Bramble and bracken

[Stereo]

Probably best to leave it until the trees grow enough to shade out the brambles. Rapid bramble growth is the first sign of the woods reclaining land. Next thing to happen is pioneer species will pop up and start to deny the brambles shade and then the rest will follow along.

 

We've got a similar slope we are looking at creating new coppice on. Various attempts with plough and mowers over the year have failed to get rid of the things so I'm not thinking we need to clear it, plant something like Alder and then gradually introduce Ash over the years.

[pgkevet]

The majority of trees are silver birch and ash... not really trees that close a canopy enough to exclude light? As for trying to use any brushcutter upwards on a 45 deg slope...age has probably caught up with me for that...

 

I like the pig idea..surely by 12 year old trees they'd cope with pigs??

 

Plan B would be just to chop some zigzags through so i can enjoy that section...

[kernowstu]

long handled hook and plod on,work across the hill.

[slack ma girdle]

Quad or similar with a mounted winch. Use the winch to lower/raise yourself up and down the slope, and have a flail mounted on the back of the quad. You will need some good anchors at the top of the slope.

[woodworm]

How about a bobcat with a mulcher on, must be well under 2m wide??

[Dave.G.]

we use pigs to clear the worst of our brambles. They rip up even the thickest stems to eat the roots and regrowth is minimal. They fertilize the ground as they work and you can eat them when they have finished

[Daniël Bos]

one word: goat

 

If you own goats you'll need a lot more than one word as you'll soon run out of swearwords! I found I've had to resort to German, French and some eastern European languages in addition to my Native Dutch and English.

 

The band "cake" said it once (as did some obscure christian book, the bible?) "Sheep go to heaven, goats go to hell"

 

They'll ring-bark all the trees, considering they're only 10 years old.

Same with pigs, you're trees are still too small for such measures.

[woody paul]

Hi there. When I worked for someone he had a jungal buster swipe we yearly swiped a piece of young woodland which was 45% in places. Hold on and go with it, tractor we used was a fordson major.

[pgkevet]

Thanks for all the comments.

 

I managed to force my way through to the top of that section today ..sweating buckets and puffing by the time I got there :-(...

 

..the top has a clearing clear of brambles..just died back bracken..so now I'm thinking if I can widen the access and clear the way to winch up some gear then I might be able to use the landclearer with gravity on my side. That's going to have to wait though...ground is still too boggy to get a tractor across the fields to that slope without ploughing huge furrows..

[Daniël Bos]

There is no such thing as "too wet soil", just tyres that are not quite wide enough:biggrin: