Tree Farming

You’re right Wallace, I’ve observed the same thing, where forest encroaches on old farm land the trees don’t grow the same, and the undergrowth is quite distinct and will easily revert to field growth if the trees are removed. I suspect some of that is due to the soil community of microbes and fungi, some may just be the many decades required for a full understory progression. I have wondered about soil transplants. On a larger scale it might help the things that can’t move get to the climates where they will be able to survive.

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I am not a farmer but I noticed some changes to the soil around here when they banned lawn chemicals.
It pisses me off to no end I can not make a nice looking lawn anymore, but if you turn over the sod and look at it there are a lot more worms and bugs in it.
Moles too they rip up my lawn to get the bugs.

Next door the old Finlander tills his patch now and it is just full of birds when he does.
They are eating the insects.
I am not sure if this is all a good sign for the health of the garden but it does tell me there is a lot more activity in the soil and something is changing.

I am concerned that the changes in the soil might be bringing metal up and back into the food chain.
Port Colburn has nickel blight on the oats and I would not be surprised to find it.
There are consequences too everything we screw up and still more when we try and fix them too.

I just want to add up here we have a bear problem too.
They seem to love the changes and come right up to your house and walk down the street looking for food.
They seem to forget they taste pretty good themselves.
Some parts of nature like Urban bears I can live without.

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Urban or rural, the over friendly bears are bad news, like a chocolate lab 3 times bigger with no manners and nothing but food on its mind.

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Princess Auto has some nice sausage suffers that come on sale usually in the spring.
Completely compatible with Urban bear meat…
I loath to harm anything without good reason, bears at least are not as waste if you eat them.
My brother is waging a war with coyotes in his neck of the sticks. ( also not native animal he shoots . 223 with a scope and he waits for them to come )
I have no warm feeling about them and you can not eat them.
That is a true a waste if there ever was such a thing with legs.
But if you do not shoot them the behave like retarded wolves, in packs and try to eat your dog or worse ( worse could be a person but that has not happened yet just domestic animals )

I am looking at those paint ball guns for next spring.
Found some places that say they sell paint balls for police with pepper spray in them.
I like the sound of that.
Hit Mr Bear or any other predator with those balls and no harm has to come to any creature.

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I think my nearest neighbor is a black bear though he is napping for a few months right now. If I keep my garbage where he can’t get to it he is less of a problem than some neighbors I have had. When a bear does become a problem or should I say becomes unbearable my weapon of choice is wrist rocket sling shot. I do keep my 44 mag handy as backup but have never needed it. A 50 calliber lead ball from the wrist rocket makes a thump that makes the bear want to be elsewhere. If you have small

animals you need to build them a shelter that the bear can’t get into though (2" siding works well). Enjoy your neighbors. Fred

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In the past 20 years I had one bear walk up and sniff my pregnant wife’s back side as she hung laundry.
She thought it was my old black lab from the corner of her eye.
The old lab was being pain she said kept getting right up to her and pushing her until the dog bolted and she noticed that other black thing was not the dog.
Poor old Molly was not a guard dog, did her best to alert mom .

Then there was the bear that would chase me and ministry of natural resources guy around house but would not actually go in the trap… ( fair to say we started all this by chasing the bear waving our hands and yelling trying to scare it off )

There was a moma bear ad cubs that would bring everyone else garbage to my place to eat.

This one bear was real quiet and I could not see him in the dark as I worked in my shop.
He followed me to my back door ( that the wife locked ) and watched me pound and yell to be let in.

There was the bear across the street trying to push in the picture window until the cops showed and shot it.
The bear that tried to crawl in the bathroom window a street over ( might be the same little bear )

The bear that charged me walking from my back yard to the mall across a wooded hill.

The good news is my brother has a way with bears that makes then very tasty lol.

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Could bamboo be used for it’s fast growing properties? Or would the mass of the usable fuel be less substantial compared to a fast growing hybrid poplar? Tyler

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@k_vanlooken primarily uses Bamboo in his charcoal gasifer. He can speak more on the issue but I suspect making charcoal out of it first is important.

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Work has been done on coppice willow. It appears to be one of the most practical biomass sources for a temperate climate. In part I think that is because it’s so easily planted / propagated. Here in the north I suspect paper birch might be more productive, as it grows very well from the stump. (But will take at least 10 years to become strongly established)… Other birches may have similar qualities.

