Improving Your Woodlot
A Master Class
Part 1
With the present economic uncertainty what can you do to protect your investments, especially your homestead? No one knows or has solid answers which only compounds your stress levels.
There is one improvement you can make that will provide a huge economic return for your investment of time.
Most homesteads have some wooded acres, whether it’s along the fence line or a larger wooded area. As homesteaders develop a plan for their homestead, they need to include an active forest management plan for their woodlot. Implementing a forest management practice plan now can improve the economic benefit of the woodlots when future timber markets rebound.
To use an analogy, the garden is the important part of any homestead. To have a successful garden, the gardener spends a lot of time pulling weeds and pruning so vegetable plants have space, nutrients, water and sunlight to grow and produce a bountiful crop. The woods have larger plants but they need the same help as the vegetables so that the woodlot can produce a bumper crop: strong, straight, disease-free trees.
The woods are full of poor quality species and poorly formed or damaged trees that compete for the food, space, water, and sunlight. These trees are ‘weeds’ and must be removed.
The forest management practice that provides the same benefits as weeding the garden is called Timber Stand Improvement or TSI. TSI is the practice used by the landowner to identify potential crop trees and implement practices that improves the growing habitat of those trees. As a former state forester would say, ‘The woods are a garden, and the owner is working with larger plants, but the concept is the same.’
The basic idea of TSI is potential crop trees (for timber, veneers, etc.) are identified and then the landowner implements forest practices to provide space, nutrients, water and sunlight for those to mature into a crop tree or $$$$. The TSI practices eliminate or cut grapevines, poor quality trees, poorly formed and damaged trees (known as cull trees) and sometimes removes trees that are just too crowded.
Each landowner needs to take an inventory of their woodlot and then establish their goals as they plan to manage each area of their woods. Each tract of land is different and each landowner’s objectives are different. Those objectives might be developing wildlife habitat (deer and turkey), or protecting scenic natural areas. My wife and I choose our primary goal as saw-timber production. We needed the financial return to pay off the mortgage, pay real estate taxes and insurance, and money for future homestead projects. Your goals should be personalized and match your objectives.
One timber harvest practice is called selective tree harvest. The concept is to only cut and harvest the mature and good quality timber trees. However, over 50 or 60 years this cutting procedure reduces the wood to poor/low quality species and unmarketable trees. This practice is called High Grading, which means to harvest the best and leave the rest (weed trees). You end up with a wooded area full of nothing but firewood.
These are examples of woodlots that have had 'high grade' timber harvests. The soil type is identical to ours. Only poor quality, scrap trees are growing. The best thing that could happen to this woods is clear cutting the property and starting over.
That’s why TSI implementation is so important so the woods has a continuous number of potential crop trees in the inventory to fill those spaces.
So, Where Do I Start?
In Ohio, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) www.ohiodnr.gov provide free technical services for private land owners. The Division of Forestry has area district service foresters and the Division of Wildlife has private land game biologists to provide assistance in helping the landowner develop a plan and direct them to additional resources. One such resource is the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) www.nrcs.usda.gov which can provide financial cost sharing to help the landowner implement various forestry practices. To be eligible for the financial assistance programs, the landowner needs a certified forest management plan. Previously, the area district foresters would write the plans for the landowner, however, today almost all forestry management plans are written by Professional Consulting Foresters for a fee. The idea of paying for something we think we can do ourselves seems ridiculous. Please bear with me and I will show you some light at the end of the money drain.
In Ohio, in the 1970’s, the state legislators passed a real estate tax relief program for farmers (including many homesteaders). This is a flat base real estate tax value on agricultural use of the land. If we want our woodlands to be eligible for this tax relief, we need to have a ‘Certified Forest Management Plan’. Farmers really benefit from the Current Agricultural Use Evaluation or CAUV tax relief. My parents had a 61-acre farm in Louisville, Stark County, Ohio in 2015. The CAUV real estate tax relief was a $5600 per year savings. There are certain guidelines and a March 1st annual deadline to apply for the CAUV tax relief. Last year a friend called me because the CAUV was going to be denied on his property because the county auditor required a certified forest plan. On my advice, my friend contacted the Professional Consulting Forester in our area and had him write a plan. The cost of the written plan was high, however the cost savings on the CAUV tax relief more than covered the cost of the plan and the forestry plan will be saving him money every year into the future. He also has a workable plan for his woods and a professional forester to assist him.
