Willionaires

Willow gets me excited.

As a lazy man, planting and tending trees was a serious effort and the speed at which willow grows is amazing, which is why it’s planted for biomass in many parts of the World. To grow willow could hardly be simpler. For most species, you buy (or acquire) a stick, called a rod, about the size of a pencil. As the name suggests, you stick this in the ground and voila! A willow tree ensues. It’s so potent and ready to root that an infusion made from bits of willow wood soaked in water will stimulate many other plants to root, saving money on expensive hormone powders. It’s good for feeding livestock as well as having multitudinous other uses, such as weaving and forming living structures.

To give you an idea how rapidly it can grow, in my old house, there was a willow tree (I think it’s osier viminalis – common osier – but possibly hybridised with something as I’m sure the leaves were variegated) planted in the flowerbed next door. It provided too much shade for the occupants and I was asked if I could trim it in exchange for keeping the trimmings. Not the best deal in the World, you might say, and you would be right but I kept on top of it for a couple of years. One year, I was getting tired of individually sawing through the shoots that were too thick to cut with secateurs and knowing that it wasn’t a well loved shrub, I too my chainsaw and cut the thing down to a stump, about as flush to the ground as was possible. The sad stump sat there for the Winter. We has assumed that it was dead and weren’t particularly bothered. However, in the Spring, small green shoots started to appear and by the end of that year, they were up to 3m long and 30mm in diameter. IN. ONE. YEAR. I’ve taken many of these trimmings and planted them at our current property where they are doing very well, although as not coming from a well established stump, I don’t expect they’ll produce the same growth this year.

Osier viminalis

Some economics:

To buy a stick of willow on eBay, for example, costs around 50p. You can find it cheaper but you can pay a lot more.

Now. To encourage willow to produce straight shoots, it is desirable to plant them close together at, say, 50cm (0.5m) spacings. An acre is 4,047m² which, if square, is roughly 63.5m along each side. Planting a stick at every half metre would give 128 plants along each side, a total of 16,384. If each of these plants put out 10 shoots (whips) of 2 metres each, and each shoot was cut into 25cm length that would mean 80 rods per plant. In one acre, that’s 1,310,720 rods, which at 50p each, is £655,360. Per acre. Per year. The willow I cut down produced many more shoots that this – I reckon I planted about 400 rods and had many longer whips left over which I stuck in the ground for want of something else to do with them. Now, I hear what you say, selling that amount in would not only be difficult but would also attract some sort of bulk discount. Let’s say you sold the lot at 10p each. That’s still £130,000. Obviously, you’d need some sort of harvesting and cutting equipment in addition to the handling/postage costs but you can see why I asked my father-in-law, after pointing out we owned 10 acres “What colour helicopter would you like?”*

* the difficulty being that we’d have nowhere to land them as all the land would be covered in willow

Regarding biomass, we are accustomed to burning logs in this country, either on an open fire or in a woodburning stove. With a quick growing species such as willow, you might get a reasonable sized log in about 4 years, which then should be dried for a year or so before burning. Why, then, should one not be able to produce meaningful heat from the smaller shoots that we could harvest every year? The solution lies in a device known as a rocket stove, but I have only found one commercially produced version – the Stick Stove, from Black Mountain Wood Fuels (see links). However, I don’t consider this to be a very attractive stove and it’s quite a lot of money, but you must admire the technology. I am working on a similar stove, designed to work inside an old oil-fired Rayburn that we were given. Hopefully I can be burning my own willow soon and heating my workshop (unless I can convince my wife to let me put it in the house).

Trailcam pays for itself

I've connected my trailcam up to a bigger battery so can leave it out for a long time

Had it out for about 10 days close to where something had been nibbling my willow and was rewarded with this fine chap. I thought deer would be most active at night but all the images/videos I've captured of him have been early in the morning:

Cheeky deer (roe deer)

Also caught lots of other critters who are also in danger of being eaten:

Crepescular rabbit

A marked man

Sometimes they don't come alone!

Future pair of slippers

 I notice that one has a torn ear - should make it easy to identify in future videos

Willow deer damage

Here is some common osier willow, osier viminalis, that I think has been damaged by a deer. Need to set up the wildlife camera in case they strike again!

