How NOT To Take Down A Damson Tree...

So with winter nearing it's end I still had one more tree job to complete this year - to take down a damson tree and replace it with a pear. 

I planted this tree ten years ago and it has reverted back to it's rootstock and never produced any fruit. So I decided enough was enough and it was time to take it out. I had purchased a Black Worcester Pear to go in it's place, on a big rootstock, so I needed to get a move on before it started to grow where I had healed it in. 

I wanted the pear to go in pretty much where the damson had been though, and I knew if I just cut it down the damson would sucker like mad and throw up lots of shoots. So I took the drastic measure of pushing it out with the digger. 

 

Hopefully this new tree will establish quickly and grow well. I couldn't quite believe the growth of the damson over the last ten years - you could almost grow that for a timber tree! I've put the trunk and big branches to one side and hopefully I'll make something from it later in the year. Damson is a lovely wood to work with. 

Watch the video above and let me know what you think. 

Hedges Patched

 Good fences make good neighbours and all that. I decided that as I had a few spare plants left over it was worth just patching up the old hedge that divides between us and farm next door. 

Mainly hawthorn and I'll be honest and say I'm not sure how they'll be do being so shaded under the other trees. 

Hopefully enough will take that can be laid in a decade or so to help strengthen the hedge and fence line. A few hours well spent hopefully and a few more trees in the ground on our little smallholding! 

Over 500 Trees Planted!

I'm so pleased with the last week - we have a new fence and hedge in! Woop! 

We did this years ago with the first field nearest the house, to separate off the footpath from the field and make things more private. We kept thinking about doing this with the second field as well, but it was during lockdown and seeing how few people kept their dogs on leads and could control them that made us decide that this was the right thing to do. 

Planting 40 Plum Trees!

It's not been ideal conditions for planting trees, really the ground is too wet - but as they say time waits for no man so I decided we'd get them in and see what happened. 

Helpers - my eldest was poorly. 

To start with we planted up a new hedge between us and the neighbours. For this we used cherry plum trees, just little whips, and every 10ft put in a Victoria plum (they were £5) as a standard. Not sure how this will turn out but it should be interesting. I've read lots of people saying it makes a good edible hedge but when asked no one seems to have tried it!

Plums For The Whole Season?

The season for plums in the UK is from mid July until The start of October. These are from a variety of plum types, grown under different conditions, they're even growing plums under plastic now to get them even earlier. 

But last year I think we had plums for the grand total of 2 weeks. They were a glorious two weeks, but it left me thinking I've really missed a trick. Time to do something about it.

Storm Damage

During the snow storms I noticed a bit of storm damage in the one field I rent. 

 A poplar tree had fallen over. In fairness to the tree I'd been on about taking it down since the two  next to it fell over a few years ago. The first one is here and the second one is in a post here.

 Now although I do get the wood from this tree (I've asked the landlord and they've had so much storm damage in their garden that they've got enough firewood for years), there is also a fair bit of work that'll go into sorting this out.

I'm going to have to log and split all the wood. Good because we burn a lot of wood, but it's not he best firewood in the world, but you don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

 I'm also going to have to repair the fence.

I've already repaired this section of fence before in atypical farmers fashion but shoving a few hurdles in the holes. I think when I get the tree out it might have to be a more permanent fix with fence posts and wire!

Winter tree Pruning

This is something that scares most apple tree owner. People often say to me that they don’t prune them because they don’t know what they’re doing, or I quite often see them pruned in the wrong way.

 The worst thing you can do to an apple tree, in my opinion, is not to prune it. Cutting stimulates growth, you get to shape it into a form that works for you and control it’s growth and fruiting potential.

Before

After

Before

After

Winter tree pruning can be any time from when the leaves have fallen until the sap starts to rise and the buds start to swell. I try to do mine before Christmas if I can but have been as late as March before now.
Before starting to prune your tree, step back and have a good look around it. See how it grows and the height it is. Walk around it and see it from every angle.

Now don’t fear the saw. I use a folding pruning saw and a pair of secateurs for all my pruning on my young trees, on mature trees I might use a chainsaw. If you’re not competent with a chainsaw make sure you get someone who is to do that work. It’s far harder cutting in a tree than logging firewood. I’m lucky as my brother is a qualified arborist and has taught me well.

