Willow and Poplar coppice/pollard

[oxbowfarm]

Over the past couple weeks I've been working on my willow coppice and pollards in the creekbed. I have a couple of willow pollards that I've been working for a couple of years, they were just a few small Black willows Salix nigra that I cut to make pollards.

This spring I trimmed back some large willow clumps in the creek to try and create some coppice willow as well.

My idea for this is to use the coppice as a way of harvesting useable firewood from the creekbed and the marshy ground on the other side of the creek.

Long term we also would like to get into basketry to create another product we can produce here on the farm, kind of a big learning curve for that though. We've been making some very rough baskets for our own use but they are a long way from being anything I'd be comfortable selling to the public.

I'm also interested in exploring adding hybrid poplars into the mix as a renewable firewood source that would do well in the 2-3 acre area across the creek that seasonally floods. The long term goal is to get a lot of willow and poplar going over there and try and establish more useable warm season grasses like eastern gamagrass for summer pasture, it typically only floods in spring and fall.

I'll try and get some pics to add to the thread.

[steev]

So you'll be heating "by hook or by crook"?

[Deleted]

We've been making some very rough baskets for our own use but they are a long way from being anything I'd be comfortable selling to the public.

Those are sold as rustic, primitive, or wabisabi.

I liked the idea of incorporating this stuff into twig or recycled wood furniture and will experiment more, when the leaves fall.

[MikeH]

Tim, I'm curious as to why you have coppiced some and pollarded others.

As for other hybrid poplars, these guys might be a start - www.frysvillefarms.com/growfirewood.htm. There prices are quite good.

And there's even a free source to get you started - www.hybridpoplars.com/freeopcuttings.htm. There's also planting and harvesting info - www.hybridpoplars.com/heat.htm I've got a couple of Frank's OP-367 poplars that I've just started. It's really easy to start these from cuttings so you can clone a few into many very quickly. In the past, he's also had willow cuttings available - web.archive.org/web/20110204061532/http://hybridpoplars.com/cuttings.htm. Maybe he will again.

We've got a number of different coppices started - hazel, mulberry, black locust, honey locust, osage orange, poplar and willow. We have ashes but with the emerald borer, I don't think there's much future in them even though they are a very hardwood and grow very fast. In a few days, I'll be making my first cut on some of the poplars. I'll dry the wood over the summer and see how it burns next winter. Joyce is particularly interested in the willow for basket making so we have a number of different varieties planted. I've found that they are immediately useful as plant stakes.

I've collected a bit of info on coppicing - docs.google.com/folder/d/0B4z8GE1bbsDjc3ZTRmJodkdQelE/edit

[12540dumont]

Ox,
Leo has quite a bit of experience creating habitat in the riparian corridors here (seasonal floody places). He has had some success with coppicing Willows. However, in the wild, as you may have noticed, the best sprouts (cutting stock) seem to come from downed, but rooted, trees or broken but still attached branches. Downing a tree without severing it takes technique he is still working on, but it's food for thought.

He takes cuttings and usually replants them directly, after some conditioning (more info if interested).

He did a huge project this way in Alaska. Those big spring whips make a great forest.

I want a wabisabi laundry basket!

holly

[Deleted]

Some people were planting them very tightly in rows, as this would prevent branching.

I will be looking for native species, abundant naturally, but there was a never ending variety of colors and textures, online. One of the most interesting ones I saw was diamond willow, apparently named after the knots.

[oxbowfarm]

Hey Mike,

Basically I pollarded the first one because it was already a fairly large tree that one trunk had broken off of. I had come over there to cut up the down portion for firewood and thought "What the hell!" So I lopped all the other trunks off at a height I was guestimating was above cow/deer browsing level. Turns out I went a little too high and will be cutting them lower in the future, they are hard to reach to harvest the withes, and I now have realized that a cow or a dear nibbling on the lowest withes isn't really a big deal. The main reason I'm doing pollard in that area is that the willows are all Salix nigra and already small trees and I would like to eventually turn that area back into useable pasture while still having the willows in it. Pollards seem to be the traditional solution for combining grazing with willow management. Plus I really think they look cool, definitely not a universal opinion, some of my neighbors think they look pretty damned weird, but they like me.

