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.