Has anyone looked into the Paulownia tree? It is a fast growing hardwood. Down south, the Chinese Tallow tree (also known as the Florida aspen, chicken tree, gray popcorn tree and candleberry tree) is a very fast growing tree. However, it is considered by the USDA as an invasive species. Therefore, they won’t fund any research. Think: kudzu with bark. However, the berries make a high yield of oil for biodiesel and the wood is fast-growing.
Forced ways to plant trees. Chemicals. Narrow gene pools. Wrong altitude species. Letting your own animals destroy them.
S.U.
If one were to attempt to propogate a bunch of Red Alder, preferably from wild sources, what would be the best way to try to do so? I know they like to sprout off little side buddings/branches at the base of a fully grown trunk, would chopping these out and planting them be likely to work?
Hi Brian,
I don’t think the planting of green chopped branches works for alder. It will definitely work for willow. For the alder, you might want to try to put or lay down a branch and cover it with soil or dirt somewhere in the middle. It might grow roots there, but I am not sure.
Where I grew up there where lots of hedgerows (or hedge banks?) mostly ash trees and alder, but also hazelnut bushes, willow and some few oaks. I assume it was black alder - although it turned red where it was cut after a while, but wikipedia says the North American Red Alder is different! Nice wood to split and not too bad for heating. Those hedges have to be taken down every 7 to 10 years (except for the oaks (never cut down) and the ash and alder trees (only cut down the biggest ones - after 20 or 30 years or so…). Ash, willow and alder are like poplar reliably re-sprouting.
But what should work is growing trees from seeds (if you have the time…). I attached a picture from German Wikipedia; you can see the ripe “fruit” in the right bottom corner.
Best regards,
Sam
Until then!
I was intrigued by the way Wayne used the outside remnants of a tree left from making lumber. (wish he would do a book on that wood mill, I got $50 waiting for that one). I was told left over lumber from cabinent shops is treated and not good for burning? So, when I discovered a lumber mill about an hour away, I went down to investigate. Turns out, they only accept oak trees and make very durable pallets. Also, they bundle the outside remnants of the tree into about 6’X6’X10’ sizes and sell for $25! The owner told me they weigh about 5000 lbs. If a lb. of wood equals a gallon of gas, then that is a lot of fuel for $25.
Don
Don, correction; about 16 pounds equals a gallon of gasoline for the Keith gasifier. 20 lbs/gallon on smaller gasifiers.
Also, the wood will shrink by about half its weight as it dries. So you’re paying about $20 per dry ton, equivalent to about $0.16 per gallon. Not bad!
Righto’ on the energy correction ChrisKY. I use effective woodstove/woodgasifer ~5000 BTU’s per air dried pound veersus ~105,000 BTU per US gallon of gasoline. Ha! Remenber only 22-28% of that gasoline turned into usable shaft power in a piston IC engine.
Shocking on those “eastern” wood srcrap prices to us western softwood people. About 5X to 10X that out here for at the best alder cabinet woods and fir truss wood scraps sell-offs.
Brian Ham I’ve never seen western red alder stump re-sprout. Donno’ on the clipping sprouting. Easy to seeds start though. Wants indirect shaded sunlight, very year around humid mosit air like stream, river valleys and shaded north slope patches.
Next local grown tree picture set. These naturally self-seeded and grown.
1st picture. Our timber patch plot on the right hand started out three human generations ago as once large old growth selective logged and mule/stump to stump skid roaded hauled out. All other smaller trees not used for three log skidroad making were left, many falled trees damaged. Then within a decade accidental man started forest fire burnt over this “slash”. HOT sterilizing wildfires are great weeds/scrub bush knock backs for about a decade. This 15 acres was then tree by tree self seeded by no more than 8-10 native Doug Fir survivors. “Nurse trees” like the left hand of the road single stand-alone. Distincly three different genrations of more crowded in forced to grow tall for the sun Doug Fir offspring in the timber patch. From pocket patches like these; take the humans and their animals out of the picture and the PNW wetside would revert back to altitude adaped natural evolved firs and spruces.
2nd picture is a patch of 18 volunteer self-sprouted Doug Fir babies sprung up in the last two years in an 8 years ago plot where Steve the human took out 4 adjacent large firs for firewood. Only 3-4 of these self-seeders will be allowed to prove thier worth and grow in this space again.
3rd picture is some volunteer firs edging out into the old hay field that survived from our seasonal cow grazing (see the lower damaged, not strait trunks) These are about 12 years old. Perfect gasifier fuel size now. Hatchet chunkable. Note the better/longer top growth by the annual limb ring/tiers without lower stunted cow bothered growth and with our last 4 years of wet, wet summers we’ve been having.
Domestic grazer critters are hell on baby trees. Very few survived in our timber patch from the 70’s to 2004 when the cows were pulled off. Cows and horses and and especially goats can be great underbrush and understory cleaners IF you let the trees get big enough to withstand the rubbing and NOT be so new sweet bark tasty. 4th picture is a nieghbors man planted patch all the same size and age they did this with. Look how clean underneath with NO man maintance. No baby trees either.
Sheep will kill them all bark ringing them. “. . . has no trees because they cleared them off for the sheep!” B.S. The sheep killed off virtually all of the trees. I like sheep. I wear wool socks year around. Wool outer wear much of the wet year.
