Brian Vraken

Hi all,

I've been a yearly gardener or the past 15 years, but am slowly growing disheartened and disillusioned. The short version is that the results have rarely been worth the time, effort, and cost that has gone into my garden. Yields remain low, but the reasons change every year - often weed pressure, but also significant pest issues (of different sorts) each year.

I'm in Zone 5A. Soil is a type of clay loam that and the garden area was either pasture and / or hay fields since the land was first settled. Soil PH is ~6.8 on the surface, and 7.2 in the lower layers. It's pretty solid clay below ~12" deep.

I've tried several years each of lots of mulch, low mulch, no mulch (all ramial mulch from the local electricity company's forestry / line clearing department). Yearly compost additions. Given how much mulch and compost of various types has disappeared into the soil, I should have a good OM level in the top ~8-12". I have large amounts of earthworms working the soil - it has all the outside appearances of rich, live soil especially when compared to soil from outside the garden area. Tried no-dig for the last 4-5 years, but have had issues with grasses invading. Dense planting didn't provide good results - the plants just didn't thrive, and the weeds did!

Weeds are my biggest problem - I have huge issues with rhizomatic grasses and thistles. The thistles are easy to remove when young, but I find grass rhizomes down 4-6". If I chop them up, they sprout individually. I've manually worked through beds and removed *all* the rhizomes by digging and sifting the soil. That kept them out for a season until they invaded from the surrounding lawn again, but the effort required was huge.

My time is also limited - I can't spare more than an hour or two a week to work on the garden. This makes it easy to fall behind the weeds.

I'd love to hear some strategies to help reduce the time required and improve the results!

A few things that come to mind:

1. I need a weed barrier - either a surface barrier to prevent weeds from ever getting daylight, or else an edge barrier to keep the grass rhizomes out. Thick mulching did suppress some weeds, but the grasses still colonized it, and it gave me huge slug issues. It also was a headache when I wanted to direct-sow some plants.

2. I have fertility issues of some sort. I plan to do some soil testing this year, but I haven't found many resources for a lab that isn't aimed towards conventional farming.

Resources available:

- Rabbit and chicken manures
- A lot of comfrey
- Vermicompost (small amounts being made)
- 'Regular' compost - probably will have a yard ready this spring.
- I can harvest and cut as much grass and green material out of the surrounding fields as needed.

Thanks for the thoughts on Mulberry. One I certainly wouldn't have thought of - I'll read into it!

Luke Mitchell wrote:

Brian Vraken wrote:

Michael Cox wrote:Would sweet chestnut do well in your area? It's an ideal coppice species, makes for dense firewood that burns hot.

We don't really have them on this side of the Atlantic, and from some quick checking, it's probably not a great fit for our climate zone or the wet soil.

There is the American Chestnut (C. dentata) that grows on the east coast. I would bet that it would coppice well. As you say though, it might not be a good fit for wet soil if it's anything like ours.

Unfortunately, I believe many / most of those have been wiped out here for the past 50 years or more due to disease. I've never seen a 'real' chestnut in the wild.

Birch doesn't like to be coppiced unless you catch it young. Trying to fell a larger birch tree (I don't have enough experience to say how big I'm afraid) is likely to kill it. I've never seen to a coppiced birch but I have heard that it can be done.

The maples sound like a better option as most of that genus will regrow when cut (sycamore and field maples being two that you see a lot over here, both coppice easily). I understand your concern about them being low-value firewood and can only suggest that perhaps this doesn't matter so much if you have an inexhaustible pile of firewood?

Other genera to consider are the willows, the poplars and the alders. All of these will thrive in damp soil - but all of them also produce fairly poor quality wood.

Ash (Fraxinus) coppices very easily and is nicknamed "the king of firewood" and might grow well on your site - if so, please try to find local stock and don't import it. We are suffering with an awful disease (ash dieback) that is killing almost all of our ash trees. Ash burns hot and has a naturally low moisture content so seasons quickly; you can even burn it green in a pinch.

Oak will usually coppice too, if cut when reasonably young. It's no where near as fussy as birch though. The downside with oak is that it is slow-growing and quite wet, taking a long time to season. It burns slow and hot.

Thanks for the note on the birch. Maples are definitely an option, but I would need to look at hard maple. As above, Ash trees here have been mostly killed off by the emerald ash borer beetle, but I wonder if, in a coppice situation, the trees would be more resilient due to being permanent juveniles.

Nancy Reading wrote:Hi Brian, I had similar thoughts to you and have planted most of my land to mixed coppice woodland. I have been harvesting alder for about 5 years and birch for 2. Already it is providing a fair proportion of our wood needs (on about 6 acres). The birch does need a fair amount of light to grow back, so would need cutting in fair size coupes (annual cut areas). I've found Rowan (mountain ash) grows back pretty well and since it has been one of my better growing hardwoods I have planted more of it recently for coppicing. Originally it was just intended to be in my windbreak rows for wildlife/shelter. You might find European ash (Fraxinus excelsior) a good fit as well. It is hardy to US zones 5-8 and should coppice well and make excellent firewood. I've lost most of mine to ash dieback now so would also suggest you plant different varieties of trees to build in some resiliance....Most deciduous trees will coppice when young, so I would pick whatever grows well in your area.
I'm actually finding the branchwood to be of more use than I had anticipated as well. The small twigs I tend to leave it in a pile for a year they dry out and I pull out the bigger bits which then break up easily for kindling - that leaves a clear spot in the grass that can be planted into with herbacious plants or shrubs. I never have to split wood!

