Woods from years ago, and how NOT to prune a tree

A couple of weeks ago I visited my parents, near Manchester. Here's some pictures of woods I used to play in as a child, and also some appalling pruning of a tree that I saw.

Here's the path at the back of my parents' house, it used to be a mining railway, but is now a haven for wildlife, probably because as a strip of trees a few metres wide it is almost entirely "edge":Carrying on from there we headed past a gully that I remembered having much smaller trees in it!The really weird bit was coming to piece of ground that's split into two levels with a slope between them. We used to set up a ramp and jump our bikes from the higher to the lower level, but you'd struggle to ride through it now:
Interesting to see what can happen to some bare land if left alone for 20 years.

One really cool thing we saw was a Great Tit making its home in this hole that a woodpecker must have made in a dead tree:
Anyway, onto the poor attempt at tree surgery that we saw. This was on a bit of land just at the edge of someone's garden, so not actually part of the wood. They'd pruned off some lower branches using a chainsaw (probably up a ladder with a chainsaw meant for use on the ground...). Here's the results of their work.

First, the stump of a branch that they seem to have just hacked off, with no attempt to tidy it up:
Then one that's a bit tidier, but where they overcut and went into the main trunk:
And finally, one where they didn't make an undercut so the branch has peeled back bark from the trunk as it came down:
None of this is going to help the health of the tree, opening it up to infection, etc. It'll be interesting to see how it's doing when I'm next up there...

Mike

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Chestnut pruning

Sweet chestnut trees often grow quite branchy, and when you're after straight poles that isn't so helpful. Increasing the density of the coppice can improve straightness, as they all race up for the light, and we've done some planting. But we're trying an experiment with pruning as well.

Some of the stools we cut last winter are regrowing nice and straight:
Others are much more branchy, presumably due to genetic differences:
So, what we're trying is pruning the side branches off these stools to see if they grow straighter and taller as a result. As a control we've left some of the branchy ones un-pruned. We'll prune again next winter and see what happens - it'll be a few years before we really know!

Today we did our first delivery of wood fuel on foot!
We'd driven, but parked the car on the road up the hill from the wood, by a friend's house, and we dropped the logs in for them on the way back.

This week should be busy - we'll be in the wood every day except Thursday, when we're visiting Tracy's Mum and brother. We don't celebrate Christmas, so as far as we're concerned it's a good opportunity to get on with some coppicing and enjoy what looks like being a drier and warmer week than some days have been recently.

Mike

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