Wildfire of 76

[openspaceman]

I said there was a story behind this picture

 

The heath is a remnant of a larger common that has mostly become developed as the commuter town of Woking was built up. This part to the north of the town is a large open space of over 800 acres. Grazing had largely ceased in Victorian times but it remained a "blasted heath" because of it's sandy soil with leached out fertility.  When I was a boy the military still had a lease on the land from WW2 and their antics plus hordes of recreational horse riders and the occasional wild fire had kept it largely devoid of trees.

 

From 1974 I had fallen into forestry work and was an avid member of RFS. At one meeting on Wisley and Chatley heath commons  the forester for SCC (the owners there) told us that he was planting up that heath with mostly lodgepole pine. Now by then I had planted  lodgepole pine and never seen any that looked likely to produce decent timber, I was also aware that heath, which is mainly man made  by over grazing, was becoming a rare habitat. So I spoke up that it should be maintained as heath and not afforested, I was told that was ridiculous and as a major timber importer it was important to have our own timber production. It got planted both sides of the then single carriageway A3 with separated the two blocks, lodgepole and Tsuga to the north . Now 50 years later the A3 dual carriageway is widened to 8 lanes and a green heathland bridge has been erected to link the two heaths, the planted trees have been long gone  (and all that planting grant money wasted) as the Thames Basin Heaths project has taken off to preserve heath.

 

Having lost my forestry trainee job after a house move I went back to learn a bit more about dairy farming and volunteered on a decrepit farm with a 72 year old chap and his herdsmen, about this time I met @Deafhead. The farm was bought  and subsequently developed into a golf course. By then I had been head hunted by a new IH dealership as a tractor salesman. Here I tinkered with tractors, met a number of local farmers, one the grandfather of a garrulous member here who politely told me not to return,  and gradually twigged not only was I a useless salesman but the business was only a front for getting the owner's money out of Zimbabwe. I was sacked. I went back to climbing for one of the major local tree firms, the boss was good but wages and conditions poor so that didn't last, I moved into managing another smaller firm with just two gangs. The owner, a chap of about 40 on his second or third marriage , his  manager have run off with his previous wife, came in one morning to complain that his new wife wasn't happy with me and that I had berated an employee for having sharpened his saw below the rakers. Given the ultimatum to apologise or go I was off.

 

I bought some birch for turnery poles and with a college mate we went into the timber felling business. 

 

Now to the gist of the story, while a tractor salesman I had met  a printer who ran a small holding with liveries and was the part time manager of this common to the north of Woking. Since the army had left 15 years earlier  a large number of self seeded scots pine had taken advantage of the nitrogen from car exhausts and coupled with the aid of mycorrhizal fungi extracting potassium and phosphorus  from the grains of silica the whole place was becoming a low yield secondary woodland. The bit in the photo was still heath with little to no bracken but the area just beyond was thicket stage pine. Again the proposal was to plough and plant , corsican pine this time. I approached the new owners and suggested this was a bad thing, I still have the wordy letter I sent to explain. I bought some birch thinning from them and worked for them, on a self funding basis for 30 years.

 

Then came the drought of 76 and the wildfire that burned a hundred or more acres, devastated the reptile and probably ground nesting bird population but killed the trees.

 

After looking at the eyesore of standing dead trees the owners agreed to let me clear the land. I worked with a sawmill tidying up after their big hardwood fellers had taken the timber and , for speed as we were often on shooting estates, burned all the small roundwood and tops. So I got the chap that did this with his Cat 977 to rake up and burn  the scorched trees, the mound of ash is still there as a clump of gorse. The heahter is good but over mature now and could do with swaling blocks.

 

I think the disturbance of the soil profile was a bad thing, but I was young. The area largely  returned as heather in the bit we raked but the potassium from burned trees mean that bracken started encroaching from one roadside. If left un managed it will out compete the heather and take over, much as it has on the Wisley common. A management problem is that all these Thames Basin Heaths have upgrades from SSSIs to SPAs in the 90s, which makes management stupidly restrictive, to the benefit of bracken and the overall loss of heather.

