Saplings

[gdb]

Anyone know an effective way of getting rid of saplings?

I guess, if you have one or two, you dig them up?

Trouble is, I have got hundreds of the beggars - baby apple, baby oaks, baby silver birch, bay pines... the lot. And I need 99% of them gone. Root n'all.

[Green Aura]

Is there a tree planting scheme around - I know that's probably a really stupid idea in Sweden - however yours are all broadleaf and most of the forests are coniferous aren't they?

[JulieSherris]

I'm sympathising with you here..... we have a 35 acre forest on 2 sides of our property & the previous owner spent the last 9 years digging up small saplings from the forest & planting them into the garden!!

Together with the mature trees that were already here, we're halfway through removing the 80 or so that need to come down & out - hard work!!
Hubby has cut them all down to stumps so far - we're busy making logs & splitting & stacking for our solid fuel range, but once the place has been cleared, he will go around again & start digging out the roots - yep, hard work indeed!!

Good luck with your clearing - and if you find an easy way, let me know!
Julie.

[Ellendra]

Cut them to a reasonably-sized stump, innoculate with mushroom spore, enjoy mushrooms for a few years, then the roots will be rotted enough to fall apart when you till.

[gdb]

The tree planting scheme would be great - anywhere but here. As you've guessed you can't move for trees here! (Oh for a clear green field....). Maybe I could dig up and bag up the baby apples and stand them by the road for passers-by to take away for free? Or, better yet, a new version of Pick your own - Dig up your own! As it's the digging up I dont fancy.

Julie, well, it's nice to hear that some other ishers have got it harder than I have!! I've also got the hundred odd fully mature trees to fell and then chop up into tidy little 35cm pieces. Argh! But you've got a lot more land to maintain than I have....

The mushroom injection is an idea. If I could rot the things away without digging them up - that would be great. Hmm... I shouldnt ask, but are there are nasty chemicals that can do the same thing a bit quicker? I'm Organic by nature and will be growing the whole plot as Organically as possible - but sometimes you have to reach for the slug pellets or, in this case, the dynamite!?

Does anyone use/has anyone used an earth digging machine for this sort of thing - like a little JCB? Would a very robust rotavator rip up saplings? Would pigs/goats eat them? Root and all? I never had this size of problem before.

[Millymollymandy]

Can't help with an easy way as I too have a small woodland full of self seeded or runner saplings - mostly wild cherry, sycamore and elm (comes up everywhere by runner). I pull out the little ones and cut off the bigger ones - but I'm talking really small saplings. Sycamore is really hard to pull up even when it is only about a foot high. We get a sycamore lawn every spring!

You wouldn't know here that I spent most of last winter clearing saplings and brambles as they are just as bad as before. I never thought of trees as weeds before!

[gdb]

Trees as weeds. That's just about it - I think you've got that just about right. I'd never seen them like that before either.

Well, anyway, I've just been speaking to a chap nearby and he swears that Pigs (or better still Boar) are the best way of doing this. As I'd be keeping some trees but clearing others, and as there are some large boulders on the land, he reckons it would be very hard for a machine to do. (On the other hand if you want it all cleared, then the machine is best - it seems).

Trouble is I know even less about Pigs than I do about land clearance.

I can see the upside - free bacon for years to come and all I have to do is build a fence and let them go.

But the downside - where do I keep them during our winter? Do they mind the bitter cold? I dont yet have a barn. And I'm not sure I could bring myself to kill them after they had done all the work for me...

[Annpan]

Set yourself up as a 'carbon offsetting' company and start raking in the money...lol....

Boar is a tasty meat... but I don't know if they are easy to keep. I think I would go for pigs...yum, yum.

[gdb]

That sounds a great idea!

Trouble is, if I do get pigs, they'll be producing an awful lot more Carbon (as emissions!) than I could ever offset.....

[Mooncat]

Here in West Wales, there is a shortage of trees in many areas, I only wish I had more land, a wood named after me would be a fine memorial.