My personal testimony: I have been working in forestry since 1971. I have worked with and taught along with some of the best Professional Foresters in Ohio. With that said, I still hire/contract with a professional forester when I plan to sell timber. The consulting forester does all the work of marketing the timber for sale, preparing the timber bid sheets and contacts potential timber buyers. The forester is there to assist me with the actual timber sale, the contracts, and overseeing the timber harvest, protecting my timber resource. The consulting forester gets 10% of the total sale contract. Before you blow a gasket, having a consulting forester conducting the whole process most likely will increase your final return by about 20% or more….after his 10% fee. The consulting forester also helps the landowner with any problems that may occur with the logger. In 2012 we had a timber sale and plan another before 2025. Having a knowledgeable forester marketing and managing the 2012 timber harvest made this possible because he knows our goals and restricted harvesting of immature timber.
With a certified forest management plan, you now have a blueprint for improving the woodlot. I am only going to highlight some basic forest principles, but they are good keys to get started.
Each wooded acre has a site growth potential based on soil type and the site index. On my farm, I have a wooded area that has a natural site potential to grow 744 board feet (BF) of red oak per year. With an over-crowded tree stand, our growth rate was about 300 BF per year. After implementing an aggressive TSI, our growth rates soared to about 1000 BF per acre for nearly 10 years. We have applied TSI twice since 1979 and are planning another round before our next timber harvest. The basic concept is that I work now and the woods produce economically for my benefit for the next 10+ years. If I didn’t do TSI, the trees would continue to grow but it would take 25 years or more to gain the same results I get in 10 years.
The NRCS has forest incentive programs to help cost share the labor to do the forest practices. But with or without NRCS you can start to improve your woodlot. Before you start, go online and checkout the Ohio State bulletin #697, TSI in Ohio Woodlots (out of print but linked below) or Controlling Undesirable Trees, Shrubs, and Vines in Your Woodlot.
For the rest of this week’s blog I will give you my prescription for improving your woodlot. Next time, I will get into thinning based on canopy and sunlight. As with any of my sessions, I start with the basics for the beginners, so bear with me if I start at too elementary a level for you.
Improve Your Woodlot – step by step
1. Select of an area that doesn’t require the most work. Pick out a small area with definite boundaries that you can get done and easily see your results. The typical TSI-crop tree release program takes 10-15 man hours per acre. During this time, you will:
a. Select potential crop trees
b. Kill the cull trees by either girdling, injecting herbicide and/or felling the tree
c. Cutting up trees and remove them for firewood or brush piles take additional time
d. Girdling trees with or without herbicides has great benefit. To girdle a tree, you can us an axe and frill around the base of the tree, applying herbicide into the cuts.
Frilling and girdling
Photo from Controlling Undesirable Trees, Shrubs, and Vines in Your Woodlot bulletin
Or you use a chain saw to cut a ring completely around the tree (about thigh high). Make your ring about 1” deep and it go all the way around the tree.
This box elder tree has multiple small limbs growing on it. It will never improve to become a saw log. You can see the girdled cut at the base of the tree.
One of the benefits of girdling the tree, is that the tree slowly dies, slowly reducing the canopy space it occupied. Also, after the tree dies, when you fell the tree, the dead branches usually allow the tree to fall without hanging up in good trees. Plus the potential crop trees have less damage from the falling tree.
e. Dead girdled trees are a great source of standing dry firewood.
f. Leaving gridled trees to die standing, reduces the need to use herbicides on grapevines.
2. Be able to identify tree species
3. Learn to identify the crop tree species from low grade quality species
Both of these properties are on the same ridge and receive equal rain and sun. They also were logged at the same time in 1988 and again in 2014. The picture on the left is a woodlot that has had TSI management for 40 years, removing low quality trees and grapevines. When it was logged there were specific requirements for tree size to prevent over-logging. Thousands of dollars of firewood have been sold from this lot, too. Notice how straight the trees are growing, with space between the trees for water and sunlight. The picture on the right has not had TSI management. It was high-grade logged, meaning all trees that had any value were removed and only low quality trees remain. There is no potential for future growth, the trees are small, overcrowded, and misshapen.
4. Cut all grapevines. Grapevines cause excessive damage to the woods. They grow into the tree crown and weigh the crown down under snowfalls and high winds, destroying the tree crown. They also hold trees upright when the tree is cut, making it dangerous to fell the tree.