5th and 6th picures were bird and squirrel planted off of stump perches. Some can be brought along for a time until root base resriced bu the stump starved and are wind taken down due to the un-full around root base support.
Want more?
Regards
Steve Unruh
O.K. Here are some more local native tree grown pictures. These are all visible from out properties - the first two from our front porch.
#1 Some volenteer roadside in the ditch growing Douglas Fit trees. 15 years old. Bit too big now for easiest gasifier fuel wood processing now would require much sawing to be able to chunk up in any way. 13 1/2 inches/34 cm diameter at the trunk base. ~20 feet/6.1 mteres tall.
#2 Picture is an adjacent ditch grown volunteer Red Alder tree the very same age. Same lower diameter. Bit shorter at ~16 feet/4.88 meters tall. Probably ~15% more fuel wood volumn if chunked due to more volume usable in the side branching.
Note how the Alder has light, water and nutrient starved and stunted the next to it now smaller same aged Doug Fir tree growth. With no disturbnaces from man the Alder would grow 2X more in volumn and age then die, fall and enrich the soil as an atmospere nitrogen root fixer like cliver. IF the Doug Fir survived it would grow tall and lean then from the early forced to streach for the light and the alder dropped leaf and rooting trunk produced soil nutrients. Alders are our Pioneer trees able to come back soonest after ground disruptions. Our enduring eveoled end-game forest trees would be the 300 to 1000 year living taller Doug Firs.
Just for fun:
120 foot long power pole logs hauling out through the center of town. Regrown back after the 1903 Yabolt burn fires and early 20th century logging off, so be ~90-100 years old. Still be 2nd growth (regrowth) trees.
This where they came from. Center of 4th picture. Folks had 5-6 truck loads taken out of the corner of thier property to “Pay the property taxes”. Visble now through the center of the reamining stand you can just see now a newer hillside house at the end of a long dead-end mountainside road peeking out now visible from the main county road. Owner up there is pissing and moaning that now people can see him! He built up there to be able to see Mt Saint Helens over the tops of the valley bottom trees but not be seen himself.
His public paid for access road is where my previous Mt Saint Helens avatar picture was taken from.
Regards
Steve Unruh
Hi All
Bumping this buried topic back up for new members now to be able to find.
Note that the originator TimJ and I actually live in the very cloudy, raining Pacific NW and so our fuel wood trees species will be different from most.
ANY treewood species can be gasified for IC piston engine power.
Just take a little different jiggering around.
Grow for YOU what WILL grow for you.
Then ask. Someone experienced here will help you do this systems gasifer jiggering.
If you can grow it and get it chunked up and dried down to reasonable it can be motor fuel gasifed for a power purpose.
Regards
Steve Unruh
Question: Say someone started a tree farm solely for producing wood fuel, feeding the soil sustainably yet working towards max yields. What would it look like, and how much could it produce?
(Hint… it will look a lot nicer than a corn ethanol farm!)
I was always impressed with the hybrid poplars 60’ high 10-15’’ diameter in about 7 yrs
I want someone, (hopefully me when I get this gasifier rebuilt) to gasify some jatropha seeds. They are currently hyped for biodiesel production, but when reading about the btu content of the seedpod and oil fraction, it is on up there with the best hardwoods. They say the plants live for 50 + years and are insect and disease resistant! Cattle won’t touch them either.
Does anyone know anything about this tree? I wonder how it would do in a gasifier?
That’s paulownia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulownia_tomentosa
Wayne’s tried some, it is very light and burns up really fast. But, if you had enough of it that might make up for the low density. super-light and soft woods are easier to process and dry. You’ll be handling 2-3 times as much though.
what about the black wallnut . not so fast growing but you can use the nuts for fuel while it’s growing and if they grow good and stright they have a high value = sell the saw log and use the rest for fuel. easy to plant just put a nut in soft soil and push in with your heel
V-10 on paulownia
Yes DanS I have done small batch amounts of black walnut woods in small engine gasifiers.
Works good. Needs to be proceesd down to about half the size of a conifer wood fuel to get the same energy release rate. Char chunks are very durable handle-able and last a long time.
Moderate low ash with a high slagging temperature. Both of these gasifier operations good. “Grate Good”
Seemed about the same as the small amounts of hickory that I’ve trial’ed used.
S.U.
here is a web site with lots of info on growing and using these hybrid poplars. Al hybridpoplars.com
Ive been thinking about this a lot. Depending on the geographical and rainfall limitations I imagine a backyard paddock of several species of trees. Avoiding the monocultures suseptiable to mass failure. In my semi-arid high plains monsoonaly watered area I see a combination of drought tolerant trees: Nitrogen fixing Mesquite, and Black Locust trees intercropped with drought tolerant hardwoods like Encinal oak trees, Arizona cypress, Alligator junipers, Siberian/ chinese elm, Hackberry, Arizona walnut, Arizona ash. Some self propogating low water sucker-grove forming trees like Allianthus Altisima (aka cancer tree, stink tree, tree of heaven), or Soapberry (Sapindus ssp.).
Look at the natural vegetation of your area and do your best to imitate it in the most beautiful way possible. You wont go wrong that way.
Mmmm. Woodgas and beautifying/ improving the land by fixing nitrogen and Co2 through decomposing tree roots and surface leaf litter. Thats what Im talking about!