 

The bit where the tractor is working was never heavily treed but was becoming so, it was a wet area in winter with a large number of informal borrow pits. These are difficult to work and have been mostly left to develop as secondary woodland, pine, birch aspen and willow. For some dubious reason rather than cut and carry off the over growth on the machine manageable areas the decision was made to screef off the surface. The arisings were dumped in a field that had developed from 1972 to wood pasture with glorious displays of orchds and that was the end of them.

 

The screefed area is what you see some 10 years later where he exposed layer favoured gorse, finally, where the mower and baler could get, they are taking off the arisings. Over time  this lowered surface fertility should favour heather ( ling, crossleaved and bell) as long as bracken is controlled. Strips of gorse have developed alongside paths  throughout as the roots partake of phosphorus from dog crap.

[Mark Bolam]

Very informative, thanks.

[sime42]

Echo that, thanks OSM. 

 

 

[sime42]

I, for one, hadn't realised quite how important a role trace elements like potassium, phosphorus and nitrogen played in determining the ecology of a habitat. Interesting. 

 

 

[openspaceman]

42 minutes ago, sime42 said:

I, for one, hadn't realised quite how important a role trace elements like potassium, phosphorus and nitrogen played in determining the ecology of a habitat. Interesting. 

 

 

There is an old saying which indirectly tells about soil fertility.

" Gold under gorse

Bronze  under bracken 

hunger under heather"

 

so heather grows where the fertility is low, it has a  way of locking all the available nitrogen into the plant.

 

Bracken thrives where there is a bit of potassium, I often notice it along one of the trees we left as standing dead when it has fallen down and started to rot.

 

Gorse grows where there is available potassium and Phosphorus and can make its own nitrogen as it is a legume.

 

 

It's more nuanced than that in reality as there are lots of other things that influence  but the old farmers  knew a bit.

 

Heath developed where much of the available minerals for growth had walked off the site into the farmers adjacent fields after a bit of free grazing.

Edited 7 hours ago by openspaceman
spelling and typos plus a sentence

[AJStrees]

A wealth of Knowledge, very interesting. I am near Ashdown Forest, of which there is a lot of heathland, it is interesting what grows and survives in those conditions. 

 

Seperately, I recently cleared a couple of old fields that were absolutely rammed with bramble, where I removed the bramble there is now a whole load of bracken shoots coming up, haven't had bracken in there for a long time. Will be interesting to see what else happens. Will probably keep it cleared as I don't need it to turn into woodland, there are over 40 acres on the same site and that all needs managing. 

[sime42]

7 hours ago, openspaceman said:

I said there was a story behind this picture

 

The heath is a remnant of a larger common that has mostly become developed as the commuter town of Woking was built up. This part to the north of the town is a large open space of over 800 acres. Grazing had largely ceased in Victorian times but it remained a "blasted heath" because of it's sandy soil with leached out fertility.  When I was a boy the military still had a lease on the land from WW2 and their antics plus hordes of recreational horse riders and the occasional wild fire had kept it largely devoid of trees.

 

From 1974 I had fallen into forestry work and was an avid member of RFS. At one meeting on Wisley and Chatley heath commons  the forester for SCC (the owners there) told us that he was planting up that heath with mostly lodgepole pine. Now by then I had planted  lodgepole pine and never seen any that looked likely to produce decent timber, I was also aware that heath, which is mainly man made  by over grazing, was becoming a rare habitat. So I spoke up that it should be maintained as heath and not afforested, I was told that was ridiculous and as a major timber importer it was important to have our own timber production. It got planted both sides of the then single carriageway A3 with separated the two blocks, lodgepole and Tsuga to the north . Now 50 years later the A3 dual carriageway is widened to 8 lanes and a green heathland bridge has been erected to link the two heaths, the planted trees have been long gone  (and all that planting grant money wasted) as the Thames Basin Heaths project has taken off to preserve heath.

