Weeds

Weeding. 

When seeds are germinating on a woodland floor they need to compete with not only other seeds but also the plants that are already there. Tree seedlings tend to grow more slowly than herbaceous plants and get swamped. When trees are being planted they are usually at least 12" tall they are also normally planted into soil that has been sprayed with herbicide or ploughed. I usually spot spray the places where new trees are to be planted.  Spraying again in the late spring after planting if possible. The idea being to reduce competition for water and nutrients.

Spot spraying of newly planted trees at Pit Wood. An almost ideal mown flat grass meadow. Planting into a woodland presents different problems.

The problems associated with mature weed beds is the competition for light from tall perennial weeds and shrubs. 

This picture shows the trees that were planted over the winter of 2020/21 in the Plantation, which I now call the Tulip wood. The new trees are where the canes and tree guards are.  On the right the original sprayed area, around a tree, can be made out but the tree is not as tall as the weeds.

Both Woods are on nutrient rich soils. Weed growth can be very fast. Here the main weed is goose Grass, which takes over from Hedge Mustard that dominates earlier in the year. As the trees grow they may start casting shade and the dominant weeds will change. I expect Bramble and Nettle to dominate in few years.

If no action is taken then perennial weeds can make walking up the rows difficult. Bramble and Goose Grass can make it impossible. Where trees are newly planted ,I try to keep rows open by brush cutting or spraying. The space between the rows of trees in the photo above will be brush cut. This is quite hard work with Goose Grass being a major component. It wraps round cutter.

The Goose Grass swamping the Coast Redwood in front of the Birch tree will have to be removed by hand.

Where trees have been planted to replace failed ones, control is more difficult. On low nutrient sites the trees can shade out most plants that are not adapted to low light levels. As the trees grow the weeds get less light and tend to grow more slowly.

Once the trees are established I try to keep about one in three rows reasonably clear of weeds to make access easier. This is done by brush cutting and spraying. If there are not pressing reasons to get down between the trees This may not happen with the result that moving through the wood can become very difficult.

I received a pleasant surprise while collecting old spirals in Cairn Wood. The photograph is of a Bee Orchid. To find it was a real shock. It was in a very heavily shaded area and they are flowers of open dry limestone grassland. The heavy clay at Cairn wood was arable before being willow coppice. I will certainly have sprayed the whole field with Glyphosate twice while getting rid of the Willow. There is unlikely to be a Bee Orchid within several miles, so how and why it is here is a complete mystery.  I have pruned back the dense shade around it to give it a chance. It is not normal for me to try to favour plants of no apparent use. It is of little environmental value as the bee it mimics is not in the country, so has to be self pollinating. I will be careful and watchful with weed control now.

Splitting

 Splitting logs.

Wood for burning needs to be dry, this means 20% or less moisture content. Felled trees can be over 60% water. As the bark of a tree is designed to keep moisture in the tree logs dry very slowly and mainly via the cut surfaces.  Logs that have been split can dry much faster. It is easiest to split logs while they are green and recently felled. This is particularly true for Eucalypts. Splitting logs is the most physically demanding and time consuming of all the stages in log production. At least for those of us without expensive automated log splitters.

Logs that have been cut to length dry faster than longer lengths, but they require more handling and are more difficult to store and stack. The compromise I employ is to cut felled trunks  into lengths of 4-5 feet which can fit in the car and then split them. This size is known as cord wood. A cord of wood was the standard measure of fuel logs and is 128 cubic feet, derived from the size of the stacks in which it was initially stacked for drying and selling. A cord being 4' high 4'wide and 8' long.

I start a split using a hatchet placing it where I want the split and hitting it with a lump hammer. Driving the axe head until most of it is in the log. This is not a recommended method as it involves hitting a metal head with a metal hammer. It does require ear defenders and a face protector.

Once the log split opens up Metal wedges are driven into the split. The split should run down the log and release the axe. when the thick end of the wedge is is nearly in the log a second wedge is knocked into the split and the split extended as the first wedge becomes loose and can be relocated further down the the log.

Once the log is split it can be stacked on a pallet at the edge of a wood. It is better to get the log out of the wood where there is more air flow. I often run a Stanley knife blade down the bark. This helps the bark peel away from the log while exposing wood to the air. As it dries under the cut there is variable shrinkage and gaps open in the wood enabling more moisture to escape.