Thank you for the thoughts!

The Emerald Ash Borer has been hard at work among the ash trees here in North America. Trees planted for coppicing may survive, since the ash borer seems to 'prefer' more mature trees with thicker bark to tunnel under.

We have lots of mountain ash available (or rather, we can as I have a mature one here with loads of berries).

Michael Cox wrote:Would sweet chestnut do well in your area? It's an ideal coppice species, makes for dense firewood that burns hot.

We don't really have them on this side of the Atlantic, and from some quick checking, it's probably not a great fit for our climate zone or the wet soil.

bruce Fine wrote:of the 3 species you mention I have a little experience with each.

Well, I burn a lot of Box Elder (just because there's always a lot of it around), but yeah - it's a low value firewood. Silver maple is marginally better, but it too is a 'soft' maple.

Birch may be a potential option, looking through some lists.

Hi all.

We go through a lot of firewood on my property (primarily wood heat), and also go through a fair amount of charcoal. I have a little under 3 acres of former pasture - while I had at one time hoped to run cattle, that just doesn't seem like it would work anymore.

I'm exploring the idea of converting the field to a coppiced woodland, in order to start providing some of my firewood needs. A few thoughts:

1. I need 'standard' firewood - we don't use an RMH here, and likely never will. Ideally, 4-5" diameter poles.
2. Soil is a clay loam over much of the property. Water table is near ground level in early spring, and sinks to 6-8' down by late summer.
3. Would prefer a harder hardwood - both for storage efficiency, and the fact that we go through a lot of wood as it is.

The species that seem to grow well in this soil on our property are:

1. Box Elder / Manitoba Maple
2. Silver Maples
3. Mountain Ash (HARD wood and nice berries!)

I'm located south of Ottawa, Ontario. Zone 4B. I would appreciate any appropriate species suggestions!

Hello everyone.

I am mulling over the idea of hedging two sides of my property. My primary end goal is stock-proof fencing on those sides - while I've put up a new wire fence on one side of the property, I'm very interested in hedging .

Currently, I have a dilapidated wire fence on those sides - the wooden posts have long rotted out, and there's intermittent steel posts holding the fence up. A few feet behind the fence is a row of trees. As you no doubt see in the attached photos, one 'feature' of this tree line is some fairly large, untended Box Elders ('Manitoba Maples' here) which have developed a bad habit of falling and smashing the existing fence flat. As my intention is to someday have a few beef cattle in this field, I need better fencing, and whether I do wire, electric or hedging, I can't have trees that will destroy a section every time we get a bad storm.

So, I'm working through the initial plans for how to get to a properly hedged fence from here for both the longetivity, beauty and habitat it provides with proper maintenance.. A few thoughts:

1. I fully expect that cutting the Box Elders to their stumps, essentially coppicing them, will lead to a flush of new growth. Within a few years, this will provide some good stems for hedging.
2. There's a few other species present and locally available to easily collect cuttings for planting to provide additional stems in the middle - Red Osier Dogwood and Willow come to mind as being nearby and very easy to propagate by cutting and sticking.
3. There's a fair amount of invasive buckthorn in the treeline. In one sense, I think it would make a good hedge species. However, it also has a lot of downsides to the ecosystem in general. Having dealt with it for years, manual removal typically isn't very successful and it would require herbicides to remove.
4. I really can't / won't invest a lot of money in this project. I would want to focus on species I can scrounge locally.
5. On paper, I'm in Zone 5A or 5B depending on the map. However, we've definitely had winter lows in the Zone 4b range and lots of wind exposure, so I plan to work within a 4b hardiness range.

This would be a plan over several years. There's a lot of trees to cut down and remove. They have to go anyways, or the wind will do it for me. The Sugar maples referenced in the photo description at the front of the property will be spared - they are actually several feet in front of the wire fence and maybe 6 feed in front of where the main hedge line would run and are still very strong..

I'd appreciate any suggestions on how best to get to where I want to be from here.

I was looking for information on hedging, and once again Permies delivers!

I currently have a broken down wire fence with a row of silver maples in front of it. My goal is to eventually have a stock-proof fence along this line, so my goal is to start growing some hedge-able plants between and start laying them down in a few years.

Hi Robyn,

Unfortunately, I didn't find much else useful, and decided the courses were too expensive for what they claimed to give - even at the periodic 50% off rate they offer now and again.

I do still watch everything they put out on Youtube, and I think Dr. Ingham's methods are valid. I'm just not convinced that the incremental knowledge or certification you get at the end are worth the money you have to pay to get them.