The coppiced willow is a completely different species, possibly native or possibly Salix purpurea or both and they are actually down in the creekbed itself. They don't form trees at all, they are more the standard willow style brushy clump anyway. Most of the ones I've done were pretty significantly overgrown and I took the chainsaw and gave them as hard a haircut as I could manage without wrecking my chain.

I'm very strongly considering ordering the Basketmakers package of named willow varieties from Dunbar Gardens, they look really interesting. www.dunbargardens.com/willowcuttings.htm

[oxbowfarm]

3 year old pollard made from small tree. Salix nigra

[oxbowfarm]

4 year old willow pollard from large tree. This is the first one I started working on. Salix nigra The small tree framed in the left side crotch is actually grown from one of the branches of this pollard that i just shoved into the ground. Its about 20 feet tall now and I'm going to cut it back this winter sometime and get it started as another pollard.

[oxbowfarm]

Another black willow that I cut back this spring to make a pollard. I took some pics of the coppices but the pics weren't worth looking at.

[steev]

My personal opinion, backed with no authority whatsoever, is that you've not cropped them close enough. By leaving that much stub, I fear you may encourage acumulation of bark/crap that could weaken/encourage rot/disease.

Here in the Bay Area, sprouts are generally taken off clean, resulting in lumpy, not stubbly, pollards. Some arborists pollard with chain saws, which is too extreme, in my opinion.

Very interesting willow link, BTW. I so need a pond.

[MikeH]

Nov 11, 2012 6:41:23 GMT -5 oxbowfarm said:

the Basketmakers package of named willow varieties from Dunbar Gardens, they look really interesting. www.dunbargardens.com/willowcuttings.htm

Thanks for the link. I had been looking at these guys - www.bluestem.ca/ but at $25/per bundle of 10 cuttings, they were far too expensive. They do have extremely useful info at their website though, eg, their colour chart - www.bluestem.ca/willow-comparison.htm. I'm not going to order the basketmakers package from Dunbar because I don't need 10 each. Instead I'll spend $50 to buy 3 each of 10 varieties including those in the basketmakers package.

Last fall, I established a willow bed for a few varieties that I had gotten in a swap for some thornless male and female sea buckthorn cuttings. It's not a particularly wet area but it is towards the bottom of a long hill in deep soil so moisture does accumulate in the soil. Even with this summer's drought, I only watered once so I'm satisfied, I think, that willows will do OK where I've planted them. The Dunbar willows will fit it nicely.

There's someone on the eastern end of north shore of Lake Erie who is doing courses in January and February at quite reasonable prices so I think Joyce and I will take them.

[oxbowfarm]

Nov 11, 2012 22:41:18 GMT -5 steev said:

My personal opinion, backed with no authority whatsoever, is that you've not cropped them close enough. By leaving that much stub, I fear you may encourage acumulation of bark/crap that could weaken/encourage rot/disease.

Here in the Bay Area, sprouts are generally taken off clean, resulting in lumpy, not stubbly, pollards. Some arborists pollard with chain saws, which is too extreme, in my opinion.

Very interesting willow link, BTW. I so need a pond.

Thanks for the tip steev, It's actually really difficult to cut them much closer than this using pruners, one stub gets in the way of the next one and nosing your way much tighter becomes pretty tricky. I'm prolly going to leave em as is and see what happens. The pictures I've seen of willow pollards in the Low Countries and the UK all seemed to look pretty rough. Maybe that's just because they were banging them out or something. It definitely does seem true that the taller stubs end up trapping more bark and junk as the knob swells up.

I guess one saving grace to willow for me is that I can basically just propagate another one a few feet away if an old pollard starts crapping out on me, not probably an option in the Bay area. I also think that if an individual pollard "knob" starts getting really gunked up you could more than likely just cut the whole thing off and it would regrow from the trunk just below. It seems willow has an unlimited ability to generate new buds from anywhere with live cambium. You maybe can see in the pic of the oldest pollard all the little knots on the trunk? Those appeared the first year after I beheaded the tree.

[oxbowfarm]

withes from the pollard willows

[oxbowfarm]

from the coppice willows