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The hybrid poplars are not that fast growing. I bought into this eons ago
and planted 30 or so as a test. Not worth the trouble IMO. Waited 3 or so years for them
to get to the 4" to 6" diam for cord wood. Low btu wood, but I guess if you
have plenty of land and no trees, they’re at least good for that. Figure out your yearly BTU
needs, how much they supply per tree per acre and plant a whole frigging lot of trees.
They may grow to cutting size in 4 years. Cut 1 years worth for winter, plant another
years worth. Figure out your rotation. It’s not a panacea! How many 16"pieces of 4" to 5" fire wood
do you need to stack a face cord!!! A LOT!!! A 25 ft tree isn’t going to give all
4"diam sticks also! It takes a s…load of trees this size to get a face cord!!!
It has been 30 or so years and they mature at about 16" diam, 40 feet tall.
I wouldn’t do it again, as you can see from the pics of my experiment.
Pepe

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There are alot of issues with getting wood to grow fast. But if trees are not confined in a tight stand they will just grow limbs and not amount to much of anything. My forester was very clear that the best way to manage the wood lot was to let the native trees seed themselves then trim out the ones of lesser value. I plead ignorance for the most part on forest management.

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I think the 2 posts above are facets of the same thing.

I have observed that some amazingly poor soil will sometimes grow outstanding trees. If cleared it will barely grow hay. The soil web I believe is the key. Soil fungi actively cooperate with trees. They receive sugars from the trees at the root tips, and exchange them for mineral nutrients and nitrogen derived from their capture of soil invertebrates, etc. And seem to provide a complex communication web amongst entire tree communities.

From that it strikes me as less surprising that a non native hybrid poplar can’t interface effectively with the native soil community, or that field.planted trees don’t grow the same as ones established in forest soil. Willow is probably an exception because it is a pioneer, or fringe of woods species. Maybe a compost tea made from forest humus might help over time?

But Pepe is right, I’ve heard various reports that hybrid poplar needs good nitrogen content to grow well, makes sense if it isn’t part of the soil community.

Also the wood is definitely crap, hardly even has structural value. It’s like the toasted marshmallow of wood. Lots of volume, no substance. Useful possibly as a pioneer planting to shade grow hardwoods, then cut them out. But that’s a 40 year project, urban economists would have strokes… :wink:

If I haven’t exhausted patience already, all the above leads me to suggest using a native pioneer species. Willow is probably the most effective given ease of propagation. I had a sad paper birch sapling, bent over by a fallen aspen, I cut it to the ground in the fall of 2013. It was maybe a 2" stem. I knew it would grow from the stump. Now it is about 25’ , growing in poor soil, the bottom of the stem is around 5". And the birch is highest value firewood…

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So interesting. I just purchased 30 poplar hybrid canes as an experiment. I’ll be using them on wet ground fed by a seasonal brook. The ground is very rich and damp and my research says they work well for moving some of that water up and away and solidifying the ground. The leaf supply will be good for my composting as well. Ill use these purchased ones to establish some stock for new canes I think. Early days ill post when I plant.
Cheers, David

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Willow will definitely grow fast in the ground you describe. If you know anyone with a willow tree near by a few branches and you will have your own forest they are very easy to root. Infact if you want to root other plants put a small stick of willow in the water it will make a world of difference.

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Hi David, where I live we have rows of the tall wind break type poplars. They grow fast and tall, the roots start more trees. The fallen leaves make great compost for soil building. The wood burn well in my gasifier.
Bob

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This may sound funny to most, but the best jerky I ever ate was coyote in Tennessee. It started as a joke, but ended up being quite good.

I think there is no doubt about this. We have been seeing this in the Amazon for decades. Sustainable small-scale/large scale gardening/farming in the jungle can only be done with limited disruption of the eco system. Henry Ford learned it with attempts to grow latex trees in orchard fashion in Guyana a hundred years ago. It’s still the same. When you disrupt too much of the system, it stops producing plant life in large part. Or at least you become quite limited to mono culture systems which are notoriously suseptible to disease, etc. I’m not a permaculturist, but it is a very necessary thing to respect the Creator’s way of doing things.

Does it add some kind of rooting agent to the water?

Is that what is called propolis?

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I think Dan makes a good point - willow will be more tolerant of wet conditions than hybrid poplar.

Our native balsam poplar propagates readily from dormant sticks, grows rapidly, and certainly doesn’t mind growing in wet conditions. The wood is inferior, but has some use for firewood or structural material. The bud resin is antiseptic, and was valued as the “balm of Gilead” in biblical times. Honey bees collect it for filling gaps in the hive, and probably for the medicinal properties.

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Poplars get lumped in one group, but there is something like 27 species that vary greatly in strength, and density. Some that are called Poplar are not. I have at lest two on my property, one is good for lumber, the other is not.

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I was just thinking largely for wood gasification and it being used as a renewable fuel, because in a lot of cases, the more dense the hardwood is, the better. Thanks, Tyler.

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There is a hormone in the willow that makes things root. It is the active ingredient in the take root I think the powder they sell is called.

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