THIS is a fairly quiet time of year for most forms of gardening activity but the exception is the management of trees.
Early winter is the best time of year to both plant and fell them.
My enthusiasm for trees has, over the years, led to me planting too many, and some were badly sited and too close together. One of my biggest mistakes was a collection of fruit trees – apple, pear, plum and cherry – surrounding the vegetable plot. They never produced much fruit, partly because they were too close to each other and too close to a tall hedge and partly because I have active and efficient squads of bullfinches which eat the flower buds every spring.
Then, as the trees grew larger, their roots spread under the vegetable beds, poaching water and nutrients, and I started getting fist-sized cabbages and marble-sized turnips. Something had to be done. The chainsaw had to be sharpened.
All fruit trees produce fine timber that can be used for a number of decorative and practical purposes. They also produce exceptionally good firewood – it is slow burning and aromatic and doesn’t require excessive seasoning if it’s cut at this time of year. By mid-November pretty well all deciduous trees in this country are dormant. The sap has withdrawn into the root system which means that the timber will season quicker.
So for the past couple of weeks I’ve been a lumberjack, using the more tolerable intervals in the weather to convert my problem fruit trees into a substantial and very satisfying stack of fire logs.
There have been some challenges. I managed to avoid felling anything on top of the greenhouse but one tree did knock over the stake supporting the garden tap, adding a fountain as a new garden feature. Briefly the lumberjack became a plumber.
Then, of course, there is the problem of what to do about the stumps. Life is too short to dig them out and because I’m an organic gardener I’m suspicious of the chemicals you can buy that are supposed to rot them away. The solution I came up with involves recycling. I cut the stump as close to the ground as I can without taking the edge off the chainsaw. Then, as I burn the timber, I bring out the ashes and use them to build a low mound over the stump. In the spring grasses and weeds start to grow in the wood ash (this is the one positive contribution from that most horrible of weeds, the creeping buttercup) and I can run the lawnmower over the gently ramped mound. The eventual ‘lawn’ undulates a little but there’s no sign of the stumps and the mower deals with any root suckers the ex-tree might try to produce.
‘You can plant a container-grown tree at any time of the year but bare-root saplings are much cheaper and they should be planted in early winter. Even evergreen trees, which do not go into full dormancy, thrive best if they’re planted around now.
One of the main causes for newly planted trees failing is drought stress and, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, this is not likely to be a problem at present. The winter rain will wash the soil down around the roots eliminating air pockets and giving them a chance to consolidate themselves before any hard frosts come in February and well before growth starts next spring.
I’m feeling slightly guilty about all the trees I’ve felled in the past few weeks so now I’m going to plant some more.
* dick.warner@examiner.ie
a d v e r t i s e m e n t
This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Monday, November 30, 2009
