 

13400 tree per hectare  really dense is that corrrect?

 

EDIT

 

 

France do a 240 yr cycle another method is  promoting  a new 100yrs cycle

 

 

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjalOrImrX8AhUITsAKHXiGBZ4QFnoECBMQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fjournal.societyofirishforesters.ie%2Findex.php%2Fforestry%2Farticle%2Fdownload%2F10853%2F9907&usg=AOvVaw1E5Dm0sAwI-SouUDv6deOx

 

 

Really interesting link, suggests I should crack on and thin to my "winners" fairly soon.

Will tryt to get photos if it stops raining.

[Spruce Pirate]

9 hours ago, Stere said:

 

13400 tree per hectare  really dense is that corrrect?

 

 

Yes,  approximately 3' spacing as I was saying earlier.

 

 

 

 

12 hours ago, Big J said:

 

That as the case may be, such tight planting was also done when labour and materials were cheap. At £3.50 a tree, supplied, planted and tubed, tight spacing is economically unviable. 

 

 

That's a fair point Jon, BUT, remember we're dealing with a very long term product here.  History suggests that good quality hardwood such as oak will always sell, and always fetch a good price.  Good quality, not average, not poor, properly grown oaks of good quality.  Such being the case there should always be a decent return on the investment in the future.  Remember the planting costs are only one of the costs of growing quality hardwood.  Formative pruning around year 3 -5 with regular pruning and high pruning up to thinnings stage all eat up the cash.  Also remember that at high density nobody's tubing and staking, fencing becomes the only feasible option at these densities - if you take a square hectare and plant it at 1100/ha each tree is paying for 36cm of fencing, at 13400/ha each tree is only paying for less than 3cm of fencing, a significant economy of scale. 

 

It would have been correspondingly cheaper to plant at 3m spacing in the 1930's compared to planting at 3' spacing, just the same as it is now.  The main difference seems to be that between the wars and immediately post war people valued timber production as it was a very necessary resource.  We seem to have lost sight of the fact that unless we plant trees we won't have any timber, and if we continue to plant at ridiculously low densities all we'll end up with is a firewood crop.  I'd imagine your days of sawmilling would give a fair insight into different planting regimes and their relative impacts on timber quality?

 

Out of curiosity, what's the planting / restocking like in Sweden?  I don't know much about it, but from what I've seen in pictures and videos I'd guess a fairly high density?

[devon TWiG]

Are there grey squirrels in Sweden and the rest of Europe ?    ....also nurse / sacrificial crops can help with growing more high value hardwoods ..eg Sycamore , theory is the Greys attack them in preference to Oak ..

[Macpherson]

7 hours ago, Spruce Pirate said:

We seem to have lost sight of the fact that unless we plant trees we won't have any timber, and if we continue to plant at ridiculously low densities all we'll end up with is a firewood crop.

 

Aye, I believe that each of Henry 8's fleet needed around 10 ha or 1,000 trees of  'managed' for hundreds of years Oak woodland, leading on to Nelson's ships needing more than 4 times that per boat.

 

I did read that the stunted rotting unmanaged oak woodlands around the Loch Lomond area were planted just after Henry's and pre Nelson's era with a nod to the future of shipbuilding... and then came the industrial rev, and people forgot to care.

 

To put it in perspective, had the above mentioned wood been managed properly they would still have 2 or 3 hundred years to go before harvesting... changed days eh !

 

It kind of points to the completely different mindset of past times where folk didn't just rip out nature without any foresight but had worked with it for millennia.... thinking about this while I type I guess that the stripping out of nearly all of the mature ancient Oak woodlands to build Men o' war must have been the biggest change to this country since the ice melted, and once the resource was used up it was essentially gone for ever,  cheers.

 

 

[Peasgood]

As things are right now, if a stand of oak was managed very carefully for a few hundred years I wouldn't be very confident you would even be allowed to harvest it at maturity.

It would be a playground for dogs and town dwellers, there would be uproar.

[MattyF]

1 hour ago, Big J said:

 

No. Just reds here. I don't recall ever having seen greys in France or Germany either. 

 

No bark stripping here either. Where mature oak grow, sapling oaks dominate like weeds. They don't even seem to get browsed much by deer. 

 

 

I think that’s because the Germans and French and Europeans know how to manage there woodlands and pests , I saw my last red here in 2015 and it was dead , there was a big move to cull greys in the area but as likely there where idiots who would not let there woods be culled , the result was the culls where a waste of time and all the young trees they planted themselves are knackered, I can’t actually bring myself to talk to this one person/family and ignore any calls or messages as I just can’t be bothered to deal with people like that in regard to there tree management… last time I went on one of there sites I was trying to show and explain the squirrel damage on a belt of trees and I might as well of talked to my dog .. even the obvious maple and snapped sycamore branches with stripped bark over our heads was not enough evidence. 

[Stere]

Quote

Where mature oak grow, sapling oaks dominate like weeds.

 

Rackham reckons American oak mildew is now preventing natural oak regen within woodland.

[openspaceman]

10 minutes ago, Stere said:

 

Rackham reckons American oak mildew is now preventing natural oak regen within woodland.

It seems to only affect robur and even then the oak seedling understorey is dense in the secondary woodland (less then 100 years old) opposite here, even though I see it on all the regrowth before autumn.

[ABtrees]

18 hours ago, devon TWiG said:

Are there grey squirrels in Sweden and the rest of Europe ?    ....also nurse / sacrificial crops can help with growing more high value hardwoods ..eg Sycamore , theory is the Greys attack them in preference to Oak ..

 

We have far fewer squirrels where we are in the middle of France - but all of them are Red.  (As far as I can make out, apart from a few very isolated colonies in the Paris suburbs, there are no greys in France.)

The lack of squirrels in general is almost certainly down to there being a lot of 'Fouine'   These are a top predatory omnivore - a cousin of the Pine Martin only a much heftier beast - officially up to 54cms and up to 2.3kg !  I'm not sure that I've seen them that size but Tufty is certainly always going to be the loser !!!

Consequently tree/ sapling damage is much reduced, all of my bit of woodland is self regen and has been for the last 30+years - roe deer are the only real headache !

[Stubby]

9 hours ago, MattyF said:

I think that’s because the Germans and French and Europeans know how to manage there woodlands and pests , I saw my last red here in 2015 and it was dead , there was a big move to cull greys in the area but as likely there where idiots who would not let there woods be culled , the result was the culls where a waste of time and all the young trees they planted themselves are knackered, I can’t actually bring myself to talk to this one person/family and ignore any calls or messages as I just can’t be bothered to deal with people like that in regard to there tree management… last time I went on one of there sites I was trying to show and explain the squirrel damage on a belt of trees and I might as well of talked to my dog .. even the obvious maple and snapped sycamore branches with stripped bark over our heads was not enough evidence. 

That knob Herbrand Russel ( The 11th duke of Bedford ) introduced the grey from the USA together with the Glis glis asround 1876 . (  I saw him do it )  Wanker !