The Dutch, who are masters at pruning and producing fruit, say that we are good at growing more wood not fruit!

mature tree before

Mature tree afterrwards  - hhandy to have two poepel on one like this, very hard to tell when you're in the tree!

As I hand pick the fruit from my trees I want them to grow at my height and no higher than I can reach. I’m not planning on grazing my orchards when they get bigger and because of this I grow all of my trees on MM106 stocks (more on this in another post). 

Before

After - not much to take off this young tree but it should help it to bush out and give more options of branches to choose to grow on. 

 The shape of the tree I’m looking for is a polo tree – one with a hole in the middle. It’s said you should be able to chuck your hat through and it not catch on any branches! 

Getting towards the right tree shape. Could do with another large branch heading towards the camera and away from it. They will come in time. 

This creates plenty of light and air flow, keeping the tree healthier, reducing diseases as well as letting in more light to ripen the fruit. 

Woolly aphid damage

Before you start cutting down branches have a look and see how much fruiting buds it has. This will give you an idea of its fruiting potential (frost and many other factors coming into play of course!). The buds are easy to tell apart, the ones growing close the branches are for leaf and the fatter ones are for flowers (and hopefully fruit). So make sure you don’t remove all your fruiting material! Also as you get more experienced be mindful if it is a tip or a spur bearer (again more in another post on that!).

First go round and remove any damaged or diseased material, looking for woolly aphid and canker, cut this material out, always cutting back to just above a bud where possible.

Look at the whole shape, make sure it’s even, look to the middle and see what’s there. If there’s a strong leader in the middle cut this out. 

Don't fear cutting big branches

Then look at the upwards growth, this will be growing the strongest, so cut some of this out or back to height that suits you. 

Any growth that is touching or covering each other is not ideal and needs to go as well. 

Remember not to cut too much any one year, I’d never go more than a third of small tree in one go. To do so encourages wood growth. Pruning can look brutal but the tree soon comes back! 

Before 

After - this tree still needs lots of work but it can be done over many years.

The key shape is a goblet, but remember you’re not trying to get his shape in one year, it can takes years to get the right shape. Also remember that if you make a mistake new branches will grow and replace them. I’ve taken a tree right back to a tall stump before now and started again! 

Try to pick out branches that are a wide angle from the main trunk. they use toothpick like things to space them on some orchards now as it will mean a much stronger branch in the future. remove narrow angle branches as they tend to want to grow upwards.

Key thing is to remember that there’s no rush. Trees are pretty forgiving, new growth will come!

Also a key thing is not to prune below the graft(the scar about 6 inches up)! Not an issue with modern trees which are grafted low down, but some older trees were grafted at head height so if there is vigorous growth low down then this can be the root stock overtaking the fruiting wood.

I wrote this for a Facebook group but decided to share it here as well. I know there are hundreds of methods of pruning but this is what I tend to do. I also summer prune my trained trees each year - but that's for another post!

Let me know your thoughts! 

Storm Damage

As I was just going out to feed the chickens this morning my wife said that a branch had fell on to the neighbours old stables/cowsheds. It seemed to have broke some slates and smashed some ridge tiles. 

What we could see from our drive

I popped round to tell them but as soon as I got into their drive I could see it was a bit more serious that than! 

A huge pine tree had come down and smashed across their drive into their courtyard. smashing a wall and damaging the side of the stable in the process. 

Tree was rotten in the bottom and broke clean off.

It must be over 60ft tall 

This is where it hit the stable

Smashed in the court yard

Damage to the roof

Luckily no one was hurt and also it was lucky that it hadn't come down in a different direction, Slightly more to the right and it would have hit their house, to the left it would have got hung in a Giant Wellingtonia and would have caused more damage.

They also had four cars stuck on their drive that we managed to get out behind the tree.

Made for quite an eventful morning! 

Giant Oak Tree Reduction

Anyone who's been reading this blog for a few years knows I have quite a few giant oak trees on my property and we try to do something to at least one of them each year to try and make them last a bit longer. 

All the tree's are in their later years but some are in worst states than others. Luckily for me my brother is a tree surgeon so performing this work is usually done for a swap of my trade, or just because he's such a nice brother! 

The poor shape of the tree. 

 He came with his friend and fellow tree climber, Chris, last Saturday and they set to work straight away. This is a tree that's by the road and I think it's been struck by lightening in the past. Lots of dead wood and straggly branches. 

Putting the line in the tree

 Luckily all I had to do was keep them fed and watered all day and watch the road at a few points. They got loads done. 

