Willow are now dormant so I'm preparing for next plantation. Dec 2017.

As you can see in the picture below, the willow is now dormant. All the leaves have fallen, and the branches closely resemble the original whips that I bought. I suppose they should, as that's what they were! In the background you can see a yellow stripe which I have sprayed, ready to plant next years rotation. I plan to plant another 2 rows with 100 trees in each, entirely from the whips I trim off this years trees.

Interestingly, the tops of most of the whips, above where the branches have finished, appear to have died. I guess there is no need for life beyond the uppermost branch. the pic below shows this quite clearly. 

I have now erected a tall electric fence to keep deer out. As there is no power nearby, I selected a 12v battery fence and installed a solar panel to charge the battery. so far so good! This also means that I can have animals in the rest of the field without risking them eating my willow, which is apparently very appetising to most animals. The fence cost me €50 for posts, €120 for energiser and tape, €25 for isolators and €75 for a battery. Total € 270. I had the solar panel lying around. 

Regrowth since deer attack.

It's been 4 weeks since my deer attack, and the regrowth/recovery of the plants is amazing. Somebody described it very well as "They just want to keep on growing, don't they?". As you can see in the pics below, where the deer have snapped off a branch (the thick stem central in picture), the regrowth in leaves and shoots has been vigorous. Almost 6 inches in some places.

Regrowth on a snapped off stem.

Regrowth over 3 snapped off stems.

Also to note that hanging soap bars on the trees has worked 100%. no more deer damage since soap was installed!

6 Months Growth, and 1 deer attack..

It's now 6 months since I planted the 200 whips, and despite a dry start to the summer, many of the trees have flourished. Around half of them have between 1m and 2m growth on top. The other half have between 500mm and 1m growth. I've shown some of the larger ones below up against a jeep to give an idea of scale. (Note the jeep has a 2" lift kit and big tyres fitted!)

1.5-2m growth

Interestingly there are around 10 trees which have developed floral-like leaf growths in random places. I've never seen this before, and can't find much info on it online. Some of them grew at the top of the whip, others are midway along the new growth. I've added a picture below!

Floral Pattern

Now for the bad news, after 6 months of being left alone, the deer have finally discovered the plantation. I noticed around 10 trees that had long branches stripped of leaves and snapped in two.  There are 3 or 4 where the deer have eaten most of the growth back to the original whip. I'm not sure if these will survive, time will tell I guess.

Deer Damage

Some online research suggests the deer hate the smell of  soap, so I found a box of old soap bars, split them in half and hung them like Christmas Tree decorations on every third or fourth tree. This is a temporary measure until I have time to put up an electric fence. It will be interesting to see if the soap works in the meantime!

Soap Deer Deterrent!

Update- 2 weeks later, and no additional deer damage despite a noticeable increase in deer around the area. Soap seems to be working for now!

Guide to establishment costs.

Someone asked me recently about the costs involved in establishing my coppice mini-plantation. I guess there are 2 sides to the costs, 1) the monetary costs and 2) the effort required (I value my time!).

1) Monetary costs:

I decided to plant 200 trees per season until the first 200 are ready to harvest. 200 x 3ft long whips cost me Stg£268 (Approx. €300) delivered from UK to Wicklow.

200 x rabbit guards cost me €54 + €4 postage (via address pal) = total €58.

Weed killer application x 2 (one before planting one since) costs approx. €5.

I required a spike tool to make a 1ft hole in the ground for planting. I made it myself, but buying might cost someone €30 from a metal fabricator.

Total establishment costs to date are approx. €400.

That equates to €2 per tree.

However as I plan to use cuttings from the existing trees to plant 200 each year for the next 4 years leaving me with a total of 1000 trees, the average costs drops dramatically as follows (for 5 years):

1000 x trees €300 (only pay for first 200)
1000 x tree guards = €290
Weed killer = €50

Total Establishment Cost for 1000 trees = €640 or 64 c per tree.

