Coppicing honey locust

[ottawagardener]

I have a bunch of honey locust on the property and every once in awhile find some seedlings. These are the non-thorny types as far as I can tell. I was thinking of transplanting them around an orchard garden/permaculture type garden but keep coppiced as bushes. Perhaps use the coppiced branches as mulch or something? Mine little plantation doesn't seem to be very heavy podding but part of me is also tempted to see if any of the babies would be. Anyhow, the orchard/permaculture type garden is in serious need of regeneration and ground coverage.

Thoughts?

[raymondo]

It's a popular plant in permaculture circles in North America. Used as tall slash (mulch in other words) around orchards. As it's there, why not use it?

[steev]

At the very least, being leguminous, they could provide leaf residue for nitrogenous addition to other plantings. Haven't you said you have some very sandy soil? These might be your source of organic material to improve that.

[MikeH]

Jun 7, 2012 11:53:06 GMT -5 ottawagardener said:

I have a bunch of honey locust on the property and every once in awhile find some seedlings. These are the non-thorny types as far as I can tell. I was thinking of transplanting them around an orchard garden/permaculture type garden but keep coppiced as bushes. Perhaps use the coppiced branches as mulch or something? Mine little plantation doesn't seem to be very heavy podding but part of me is also tempted to see if any of the babies would be. Anyhow, the orchard/permaculture type garden is in serious need of regeneration and ground coverage.

Thoughts?

Hmmm, I don't think that you'll get much in the way of mulch since the leaves are very small and the canopy is very open. But you'd certainly get a supply of hardwood garden stakes with a long life. Coppice regenerated wood tends to be very straight. Unlike most leguminous species, honey-locust does not form Rhizobium nodules on its roots, and does not fix nitrogen although [r]ecent research at Yale University in the USA suggests that honeylocust does fix nitrogen directly in its roots without the formation of nodules. Further research now being conducted will most likely confirm the ability of honeylocust to fix nitrogen although at lower levels than nodulating leguminous species.

There's a lot of information when you google andy wilson honeylocust

If you're looking for a steady perennial supply of mulch/compost material, you might want to think about canaryreed grass . It's often flagged as an aggressive invasive but I think that may be a function of temperature zone. I've seen no evidence that ours is spreading. It is dense though; nothing else grows where it grows. I just scythed a huge quantity of mulch/compost material about two weeks ago from a small area 10'x30'.

You could also try buckwheat - www.food-from-the-garden.com/buckwheat.html

One last comment on honey locust - make sure it's the thornless variety. The thorns are lethal.

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[ottawagardener]

Oh yeah, it's thornless. I"d notice otherwise Those do look lethal.

The leaves are very light and airy yes.

I"lll look into canary reed grass. I'm also planting up a bunch of comfrey around some of the fruit trees too and letting the clover establish there. Got a big ol' bag of buckwheat and some winter peas too to act as green manure. The garden is getting better and better. I'm just impatient

Yes, very sandy soil especially in the orchard garden as it was overtilled - my theory. The soil on most of the property is a sandy-gravelly/sandy loam with large outcroppings of metamorphic rock on the north side and clay developing as you move toward the 'lowlands' as I like to call them but I don't have gardens there.

[MikeH]

Jun 8, 2012 6:31:25 GMT -5 ottawagardener said:

a bunch of comfrey around some of the fruit trees too and letting the clover establish there. Got a big ol' bag of buckwheat and some winter peas too to act as green manure. The garden is getting better and better. I'm just impatient

Bocking 14 or you'll be inundated with seedlings. If you need some B14 roots, let me know. I'm about to subdivide and can put some aside for you.

Buckwheat is interesting. You could chop and drop before it seeds in areas where you don't want it to seed. In out of the way areas, you could let it go to seed and harvest for next year's chop and drop crop.

