I was able to spend a little time this weekend working on clearing out the area our state forester suggested that has the correct soil and conditions for a Black Walnut stand. I had some help from my neices kids in picking up, hulling, and washing half a barrel of walnuts earlier in the fall when they were coming down. There is about 8 acres in that area. The first acre, I pretty much cleared, but most of the rest of it will just get the underbrush taken out. I got enough Honey Locust, Ash, Ironwood, and other hardwoods out of that to get a pretty good pile of wood for the next few years. I have about 15 cord stacked out in the field in front of this area that I still need to split. Evening work with the new light bar on the truck. This pic is from before it was cut up and stacked. This is what a lot of the Honey Locust looks like in this area... Great firewood, but good gloves, steel insoles in my boots, and lots of extra innertubes for the tractor tires are good things to have... LOL This one is about 10" diameter and quite thorny. The forester marked it with red paint for it to be cut... Like I wouldn't notice it... LOL
Many of them aren't too bad, but there sure are a lot of them with clusters with up to 18" spiny thorns coming out of the clusters. Then 10' away there might be one with almost no thorns at all... I know I've gotten pretty good at changing innertubes on the tractor tires.
i would girdle those honey locusts if they were growing on my property. I've cut them for firewood many times. the thorns end up in tires and easily stab me thru leather gloves. plus the wound always gets infected. once C+S+S they take 3-4 years to season. even burning in an OWB. craziest part is when splitting you'll find thorns existing inside the fresh split. As if the tree grew around the thorn? that just boggles the mind.
You mean girdle instead of fell? Why? Curious. My dad had some land with those thorny trees, I hated tractor flats.
The common wisdom is those thorns were defense against mammoths. The pods are very attractive to large animals. Neat fact, the seeds need to go through the Digestive tract of large animal before they will germinate. I swapped my tractor tires 10 ply R4 STYLE. Best move I ever made.
Geez. Pretty sure I’ve cut and split some honey locust before but never seen anything like that. That’s crazy. Nice work with the clearing.
Girdle. leave for a year or two. Come back and drop. Thorns will have dropped. This is according to a buddy who is over run with the stuff. Ouch!
Yes, girling is the way to go, the longer standing dead the better, I just like to get to them before they get dangerous, but the heartwood doesn't get punky even after many years of even laying on the ground. I have gone through the woods and girdled HUNDREDs of them while I was cleaning out grapevine and honeysuckle. This is one I missed... We have a lot of woods to walk through...LOL Although I've never seen them "drop" the thorns (most tend to stay intact), they do pop off much easier while limbing and sliding the chainsaw bar up the trunk. I try to cut the thorns off where they drop unless I have to drop one across a trail... I hate having to do that, but sometimes there's no alternative. Some of these HL are leaners and twisted up depending on the sun light conditions they have grown under. Locust and Cherry are shade intolerant and seek the sunlight as they grow. Shade tolerant trees like Sugar Maple and Beech tend to grow straighter trunks out in the woods. Out in the woods, I drop them the way they want to go... I do play around with directional felling enough so that when something up by the buildings needs cut, I can at least be confident in being able to drop em where I want em. I have some areas where I haven't girdled them so I can harvest Locust for lumber and keep some going so the next generation can have some of this awesome firewood. I'm planning on a deck for the house when I get caught up too.
Nice looking score and nice you can work at your leisure. I think id pass on that honey locust though. I hate running into wild raspberries when im cutting let alone that!
The multi-floral rose bushes out in the woods are the worst. Those thickets are impenetrable... The ones I can get to with the tractor, I back into them with the bush hog and then spray the crap out of them. Every little fragment has the potential to root and create another thicket if it touches damp dirt. I usually have to spray a couple of times to get rid of them. Thanks, Louis Bromfield... You had a lot of great conservation ideas but the one of bringing over the multifloral rose wasn't one of your finest... We have them all over here, tough to get rid of.
Help a brother out, stupid question time...What is girdling and why does it make the thorns go away??
Girdling is cutting off a ring of the bark and cambium (sap wood) layer around the base of the tree. Everything above it dies because it no longer receives nutrients. Eta: Girdling - Wikipedia
Maybe thats what i meant. Either way if it has thorns i hate working near it. One growing at the edge of our woods just below birdfeeder. Birds and night time critters use it for cover. Have to trim it back 2-3 times during the warm weather.