This massive grapevine wraps itself around a number of trees in the woods, causing damage to the trees. It also makes felling those trees dangerous. The grapevine should be cut at the ground level and again about mid-thigh height when wrapped around a tree.
a. I cut grapevines twice, once at waist height and again where the vine connects to the soil. The reason I make the waist high cut is so I can see any vines I missed as I make a final survey of my work at the end of the day.
b. Grapevines should be cut everywhere it is growing out of the soil.
c. Even after the vine is cut, it can still hold the tree, as the vine twists through several trees.
d. A combination of tree gridling and cutting grapevines, allows both to die so when you do cut down the tree, the vines break and allow the tree to fall.
e. The slow dieback of a girdled tree breaks the sunlight from reaching the forest floor and helps to stop grapevine regrowth.
5. If you are using herbicides on grapevines, be sure to spray each cut vine coming out of the soil. Be careful if you have tulip poplar trees because the herbicide leaches out and downhill and can enter the tulip poplar roots, causing burn back or killing the tree. I don’t use herbicides for this reason, but choose to return to the TSI are over the next several years to do spot checks and cut any new growth of vines.
6. If you choose girdling without herbicides, cherry trees need to have 2 good rings because the cherry sap can bridge the cut ring.
7. Another advantage of girdling and letting the trees stand as they die back is it reduces the crop trees from getting sunlight on the trunk, causing new buds and limbs from growing. This is a defect that reduces the quality of the timber grade.
8. I kill damaged trees including ones with base rot, a frost crack, hollows, main branches broken, or missing crowns.
The tree on the left has base rot and a canker on the trunk. It needs removed. The tree on the right is a walnut, usually considered a high-value tree, however this walnut is covered in cankers and is a poor quality tree. It should also be removed.
9. TSI practice includes killing low species trees, like ironwood, black gun, aspen, and so forth. These have very little value as a timber product.
10. IMPORTANT: Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus) should not be cut down before it is killed with an herbicide.
a. If Ailanthus is cut down, it responds with hundreds of new sprouts from its roots.
b. The sap oil of the tree causes human health problems when absorbed through the skin. It mimics a heart attack with chest tightness and other symptoms.
c. All Tree of Heaven trees should be killed using the recommended herbicide and application procedure. It is an invasive species. In 2019, the forest service no longer recommended cutting the saplings and spraying the stumps. The new recommendation is to frill the bark (rough it up) and spray the herbicides. Do not use this wood for firewood, either.
This is a large stand of Tree of Heaven, or Ailanthus. The underground root system of these trees is enormous, spreading the species to neighboring properties. They are nearly 1/2 mile away from our property and spread seeds as well. They are considered an invasive species and special eradication programs are in place.
11. I remove all poorly formed trees, such as trees with decay, full of woodpecker holes, crooks and twists, frost cracks and trunks covered with limbs. These defects never improve or heal over.
This cherry tree will never be a saw log because of the poor limb structure. It is in a pasture which is problematic because the leaves can be poisonous to livestock.
12. On our homestead, we consider firewood a timber crop so I tend to leave trees in less crowded areas to grow for firewood production until needed.
13. At this point, you will have made a great contribution to the improvement of your woods.
The next session will cover the choosing and thinning of quality trees for the best growth results based upon diameter spacing and tree crowns.
Over the years, I have done a number of TSI projects and I have found on Northern Hardwood areas north of Route 30 in Ohio (~ -84.2° longitude), the landowner will be able to remove 10 cords (4’x4’x8’) of firewood per acre whilethe Appalachian hardwood landowner will remove about 8 cords of firewood per acre without cutting any crop trees. Then about every 10 years the woods will again produce 8 – 10 cords of firewood per acre.
If you cut and sell 8 cords of FW per acre at $150/cord, you can make over $1200 income per acre now and improve your timber growth. AND if you receive NRCS cost sharing assistance, you are making a nice homestead income.
TSI is not wood butchering. We don’t remove all the brush and trees in the understory, but protect their growth, The thick understory results in more wildlife habitat, good soil and water conservation, and prolific woodland herb growth.
As you implement TSI, you get to learn and inventory your woodlot. You discover what opportunities it provides your homestead. You will also find out what wildlife lives and travels on your homestead.
Ask me about the bear……
Until next time,
Bob
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