A game of spot my brother!

Out on a limb

After the reduction

Some firewood and brash

They both worked hard all day and the tree looks so much better by the end. I've also ended up with lots of firewood to sort out, a great bonus to this type of work. The tree should also be less likely to drop branches now and hopefully it'll live a lot longer yet! 

Who else has been getting work done to trees on their property?

Trees Down And Finding Time

I finished working at eleven last night, laying a large oak floor for a customer. So with a rare morning to myself I decided to do a few jobs around the homestead and have a walk around the fields to clear my head, something I haven't done for a little while in the light! 

Making a door this morning in the workshop as a bit of R&R - I'm a weird one. 

Of course this little walk resulted in more work! Two trees down, one on one of my new fences. There is another tree that looks like it's unsafe so I spoke to the neighbours about dropping it when the weather improves just so it's safe. It's only poplar so the wood is not of high value. Luckily neither tree are on land I own just rent but it will still need to be sorted out. 

Working again tonight so might be a bleary eyed in the morning but I've got so much work to do before Christmas I'm trying to fit it in wherever I can. Sorry if the blog is a little sporadic again!

Tree Milling

I've been working in the village this week and where I've been working they've had a mobile saw mill in to cut up a collection of fallen trees they've got.

 One is a massive seqouyah they had to fell last year as it had died and was becoming unsafe. The tree is huge so they had to first cut it up with a chainsaw mill before moving on to the diesel driven bandsaw mill. The boards don't make very good structural timber but it does make great stable cladding. 

A Slab of Sequoyah 

 It's interesting to see how they approach milling these trees and how much wood they can get out of each one. After three days they've pretty much got through the large number of trees they had collected over the last few years on the estate, such a better use than logging it for fire wood.

Milling some larch

Some of the timber stored drying.

I'm quite jealous of their stack of timber and what they can do with it all, in fact I'm planning on buying some Sequoyah from them to use as cladding on a project I'm planning.

Seeing these guys in operation makes me think that many more people should re evaluate what they do with fallen trees and they shouldn't just see it as fire wood. It means a long term investment as you have to pay to mill the wood years before you can use it, store it for years to dry it and then process it the other end, but you gain a much higher value product for your efforts.

Who else has milled their fallen trees instead of cutting it up for firewood?

Willow Trees Update

Dawn over at Doing It For Ourselves In Wales has just done a post on the woodlands that she's planting so it spurred me on to go and take some pictures of my coppice areas and how they're doing.

The tallest from 2014 - about 6ft high

 The hybrid willow I planted for fuel last year (March 2014) is finally coming into it's own. It hardly made an appearance last year but now it's coming on strong. One is as tall as me and the others are around three foot tall. I'm pleased as I thought I might have to replant these areas as they grew so poorly last year, I guess they were just getting their roots established ready to battle the weeds this year!

The rest of this batch are about 3ft high but there are lots in there so I'm quite pleased.

 My willow I planted for basket weaving is coming up quite well but looking at it I know I should have spent a little more money on the weed mating. It was falling apart as I was putting it down so I'm not sure what I was expecting. there are some good strong plants in there though so I'm still pleased. The rabbits seem to have left them alone as well which is always a bonus!

The hybrid willow I planted this year isn't doing so well and I have only myself to blame. I made a critical error with it. I pegged the matting down, planted the willows, then just left it for a month or so. I think what happened was the wind would blow the matting up and down (this was before I added the wood chip) and it knocked the budds off the cuttings. A simple mistake that's cost me a lot of time to try to get these growing well again next year. 

 It's not a total loss though as there are still plenty of them growing and looking okay but no the numbers that should be there. I'll have to keep my eye on them a little better in future and put the wood chip down straight away.

The old willow we pollarded is coming back strong now, with loads of new growth, ideal if I had goats! I'll let this grow for a few years then cut it for firewood again.

 The bottom little coppice area (started in 2012) is looking a little more established. The trees hold their own now and there is a good mix in there, the Rowans (for berries) at the back are about 10ft high and the cherries (not for coppicing just for scion wood) are looking healthy. 

 Even the purple filbert I planted has got some nuts on it - what's the betting Mr Squirrel has them before I do?

The barberries I planted this year are doing well even though I haven't water them since I put them in! 

How are any trees you planted looking this year? Have you had many losses or made many mistakes like I have?