Tag: Tree removal

Cutting back Willow Trees

We did some necessary cutting on our Willow Trees, which turned out to be ill

When we bought our property it has been neglected for 10 years. So the willow trees where very dens and big. Far too big for the type of willow tree and our windy location. So one of the first things we did was to shorten the willow trees. Not all of them but all the dangerous ones first. This was 3 years ago. 2 years later we did the remaining big trees.

Now it is time to start maintaining the willow trees. Normally you cut back every other willow tree and the next year you cut back the other trees. This keeps the habitat for the wildlife available and the willow trees that are not cut back still function as a wind breaker.

Unfortunately our willow trees are not very healthy. We have a lot of problems with the willow borer and even the small branches have holes from them. You normally would cut the trees down by the roots and hope that you can kill the larva of by drowning them with rain water. The branches need to be shredded so the larva in there get killed. The willow borer lays its eggs under need the bark and the larva eat there way up the tree about a meter.

To start a few pictures from before we started cutting down.

All of the smaller branches we cut with a hand tree saw. These branches are too small to cut with a chainsaw. But therefore this was a fun family job. The kids helped with stacking the branches to piles which the tractor could pick up and bring to where they get shredded.

We do not cut the willow trees down at ground level, but we leave a meter or so. This will be the main trunk and all new growth will be cut back every other year to this height. After a number of years this will look like the willow tree has a head with hair. This was very common in this region.

Sometimes you will find some nice things wile working in nature, like this mushroom growing on a willow tree.

We also had a bigger tree to cut down with the chainsaw. These branches we collected and brought away with the tractor and the winch.

Some more smaller willow bushes to cut back.

And piles of branches to bring to the wood chipper.

One of our friends has an organic farm where he produces eggs and he likes to use woodchips in his chicken houses. So the branches where shredded into one of his containers and put to good use. In return we get some manure from him for our garden.

Here we want to take out some willow trees which grew on the concrete. Some soil has been blow on here and the trees grew in that. Now we want to clear the concrete, so we have some more space to move around with the tractor. We have an entrance to our barn here. Also these willow trees are not rooted very well due to the concrete, so they could be blown over very easily.

We added the roots and soil we picked up to our deadwood hedge, which is not finished by far. So every time we have something like this we ad it.

Here are some pictures from after our cutting back.

Part 3 in starting for our food forest

The last big poplers to go

Before we start planting our new trees we need to take down these last 2 big poplers. These poplers are standing beside the road and outside of our fence. As we mentioned before we need to be careful how we chop them down. We need to look out for traffic and have to make sure that the main gas pipeline and our building will not be damaged. This mend that we had to take the trees down in parts. Luckily we have a telehandler with a 9 meter reach and a basket to go on the end.

We started off by cutting off the limbs. After reaching the 9 meter height we had to cut the top off and pulled it over with a rob.

Next thing we cleared all the branches out of the way, so that we can move freely with the telehandler. And now comes the exciting part. We secured the main trunk to the basket on the front of the telehandler and then we cut the tree near the ground. We lifted the trunk over our fence and laid it down on the ground.

For the second tree we did the same.

We were surprised about the small amount of branches coming of these 2 trees.

Cleaning up did not take much time.

Our suspicion that these trees were dangerous has been confirmed by the substantial damage done by the willow borer visible in the tree stumps.

Now we are ready to plant our new trees, but this will be for a different blogpost.

Part 2 in starting for our food forest

The first of the 3 poplers to go.

In part 1 in starting our food forest we cleared a part of our property from some smaller poplers. Now it is time to take out a bigger tree standing within our fencing. Luckily this tree was in a position where we could just cut it down. No danger for the underground main gas pipeline and space for falling over and putting the tractor with our winch in position to secure the tree.

We expect the tree to be rotten in its core, so we attached the line of the winch high in the tree and put the line on tension. After that I cut the tree for ¾ and pulled over the tree to snap of the last bit with the winch. This made the falling very controllable.

All that is left to do, some cleaning up.

First we start by removing the branches, which will be chopped. The trunk is cut into manageable peace’s, of which the bigger one will be put on our sawmill. Popler wood is used for bee hives. The smaller trunk parts are going into our dead wood hedge.

The next thing to do is cutting down the last 2 bigger poples beside the road, but this is for a next time.