Daniel Colman

Dan
You did not indicate if you are dealing with sandy soil or heavy soil, marshy, deep or ?? Also, do you want to coppice to make Hugelbeds or do you use wood to heat? Comfrey is an excellent plant that produces a lot of biomass, if you can keep it from the deer. If you have chicken, they too will love it, just don't let them have the run too long or they will destroy your comfrey. If it is allowed in your state, Industrial Hemp also makes a lot of biomass (as tall as big sunflowers, and you could chip it?) Otherwise, depending on the size of your trees, you may want to put a crop like pumpkins, that could also bring income in the fall, while your trees are growing. Wood chips are a good alternative if you don't add too much at one time, but that can be pricey too. Poplars and quaking aspens grow fast, and although you cannot exactly "coppice" them, in a few years they would be the size of your thigh and you could grow pleurotus mushrooms on them: When you look at what will grow, look also at what will sell. A nice crop of pumpkins, squash or even cukes would also solve your mulching problem if you plant them thick enough. Good luck to you. Frenchie

I am planning to use the coppice wood for heating eventually with a few trees left to grow nuts. We don't need as much grass as we have as we are not planning to keep many animals, just a few chickens. Therefore, a fair proportion of our land can be turned into woodland as this will produce a useful crop and give us an element of energy security in the future. Our soil is a deep loamy one, it has managed to retain moisture despite a very dry summer and is being helped by mature grass which has toppled over forming a natural mulch. I have finished this years experiment. About 200 trees have gone in with a good organic mulch around them, I will periodically check them to stamp down tall grass and/or re mulch with chip or straw and see how they get on next year and continue to plant with any necessary adaptations. I will experiment with the pumpkin idea, perhaps a few handfuls of compost in amongst the organic mulch and a few seeds on perhaps 15-20 of the trees as an experiment. I will also order some Comfrey root cuttings and see how they go as well. All in all, the trees have gone in well, they look happy and it took about 2 days of work to collect, plant and mulch, so fingers crossed for a good success rate!

Many thanks for all the suggestions

Dan

Thanks Redhawk,

     I guess this is where learning general principles rather than specific bits of info is so important. I will have a mixed approach, get hold of whatever I can in the way of mulch cheaply, probably a mixture of straw, wood chip and grass cuttings, mulch around each tree and periodically trample any grass which grows high enough. This sounds way better than last years black plastic strategy! Of course I will allow a few trees to grow into standards for nuts, in harvesting from local woodlands my mixture resembles them, about 40% hazel, 50 % chestnut and 10% ash/Oak and any accidentals  The heat in the summer is a problem as well, would natural mulches help better than the black plastic did last year??

Many thanks

Dan

What about straw as a mulch? I have loads available locally, would it work in the same way as wood chip?

Thankyou Karen and Casie,

  I appreciate the suggestions, the pumpkins might we worth a for a few trees, maybe a few too many trees to try is on all of them, as much as I love pumpkins. I was imagining that the wood chips would just go around the base of each tree, about 2 1/2 - 3 ft diameter to give them a competitive advantage against the grass. The density of the planting was suggested by a forester friend witht he idea being that increased density allows for speedy domination of the grass and the inevitable failures. After a few years I will thin the trees, then coppice aiming for one tree every 12ft or so with a similar height. My instinct, for what it's worth, says just cover the grass, these are native trees which grow prolifically around us, we are just trying to re create local copppice woodlands on our field.  The trees are not in rows, just planted every 5 ft, so the chips would be distributed by hand. My friend is a gardener so I am going to ask him about a source of wood chip and let you know how it goes

Kindest wishes

Dan

Hello all,

   This is my first post here and I am hoping to find some useful information. I am trying to establish a coppice woodland of mixed species including Ash, Sweet Chestnut and Hazel. I have sourced all of the young trees (20-60cm high) from local woodlands and I am planting about every 5 ft. I planted the trees bare root using a notch technique in a small circle in the grass I cleared with a strimmer. After this I used mulch from their home woodland to mulch around each tree, about 1 1/2 foot in diameter. The trees have been planted into tall and well established grass, although this year it was so dry that a lot of it has died and new stuff is poking through during the sunny Autumn.
   I am planting hundreds of trees with the aim of covering 2 acres eventually, walking out from our tree covered boundary to give the trees some shade in Summer, then planting a few hundred trees each year. Last year I used black plastic as a mulch, the stuff that farmers use for covering hay bales, but I want to find an organic alternative. I know the small mulch of forest leaf-matter will help but what about a medium term organic mulch? I know that Comfrey is a good shout for chop and drop in the long term but what does anyone else think to this? Perhaps wood chip?

many thanks

Dan