Common osier willow deer damage

These were shoots I had pruned from our next door neighbour in our old house. She had asked me to trim the shrub as it was blocking out quite a bit of light. I eventually got bored with cutting each individual stem and cut the entire thing to the ground with a chainsaw. Within a year, the new shoots were up to 3m long and 3cm thick - remarkable stuff and good for weaving/structural work. I've stuck a load of 25cm cuttings into the ground and most of them have taken, the tallest being about 60cm high. The gloves in the picture are Tegera 17 cut resistant gloves, available from Cromwells, they're the best all round gloves I've found so far.

Osier viminalis

We also planted some in an organised plantation in spirals and they seem to be doing very well indeed. As from today, 4 plants (out of 64) had grown taller than the 60cm spirals. We've also planted some yellow willow but it's not doing so well as yet.

Osier viminalis

It's so easy to propagate that I'm not worried about the damage - I'd only stuck the damaged shoots into the ground as had got tired of planting the individual sticks but didn't have enough to build anything meaningful with

Willow Progress

The willows I pollarded in the Winter are covered in newgrowth and the dead hedge is anything but...

 

 

 

 

 

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The willow plantation is beginning to show some decent progress too (it seems that the yellow willow sticks we planted didn't make it* but the osier is doing well and should make for some decent weaving/structural material)

 

* actually, they were a bit slow on the uptake but grew quite well in the end

Woodland Plans

As I alluded to before, I had always wanted my own woodland, for various reasons, amongst them being a source of fuel, a place to camp and a place to reconnect with nature. My interest in bushcraft had only increased my want for a place of my own that I could manage to my own ends. Unfortunately, apart from the small orchard and numerous trees around the perimeter, there was no woodland associated with the property. With little money spare and with the neighbours being in no mood to sell me their woodland, I had no option but to plant one from scratch.

 

Some searching around for assistance led me to the Woodland Trust MOREWoods scheme (see Links). This is an initiative set up by the Woodland Trust in order to create more woodland in the UK and comes in the form of a substantial discount on the purchase prices of young trees and the necessary protection they would need to avoid predation by deer, rabbits and other creatures.

 

A few e-mails and phone calls later, I had a visit scheduled by one of their representatives who would survey the site and advise on species and quantity of trees for my new woodland.

 

The Woodland Trust representative, Luke, arrived and we walked the pasture together. He had a fair knowledge of tree species but explained that there was only a limited number of species available, all native trees. He promised to come back with a quote in a few days.

 

The quote duly arrived and was for 4,500 trees, including a lot of willow and birch. As much as I like birch, the wood rots very easily and there was plenty around, including a huge one that had recently fallen down (conveniently it was one that was leaning on another and I was going to have to pay a tree surgeon to drop it but the storms over the Winter pushed it to the ground and I spent a few days clearing up the remains with a chainsaw). Willow, of many species at least, takes root extremely easily from cuttings and I was reluctant to pay for bareroot cuttings  - especially for Goat willow (salix caprea) that is not of great value either for timber or for weaving/ living structures. The inital plan was to blanket the entire upper paddock with trees, as well as planting some clumps in the lower paddock. Discussions with family, colleagues and on-line made me reassess my plans and leave a significant amount of pasture free from planting, in order to graze animals if required. A few unexpected large bills also made me nervous to commit to such a large order and the Trust was happy to amend the quote to 1,500 trees, as well as amending the selected species.

 

The species selected were as follows (numbers in brackets were final figures):