In subsequent years, the costs essentially drop to zero.

2) Effort required

I will deal here only with the effort required for establishment, harvesting is an unknown quantity at the moment!! The various steps with timescales are as follows:

1)    Weed killing 2 strips, 1m wide 3-4 weeks prior to planting - 1 hour
2)    Planting 200 Whips - 6 hours
3)    Stripping lower buds from stems - 2 hours
4)    Weed killing follow up - 1 hour
5)    Mowing - 1 hour.

Total time input to Date: 11 hours.

A repeat of this effort will be required until I have the full plantation established, after which harvesting will be the main annual effort involved.

Other factors may include a potential loss of income from the land, the reverse of which is the potential saving on buying fuel to heat our home. Our field is small (approx. 3 acres) and was lying idle anyway. It is probably too small for a local farmer to be interested in leasing. I view the log production as the first step to perhaps more self sufficiency projects in the field such as an apple orchard, a large vegetable plot etc.

3 Months old now and growing strongly.

Top shoots are approx. 2ft (600mm) in length and plants look very healthy. Weed growth in some areas is as tall as the stems so I am glad I chose the 3ft whips to plant. Shorter whips and possibly their top growth could have been overshadowed by weeds otherwise.  Ferns especially are a problem. I plan to mow the worst of these back next week as I'm reluctant to spray in case any drifts onto the willow leaves.

Out of 200 whips planted only 4 have failed. They are randomly dispersed so cannot come up with any specific reason for this, but I will replace them next winter with shoots cut from healthy trees.

Here are 2 pics of the rows with the grass / ferns mowed. The planting lines have been treated with weed-killer earlier in the season and are still fairly weed free, with the exception of the occasional fern. Before mowing grass height was up to 16" (400mm) and ferns were up to 3'4" (1m) tall.

5 Weeks old and 6" growth!!

The healthier trees are now showing approx. 6 inches of growth in the top 3-4 shoots that we left on the stems. All other shoots were stripped off when approx. 1" long, although I did snap off a couple this week, and it was easier when approx. 2" long, so next year I'll leave them a little longer before stripping the lower shoots.

A few plants have something eating the leaves, not sure what it is yet. more investigating to do. Looks to be an insect of some kind as there are holes developing in the middle of the leaves.

3 Weeks in the ground.....

Every one of the 200 whips have budded to some extent. Above are images of the most healthy plants. Buds are upto 5cm long.

As I'm planning to grow these for firewood/logs, I've stripped all buds from the stems except for the top 7-10cm . This leaves 2-4 buds per plant. Seems this encourages all the energy to go into these ones rather than trying to grow 20 or so along the length of the stem.

I lifted the rabbit guards up, but not off the stems and stripped the buds by hand. that way I could drop the guards back down without damaging the top buds.

1 week old....

Buds starting to appear already. I'm planning to "Pollard" rather than "Coppice", which means that after year 1, I will cut the new growth back to the top of the whip, rather than to ground level as you would if coppicing. For pollarding I understand that I have to remove all buds except for those at the top 2-3". This is easier when the buds are 2-3 cm long and can be snapped off by hand (pic to follow in a couple of weeks!).

The advantage of pollarding for me is that I will be cutting the stems at 2-3ft from ground level when mature, rather than ground level. Saves the back injury! Also, should help keep the bunnies off the new growth as it'll be higher off the ground. I am slightly concerned about the deer though......

1 Year growth on pollards (c) The Willow Bank

Planting Willow.........

Willow at 1m spacing with rabbit guards ready to slip over. I found that prepping 10 holes was easiest way to make progress.

1)  Make 10 holes
2) Push in 10 whips & firm around them
3) Drop on 10 rabbit guards
4) Move onto the next 10

Here is a close up of one whip. About 12" is below ground.

And here is an image of the 200 whips planted in 2 rows. 1 metre spacing between plants and 2.5 metres between rows to allow the jeep drive between them.

