Growing Ash for firewood

[Bijela]

Someone may correct me, but from memory when we burned Ash it didn't generate as much heat as other woods and burned really fast.

[jansman]

That is correct. It is a wood that doesn’t have to be dried for too long though,and in my situation I get a lot for nothing.

[XRS001]

I heard the suggestion today that I grow Ash trees on oe waste land to use for firewood. Is this as good an idea as it sounds? I have about 1/5 of an acre of pretty rough ground that grows brambles and a fair few annual weeds of various kinds. The soil isn't very good at all, definitely no use for a veg garden or anything like that, so it's mostly been left alone.

Growing trees would be better for privacy, and it'd make good use of something that's just left to nature right now. Thoughts?

Ash, Hazel, Oak, Willow, English Alder, sycamore, Field Maple, Horse Chestnut, Sweet Chestnut, Hawthorn, Midlands Hawthorn, Hornbeam, Box, yew and quite a few more trees can be coppiced and this can be a very good way of growing your firewood in a renewable and sustainable manner which also creates wildlife habitat and captures more carbon than cutting the branches every few years.

On the right logs you could also grow mushrooms.

[XRS001]

In planting a new wood I would avoid growing Ash due to die back. It does affect young trees and it could become like Dutch Elm disease. Dead young Elms are however a good bushcrfters resource for standing deadwood. Elm suckers from the root, & is common in Hedgerows. This usually indicates that at some point there was a giant ancient Elm in the vicinity.Elms used to be the dominant woodland species in Britain's woods. The ancient wildwood were giant Elms for about several thousand tears until a brief warming period in the Bronze age wiped out Elms in South Central England clearing the way for population increase and grater amounts of Agriculture.

I digress

Plant a mix of species which all coppice.

[XRS001]

There is evidence of coppicing in Europe dating back the the Neolithic

[Rusty74]

I wonder why the land is no good for veggies , unless it has pollution on it you can grow on it , first off turn the land over get a rotavator in there unless it has loads of building rubble in there then i would level it and then put raised beds in line the rasied beds with something that lets water soak though but keeps weeds out we used a heavy membrane in ours , make sure to leave the beds a wheelbarrow apart that way well you get the idea then get a whacker and run that between the beds to firm the ground now either membrane it and gravel or membran and slab or bark chip what ever you like , fill the raised beds with horse manure the first 12inch i made mine 2 foot high with a cap round to sit on when weeding and planting make the beds no bigger than 8ft x 4ft as 4 ft means you can reach in from both sides easy to the middle ,

You can grow a huge amount in raised beds and if you make covers for the bed out od 3 x 2 and then fix polycarbonate sheet on that the greenhouse type 4mm cheap you can slide the covers on in winter for winter crops and also i forgot to say you must drill holes in the top capping to fit the blue water pipe in over the bed to make hoosp for netting to keep moggies out and stop the birds getting your strawberries if you do them .

to grow tree for firewood you need a lot of space as someone said plant acre year one then year 2 and so on and you would be looking at 5 years min i would say before you get a log worth burning , our eucalyptus was a tiny little thing when we put it in now it is 8 years on and just big enough to harvest but think once chopped you are finished no tree no more wood you would need acres to rotate
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just a small part of our garden we now have a large patch of open ground to for spuds and lots of bee attraction flowers lol , grow strawberries and lettuce if nothing else you will be the love of the family , don't use chemical and then taste a real strawberry and a lettuce that i a lettuce not chemicals

that looks a lovely set up you have there mate and very similar to mine

[steptoe]

that looks a lovely set up you have there mate and very similar to mine

Cheers rusty it took some hard work when we moved in the garden was just that a garden and a huge arch in the middle that blew away in the gales 8 years ago lol i got up one morningg looked out the kitche and said tothw wife thats funny i can see the canal lol , the arch was flat the big huge vines had gone lol .

I would do a full garden pic before and after lol as i say it took hard work the ground i rotovated took the wife and i a struggle as the house next door has a big cyprus and the roots all came our way plus all the roots from our trees and well we had to stop and dig round roots trace them back and then cut off , the raised beds have been added to and another this year i am trying to scale back but now wit hthe price of food i intend to grow more and what we do not use will be shared out , i say sod it us brits did it during the war we can do it again , i know people tell us we were born30 years to late lol , i know the war years were hard but people helped each other i know there were well still the them and us people but people helped each other .

Back to the subject i yesterday racked up enough silver birch twiglets to make 50 faggots and still more are falling , i make them twist and then put in to store boxes in the greenhouse or poly tunnel , i am gettign a kelly kettle that i will be reviewing as well so the birsh will be used in that along with some of the homemae fatwood .

[Rusty74]

that looks a lovely set up you have there mate and very similar to mine

Cheers rusty it took some hard work when we moved in the garden was just that a garden and a huge arch in the middle that blew away in the gales 8 years ago lol i got up one morningg looked out the kitche and said tothw wife thats funny i can see the canal lol , the arch was flat the big huge vines had gone lol .

I would do a full garden pic before and after lol as i say it took hard work the ground i rotovated took the wife and i a struggle as the house next door has a big cyprus and the roots all came our way plus all the roots from our trees and well we had to stop and dig round roots trace them back and then cut off , the raised beds have been added to and another this year i am trying to scale back but now wit hthe price of food i intend to grow more and what we do not use will be shared out , i say sod it us brits did it during the war we can do it again , i know people tell us we were born30 years to late lol , i know the war years were hard but people helped each other i know there were well still the them and us people but people helped each other .

Back to the subject i yesterday racked up enough silver birch twiglets to make 50 faggots and still more are falling , i make them twist and then put in to store boxes in the greenhouse or poly tunnel , i am gettign a kelly kettle that i will be reviewing as well so the birsh will be used in that along with some of the homemae fatwood .

kelly kettles are a great bit of kit mate