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.