Species	Number	Notes
Alder	300 (375)	I selected alder because it thrives on damp ground, grows quickly, coppices easily and provides excellent firewood once dry. The charcoal is said to make the best gunpowder and the roots form nitrogen fixing nodules that will help to improve soil conditions. The lack of sweet chestnut and whitebeam is the reason for the increased order
Aspen	50 (75)	The Latin name for Aspen is populus tremens – the trembling poplar. This is because the cross section of the leaf stalk is rectangular and thus makes the leaf flutter from side-to-side in the wind, a very attractive sight on a mature tree. I had also read that as a pioneer species, aspen is not fussy about soil type and grows rapidly. The whitebeam order was split between alder and aspen
Beech	125	Not traditionally associated with damp soils but there is an enormous beech tree over the fence on a neighbouring property. Makes for an attractive tree and provides good timber when mature. I had originally wanted copper beech for the pretty foliage but these weren’t available.
Blackthorn	50	I wanted this for the sloes (sloe gin anyone?) and the blossom.
Crab apple	50	There was a single, mature crab apple in the hedgerow and as well as providing a useful fruit, full of pectin for jam-making, it has pretty blossom
Field maple	100	I had queried why sycamore wasn’t on the list but was told it was an invasive species. Subsequent research doesn’t really support this theory but the field maple is an attractive tree nonetheless and I have since been offered no end of sycamore seedlings should I want them. I’m hoping once mature the sap may prove to be a good source of maple syrup, although the species used for this in Canada is the sugar maple, acer saccharum
Hazel	150 (200)	The Woodland Trust considers this to be a shrub rather than a tree, which surprised me as a friend’s woodland has some very large examples. Selected for the many uses of coppiced product, pea sticks, hurdles etc. and also for the nuts. Makes excellent firewood which is why I increased the numbers at the expense of hawthorn
Hawthorn	150 (125)	I must admit to being a bit sneaky here. I like hawthorn, it has pretty blossom, the fruits are edible (as are the new leaves in Spring) and it provides some of the best firewood although you don’t see many large examples around. I wanted to extend the hedge along the road up alongside the drive. The thorns on hawthorn make for excellent security and it’s most often found in hedgerows. There are some larger examples on the property that I presume grew from unmanaged hedges. As it turned out, my calculations showed that I would need far more than this for a high density hedge so I ordered and planted a few hundred before these ones arrived
Hornbeam	50 (75)	A great firewood and also used to make cog teeth in water mills. Like beech it often keeps its leaves on in the autumn which is why it’s often planted as a hedge. There is a single example in the hedge already
Pedunculate oak	125	What tree symbolises England more than the mighty oak? There are many large examples around the perimeter but many have been cut down nationwide to provide timber for building ships and houses. Although taking an age to season (3 years is best), the firewood is great. We’ve got some different species of oak on the property which I’ve yet to identify and have many seedlings sprouting up from the bumper crop of acorns in the past autumn
Scots pine	25	The road on which our property sits used to have a long plantation of Scots pine along it (over the road). They were cut down before WW2 and we have a single example dominating the corner of the lower paddock. My fancy was to grow two circles of pine trees, to provide a focal point should we be holding camps here in the future. The remaining tree will be planted somewhere else.
Spindle	50	The berries of the spindle tree look delicious but sadly they’re poisonous to humans. Pretty, though, and the birds can eat them. Planted for this reason. It’s listed as a shrub
Sweet chestnut	125 (0)	We have 2 on the property and although it’s one of the best trees to coppice, I am reluctant to chop them down. Sadly, the nursery was out of stock for the final order but there are plans to plant many more next year, for timber and nuts
Whitebeam	50 (0)	Initially ordered for variety and the attractive berries, subsequent reading made me nervous that they wouldn’t like our acid soil, preferring alkaline, dry conditions so I subsequently changed the order
Wild cherry	125	Planted for the blossom as well as the fact it likes damp ground and provides good firewood

 

The Woodland Trust initially suggested quite large number of dog rose (rosa canina) but I’ve always seen this as a climber in hedgerows. I’m hoping to propagate some later in the year for planting in the hedges. The blossoms are beautiful and it helps to make an impenetrable hedge – not what I’d consider suitable for a standard tree. They also suggested holly but as we have plenty already, I decided not to plant any more. It’s certainly attractive throughout the year and supplies pretty berries for Christmas but I am reluctant to have spiky species in my woodland – there’s enough brambles around for that!

Other trees I wanted included ash, fraxinus excelsior, but due to the risk of hymenoscyphus pseudoalbidus (formerly known as chalara fraxinea) in the UK, this fast growing firewood species was not offered, and wild pear, for the blossom and fondness for damp ground. This wasn’t on offer for some reason but hopefully I can plant some next year.

A note on firewood

A cursory search on the Internet for firewood suitability will bring up variations on an old poem which gives erroneous information on which wood is best to burn. The fact of the matter is, any wood, once dry, will burn and give out plenty of heat. Willow and alder, for example, have a high water content so take a bit more drying and since they grow fast, they won’t burn for as long as, say, oak, but there are plenty of tree surgeons out there who heat their homes on wood considered low quality. Green oak burns like asbestos (i.e. doesn’t) but biomass plants use predominantly willow