[synergy]

I just bartered today and got in part two bareroot honey locust saplings I planted on the outer perimeter of my chicken moat around my garden so it will give dappled sunlight , leaf litter hopefully nitrogen fixing, wood and may be coppiced or pollarded but also I aligned the two to help delineate an edge , when the plantings mature one day , of a small meadow clearing for animal grazing on the outer perimeter of the chicken moat . They may serve as a source of fodder too. Since my acreage is so small , low numbers if a diverse amount of differing trees i think is to my advantage . I also plant to plant hazelnut for similar function on the moat edge. Oh, and I think it will eventually help to give my garden privacy without shading it too much .

[steev]

If you're interested in light-shade, leguminous, small trees, you might check out Albizia. It grows fine around my farm, which is a rather rigorous environment. Easily grown from seed, of which it produces plenty.

[oxbowfarm]

Honeylocust is really easy to start from seed if you file open the seed coat, just don't take them outside till frost-free.

[ilex]

Nov 16, 2012 23:58:22 GMT -5 oxbowfarm said:

Honeylocust is really easy to start from seed if you file open the seed coat, just don't take them outside till frost-free.

Boil water, take our from fire, put seeds in, let stay in water 1 day. Those that don't double in size ... repeat. Should get close to 100% germination.

I use this tree as an hedge. I'm learning hedge laying with it ... and people complain about hawthorn.

[MikeH]

Nov 17, 2012 4:07:14 GMT -5 ilex said:

I use this tree as an hedge. I'm learning hedge laying with it ... and people complain about hawthorn.

How do you use locust for hedge laying?

[raymondo]

Are you using thorny ones for the hedge? In Africa, I've seen more or less laid hedges made with acacias with very nasty thorns. They were a metre or more thick. Stopped a lot of animals, even elephants! Well, mostly.

[Deleted]

When I think of coppicing, I think of all the things which can be made from switches.

"The fruit of the Honey locust is a flat legume (pod) that matures in early autumn. The pods are generally between 15–20 cm. The pulp on the insides of the pods is edible, unlike the Black locust, which is toxic.The seeds are dispersed by grazing herbivores such as cattle and horses, which eat the pod pulp and excrete the seeds in droppings; the animal's digestive system assists in breaking down the hard seed coat, making germination easier...Despite its name, the honey locust is not a significant honey plant. The name derives from the sweet taste of the legume pulp, which was used for food by Native American people, and can also be fermented to make beer." -- Wikipedia

"The tender young pods are edible when cooked. Also edible are the seeds, raw or cooked; the young seeds taste like raw peas. The seeds are sweet, containing up to 30% sugar, also 10-22% protein, 0.8-4.2% fat, and are high in calcium (275mg/100g) and phosphorous (315mg/100g). Roasted seeds can be used as a coffee

The pods are a source of ethanol production. Pod yields of 2.5 tons of dry matter per Hectare (85 trees/Ha producing 30kg pods dry weight) would yield 730 litres of ethanol which is only 20% of that obtained from a hectare of sugar beet. As a sustainable and a low input source, though, it is much more viable.

Although a legume it does not fix nitrogen, they do accumulate minerals and are used in land reclamation schemes. The flowers provide nectar and pollen for bees. The honey yield are about 20-25 kg/ha of honey from a pure stand of trees. "
-- essortment.com/honey-locust-tree-54165.html

[oxbowfarm]

There is a long and very interesting chaper on Honeylocust in "Tree Crops" describing a bunch of trees that had been discovered with extremely sweet pods that it was hoped would be propagated for animal feeding, instead we went the other way and looked for cultivars that were sterile so they didn't produce all the messy pods on the street.

[MikeH]

From Treecrops, A Permanent Agriculture, page 67:

"The inclination of this tree to sprout whenever the roots are broken or cut by the plow or cultivator would indicate that it could be readily propagated from root cuttings, though I have never known this to be done. "So far as is known to us all trees propagate as true to parent type by root propagation as through budding or grafting. It would seem quite likely that honey locust would propagate readily from cuttings, though experimentation might be necessary in this." (Letter from Wm. A. Taylor, Assistant Chief of Bureau, United States Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Plant Industry, Office of Chief of Bureau, Washington, D. C, February 21, 1913.)

With this characteristic, I'll bet this could be made into a living fence. With those thorns, it would be virtually impassable to two or four-footed traffic.

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