Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Rebekah Wilce <rebekah.wilce@gmail.com>]

Tameson, John et al,

I just learned a little more about this in a permaculture workshop  
today.  A coppice would be a tree cut off at stump level and allowed  
to grow shoots.  A pollard is cut off higher up, at about two meters  
as Wikipedia has it.  Both create a different tree shape than a tree  
not treated in such a way-- more shoots coming out of the main  
trunk.  This lends itself to easy regular harvesting of shoots to be  
used as firewood, fencing, stakes, in weaving and sculpture such as  
with willow, etc. and radically increases the tree's lifespan.  It  
can be done on a 1-25 yr. rotation.  Most deciduous hardwoods will  
coppice, so I would guess they could also be pollarded.  In doing a  
site analysis and assessment as part of the course today, we found an  
old apple tree that had been coppiced.  I believe I understood  
correctly that the cutting would be in late winter, so probably right  
around now.  Interestingly to me, coppicing was the background of the  
medieval economy!  (This is all from Ethan Roland of AppleSeed  
Permaculture, who taught the second part of a three-part course today  
at the Sullivan County Community College in New York.)

Bekah

> *Pollarding* is a woodland
> management<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodland_management>method of
> encouraging lateral branches by cutting off a tree stem or minor
> branches two metres or so above ground level. The tree is given a  
> year to
> regrow, after the initially cutting, but once begun, *pollarding*  
> require
> annual maintenance by pruning <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ 
> Pruning>. This
> will eventually result in a somewhat expanded (or swollen) nodes  
> topping the
> tree trunk with multiple new side and top shoots growing from it.
> A tree that has been pollarded is known as a *pollard*. A tree  
> which has not
> been pollarded is called a *maiden* or *maiden tree*; which also  
> refers to
> the fact that pollarding is normally first undertaken when the tree  
> is quite
> young. Pollarding older trees usually result in the death of the tree.
> Pollarding is sometimes abused in attempts to curb the growth of  
> older or
> taller trees. However, when performed properly it is useful in the  
> practice
> of arboriculture <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arboriculture> for tree
> management.

> OK call me stupid. What is Pollarding? I went to the website and  
> read about
> cutting trees higher than a grazing animal, but the pictures look  
> just like
> the trees in my pasture which have had no such treatment. So what  
> gives? and
> why would someone want to do that? and how is it different than any  
> other
> kind of pruning?