I had to trim back some of the trees along the ditch line so they didn't overhang the new willow.

Willow arrives......

2nd March 2017 - 200 x Willow Whips arrived by courier, 2 days after dispatched form the UK. Have removed from packaging and placed the bases in a bucket with 4" of water as recommended. Looking forward to planting at the weekend.

I've welded up this tool to help with the planting. 12" spike at the bottom, buried into the ground in this pic!

Roll on the weekend.................

What to plant...........

My first thought was a forest, ideally of native fast growing trees. Birch seemed like a good option. I conducted some research, and spoke to some people who already have such plantations and it seemed to involve a wait of 10-15 years for any significant timber to be produced. On top of the delay, I'd have to replant any trees I cut down for fuel. I looked into other varieties such as poplar or eucalyptus, both of which have phenomenal growth rates, but suffer the same problems in terms of delay and re=planting. While a forest might be an idyllic proposition, it wasn't necessarily going to solve my problem.

Over 10 years ago I spent several months working for a Biomass heating company, selling woodchip boilers for commercial applications such as hotels and leisure centres. There was a lot of discussion at the time around growing and harvesting willow for woodchip. The idea was to "coppice" the willow thereby allowing multiple shoots on a 3-4 year harvest rotation (Short Rotation Coppice SRC). The willow in question was required to have relatively thin stems so that machinery could process it. I conducted some research and discovered that by choosing the right variety, and managing the growth/harvesting slightly differently, 3" - 4" stems could be achieved, which would be ideal for log production.

Both "The Willow Bank" (thewillowbank.com) and "Mammoth Willow" (mammothwillow.co.uk) in the UK have excellent information on different species of hybrid willow, as well as planting and growing guides. Mid February I "bit the bullet" and sprayed 2 long strips approx. 100m each along the bottom edge of the field. It seems that lack of competition from other plants/weeks/grass is a major factor in strong willow growth, so I prepared 2 tracks, approx. 1 meter wide, and 2 metres apart. The recommended spacing for willow for firewood is plants in double rows at 60-70cm spacing's. and rows at 1.5 metres apart. I wanted to drive the jeep between rows and be able to access both sides of the trees (for harvesting), hence the single rows and wider tracks in my case.

Willow Planting Guide (c) Mammoth Willow

From the information provided on various websites I selected a single variety of Hybrid willow, Dasyclados, which seemed to grow a thicker stem than most other varieties, ideal for logs! I figured at a 1m spacing I'd need 200 plants. Willow is provided in slips/whips which are basically a section of stem cut to length. They are generally available in 1ft. 2ft or 3ft lengths. Research indicates that longer the whip, the better chance of good establishment, so to maximise my chances I orders 200 x 3ft lengths from The Willow Bank. The other order I placed (on ebay) was for 200 rabbit guards, as I've got bunnies everywhere! It seems that rabbits love the taste of willow, and I wasn't about to provide a costly snack for the little furry fellows........

The goal:

 4 Year Old Willow grown in Ireland. 

Welcome to my blog!

I have embarked upon a project to plant willow (Short Rotation Coppice SRC)  for log production at home in County Wicklow, Ireland. We heat our (remote rural) family home with a boiler stove, and my hope and aspiration is to become self sufficient in terms of fuel for heating. I plan to track my progress here so that it may act as a guide for others considering similar ideas!

First some background. We moved into this house in 2015. It was constructed in 1979 so required some upgrades! We externally insulated the property, installed 12" of attic insulation and new A rated doors and windows throughout. We installed a boiler stove as the main source of heat, with a back-up high efficiency oil boiler for back-up. We also have a pair of solar thermal panels on the roof to provide hot water during the summer months.

The house came with a 3 acre field which I struggled to identify a good use for. Sure, I could rent it to a local farmer, but the rent would be minimal, and there would be the privacy factor, having someone else coming onto our property. late in 2016 I settled on the idea of growing trees for our own use. what to plant was the next question................