Best way to manage Oak and Beech trees?

[difflock]

Along our front access roadway.

Beech on the gravel knowe, then Oak on the peat.

Like? Should I remove every other one at some point, and if so, when?

Or just let them be.

P.S.

I was told to just buy slips and not bother with the 6 bigger and disproportionately more expensive ones.

They were absolutely right. Despite the great care I took in planting the 6 bigger ones, the slips rapidly put them to shame. 

Marcus

[Mark J]

I would be inclined to thin that out about now, possibly remove two either side of each one retained. I would look to find my favourite ones and then create some space around them. 

[difflock]

Thank you for that Mark.

So retain every third tree.

 

Better give the scraficial victims an extra special hug before firing up the chainsaw.

Edited Sunday at 11:38 by difflock

[Welshfred]

As above but make sure your selected trees have crown space. You can thin again so don't be too drastic, shade will keep brambles down. Maybe start some pruning on the best stems too. It looks good.

And watch out for squirrels...

[openspaceman]

They do not need thinning yet, they need the competition from their neighbours to maintain apical dominance and height growth over growth of side branches.

 

That said they would benefit from some formative pruning to achieve a length of clean stems, this of course is for clear knot free timber but it is also better for access, if it is done at this stage then the wounds are small and occlude rapidly. Left till later the side branches get much larger and either die off or get cut off  and compromise the stem.

 

This is a big problem with modern widely spaced planting  and ends with a situation like this:

 

Or later still this:

[openspaceman]

Measure the average  top height  of both species, this will give you an idea of the yield class from which you can see when you can start thinning, then you can initially halo the best stems.

 

Also squirrel damage tends to start low, often at a branch and go up, so a pruned stem  can have benefit in limiting damage to higher in the crown.

 

As a rule of thumb in oak and beech you should prune before the stem diameter at the branch exceeds 4" and cut the branch on the collar before it exceeds 1" diameter. Stem length after pruning should not exceed 60% of the top height. Weak forks above the pruned height can be shortened to limit their competitiveness.

 

I would aim for a clean stem of 20 foot in 3 or four lifts over a few years then leave the rest of management to thinning.

[Mark J]

  On 16/03/2025 at 12:04, openspaceman said:

Measure the average  top height  of both species, this will give you an idea of the yield class from which you can see when you can start thinning, then you can initially halo the best stems.

 

Also squirrel damage tends to start low, often at a branch and go up, so a pruned stem  can have benefit in limiting damage to higher in the crown.

 

As a rule of thumb in oak and beech you should prune before the stem diameter at the branch exceeds 4" and cut the branch on the collar before it exceeds 1" diameter. Stem length after pruning should not exceed 60% of the top height. Weak forks above the pruned height can be shortened to limit their competitiveness.

 

I would aim for a clean stem of 20 foot in 3 or four lifts over a few years then leave the rest of management to thinning.

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Thanks. I would have just thinned them, I hadn't thought about cropping them. 

[openspaceman]

  On 16/03/2025 at 12:10, Mark J said:

Thanks. I would have just thinned them, I hadn't thought about cropping them. 

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If you think about it planting at 4 or 5 foot spacings, as most mature woodlands were, would have had one or two thinnings to be at the spacing of modern 10 foot planting.

Edited Sunday at 22:28 by openspaceman
logic

[difflock]

Thanks all,

These trees are, at least for my lifetime, intended to be  purely for amenity and pleasure. But yes I have and will continue to remove some lower branches, though mostly just the overheavy oddball ones.

[openspaceman]

  On 16/03/2025 at 20:00, difflock said:

Thanks all,

These trees are, at least for my lifetime, intended to be  purely for amenity and pleasure. But yes I have and will continue to remove some lower branches, though mostly just the overheavy oddball ones.

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Yes I understand. The thing is IMO that trees grown the forestry way are likely to survive to a ripe age whereas stunted knotty widely spaced trees are unlikely to because somewhere along their life the large lower limbs are going to get in the way of something, especially as they grow out over a drive, that they will be poorly cut off leaving a wound open to decay which will affect the tree's health.

 

Also as the canopy closes those large lower limbs are going to get shaded out and die, leaving large dead knots which will never heal over.

 

We saw this a lot in oak  standards  and coppice woodland that had been left to grow on with no cyclical removal of the standards. Instead of majestic oaks with short clean boles and a huge live canopy sitting like an island in a sea of underwood the crowns closed canopy and mutually shaded out the big branches which had developed over the underwood, killing them.

 

The first picture in my post above is of a plantation of a wealthy old chap who had bought arable field next to his very large garden and planted it  with oak, beech, cherry,  hornbeam and ash ( it was interesting to see how far the ash had been infected right down to the stumps when felled). It had been well established and mechanically weeded between the rows over a period, so no other woody plants had become established in between, hence the coarse branching, then squirrels found it.

 

I was asked by his regular arborist to help thinning this 25 year old plantation, unseen until I got there last month. It was a dilemma, especially in view of the ash dieback, there was no reason to thin and as we were on a day rate we did the best to start recovering what we could.

 

One thing we could see was the oak were likely to be the only final crop and the only ones that had good form were those that had been suppressed by more vigorous neighbours as their branching was finer and they were looking more drawn up. Like you the owner said he was doing it for posterity yet he had been poorly advised on post planting treatment that would be necessary when there was nothing left of the planting grant.

Attached picture of one of your trees to try and illustrate what I would do, red lines are cuts and the two vertical lines to show which branches need removing for a first lift (cuts at branch collar).