Growing Eucalyptus for firewood.

[timberbear]

I see an add in this months Forestry Journal about buying and planting eucalyptus for firewood which could be harvested in about eight to ten years. Not had much experience with burning it but I knows it's heavy. If I had twenty acres planted up do you think I could sustainably harvest it? Has anyone grown euc on a large scale?

[Ross Winchester]

hard to split,burns ok

[Chris Sheppard]

There were blocks planted in a few places round us - results were a bit sporadic though.

 

Some blocks pretty much all died off within a year or two and some did really quite well.

 

My thoughts are if it was that easy there would be a lot more of it going on.

[Ross Winchester]

What about southern beech ,we were looking at a load that had been planed on an estate and they were well ahead of all the other trees planted at the same time .

[Big J]

What's wrong with Birch? A thinning job we did a few months back involved working in a stand of self seeded birch 8 years old, some of which were 30ft tall. Rarely a significant branch, and perfect for a machine like this:

 

Usewood Pro - Small Harvester

[slasherscot]

if want nice clean stems, u must plant in 3 feet spacing, whats ur ground like, is it right for eucalyptus

[Stu3k]

Wee trial and some results to

Forestry Commission - Short Rotation Forestry Trial in England – Overview January 2009

[Ewan Murray]

Depends on species of Euc redgum burns well and burns hot when dried out and split but is incredibly tough they grow very large also

 

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[TimberCutterDartmoor]

Grows like stink here in the south-west; horrible to process tho; heavy, hard to split, I wouldn't bother.

[Chris Sheppard]

What about southern beech ,we were looking at a load that had been planed on an estate and they were well ahead of all the other trees planted at the same time .

 

One Estate I worked on used to plant a lot of southern beech - it does grow fast but it doesn't like the wind. We used to end up clearing loads of blown ones but to be fair it was nicely processor sized when it blew. Gairly hairy branch wise though so not the nicest stuff to do a lot of.