 

Having lost my forestry trainee job after a house move I went back to learn a bit more about dairy farming and volunteered on a decrepit farm with a 72 year old chap and his herdsmen, about this time I met @Deafhead. The farm was bought  and subsequently developed into a golf course. By then I had been head hunted by a new IH dealership as a tractor salesman. Here I tinkered with tractors, met a number of local farmers, one the grandfather of a garrulous member here who politely told me not to return,  and gradually twigged not only was I a useless salesman but the business was only a front for getting the owner's money out of Zimbabwe. I was sacked. I went back to climbing for one of the major local tree firms, the boss was good but wages and conditions poor so that didn't last, I moved into managing another smaller firm with just two gangs. The owner, a chap of about 40 on his second or third marriage , his  manager have run off with his previous wife, came in one morning to complain that his new wife wasn't happy with me and that I had berated an employee for having sharpened his saw below the rakers. Given the ultimatum to apologise or go I was off.

 

I bought some birch for turnery poles and with a college mate we went into the timber felling business. 

 

Now to the gist of the story, while a tractor salesman I had met  a printer who ran a small holding with liveries and was the part time manager of this common to the north of Woking. Since the army had left 15 years earlier  a large number of self seeded scots pine had taken advantage of the nitrogen from car exhausts and coupled with the aid of mycorrhizal fungi extracting potassium and phosphorus  from the grains of silica the whole place was becoming a low yield secondary woodland. The bit in the photo was still heath with little to no bracken but the area just beyond was thicket stage pine. Again the proposal was to plough and plant , corsican pine this time. I approached the new owners and suggested this was a bad thing, I still have the wordy letter I sent to explain. I bought some birch thinning from them and worked for them, on a self funding basis for 30 years.

 

Then came the drought of 76 and the wildfire that burned a hundred or more acres, devastated the reptile and probably ground nesting bird population but killed the trees.

 

After looking at the eyesore of standing dead trees the owners agreed to let me clear the land. I worked with a sawmill tidying up after their big hardwood fellers had taken the timber and , for speed as we were often on shooting estates, burned all the small roundwood and tops. So I got the chap that did this with his Cat 977 to rake up and burn  the scorched trees, the mound of ash is still there as a clump of gorse. The heahter is good but over mature now and could do with swaling blocks.

 

I think the disturbance of the soil profile was a bad thing, but I was young. The area largely  returned as heather in the bit we raked but the potassium from burned trees mean that bracken started encroaching from one roadside. If left un managed it will out compete the heather and take over, much as it has on the Wisley common. A management problem is that all these Thames Basin Heaths have upgrades from SSSIs to SPAs in the 90s, which makes management stupidly restrictive, to the benefit of bracken and the overall loss of heather.

 

The bit where the tractor is working was never heavily treed but was becoming so, it was a wet area in winter with a large number of informal borrow pits. These are difficult to work and have been mostly left to develop as secondary woodland, pine, birch aspen and willow. For some dubious reason rather than cut and carry off the over growth on the machine manageable areas the decision was made to screef off the surface. The arisings were dumped in a field that had developed from 1972 to wood pasture with glorious displays of orchds and that was the end of them.

 

The screefed area is what you see some 10 years later where he exposed layer favoured gorse, finally, where the mower and baler could get, they are taking off the arisings. Over time  this lowered surface fertility should favour heather ( ling, crossleaved and bell) as long as bracken is controlled. Strips of gorse have developed alongside paths  throughout as the roots partake of phosphorus from dog crap.

 

 

It seems like Bracken is a villain of the piece here. Is there any effective control for it, other than herbicides presumably? Does anything eat it in sufficient quantities? 

 

 

 

 

[Mark Bolam]

What happens to the gorse bales?

[openspaceman]

9 minutes ago, Mark Bolam said:

What happens to the gorse bales?

It's an interesting question, I no longer have dealings with the landowner but was told they would be bonfired off site. I was flabbergasted.  I suggested there were green composting alternatives locally but thought I knew a tip site (from here)that might take them if they would like me to enquire. I have been told by a local that they felt I was criticising.Anyway after a few exchanges with @Woodwanter on here he was willing to take a punt but was worried about the moisture content. By the time I had got back and asked  whether they could load them they said they had instructed their contractor to dispose the bales to a green waste site. I have asked for the contractor to contact me but they are no longer answering my email.

 

Heavy rain today won't have helped.