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Birch Regeneration

Started by nativewolf, October 20, 2021, 07:01:06 AM

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barbender

We get some pretty nice white birch on some sites. It tends to do better over towards Lake Superior. The biggest, clearest white birch I've ever seen was over that way, where the ground is a red iron tinted gravel and ledge rock. Beautiful Spruce and Birch, whereas the balsam at 4" was completely hollow🤷‍♂️ So I don't know if it is the cooler, milder lake effect micro- climate or the soil. Or a combination of those factors. I'm not a forester😊
Too many irons in the fire

SwampDonkey

Site probably. I've seen white birch grow nice on wetter ground sometimes. Not ideal site. But the fir can't take wet and if over topped by the birch, even worst. :D But on a raised spot in there out of the wet a fir can grow to be 20". Sneaky buggers. ;D But a lot of the birch on wet land here is grey birch. Seen one mill owner thin a lot of grey birch on wet ground. It's just a big shrub, but looks a lot like white birch. But leaves are deltoid and male catkins are singles and bark is tight to the trunk, not shedding. Fir definitely needs thinned and more than once but on the better sites. Waste of time on wet ground.
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

Southside

Used to get peeler cores from Columbia Forest Products for firewood.  Lots of folks used them for fence posts and they actually did OK.  Made for great firewood.  Had to pay for those.  On the other hand they would deliver for free the butt flare cut offs.  Ummm - yea, there is a reason they gave those away.  For sure they provided plenty of BTU's, only probem was those BTU's were provided while attempting to get those butt flares into some sort of firewood sized chunk of wood.  
Franklin buncher and skidder
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Riehl Edger
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Enough cows to ensure there is no spare time.
White Oak Meadows

SwampDonkey

I'm surprised they even allowed but flare wood through the gate. It had to be bucked for grade on the landing up here or it was never loaded on the truck. They had their own truck hired to come get your logs.

Yellow birch is great firewood, right up there with sugar maple. Up in this region we have very little oak at all for firewood. Beech used to be great, but hard to find any that isn't mostly rotten because of disease. It's doing a number on my yard beech, slowly killing it.
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

Southside

Maybe it was the distance? This was out of the Presque Isle plant by the airport. 
Franklin buncher and skidder
JD Processor
Woodmizer LT Super 70 and LT35 sawmill, KD250 kiln, BMS 250 sharpener and setter
Riehl Edger
Woodmaster 725 and 4000 planner and moulder
Enough cows to ensure there is no spare time.
White Oak Meadows

SwampDonkey

Quote from: Southside on October 24, 2021, 10:14:41 AM
Maybe it was the distance? This was out of the Presque Isle plant by the airport.
Same buyer as here, we dealt with Rick Bouche. That's 40 minutes away. Dan Morrisey did the trucking, he lives in Bairdsville, NB.
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

Coastallogger

Quote from: SwampDonkey on October 24, 2021, 02:54:23 AM
I'm surprised they even allowed but flare wood through the gate. It had to be bucked for grade on the landing up here or it was never loaded on the truck. They had their own truck hired to come get your logs.

Yellow birch is great firewood, right up there with sugar maple. Up in this region we have very little oak at all for firewood. Beech used to be great, but hard to find any that isn't mostly rotten because of disease. It's doing a number on my yard beech, slowly killing it.
For me, a good element of a quality firewood is ease of splitting. Using a splitter is a pain. Birch is just a pleasure to split with an axe. So much better than oak.
Building 20X20 dovetail log cabin off grid.

barbender

I don't know, not much splits nicer than straight grained red oak.
Too many irons in the fire

Coastallogger

Quote from: barbender on October 24, 2021, 12:23:43 PM
I don't know, not much splits nicer than straight grained red oak.
I see. Maybe I had a bad experience. It was stringy, and just solid as a rock. No chance at all with a maul, and the splitter was slow due to it being so stringy. Maybe it was the type of oak, or the time of year, or the size of it or something.
Building 20X20 dovetail log cabin off grid.

Southside

Around here I would say you fell for the old "give him a piece of gum" trick.

Whoomp, whoomp, whump, whump, thud, maul falls to the ground, guy is exhausted. Me "Oh look, you have a dent started, keep going, swing harder".
:D
Franklin buncher and skidder
JD Processor
Woodmizer LT Super 70 and LT35 sawmill, KD250 kiln, BMS 250 sharpener and setter
Riehl Edger
Woodmaster 725 and 4000 planner and moulder
Enough cows to ensure there is no spare time.
White Oak Meadows

Coastallogger

Quote from: Southside on October 24, 2021, 12:58:06 PM
Around here I would say you fell for the old "give him a piece of gum" trick.

Whoomp, whoomp, whump, whump, thud, maul falls to the ground, guy is exhausted. Me "Oh look, you have a dent started, keep going, swing harder".
:D
It came from my own yard, so that isn't it. But you are describing my experience in very vivid detail :)
Building 20X20 dovetail log cabin off grid.

barbender

Trees from the white oak family are stringy and horrid to split. Red oak pops open nice and clean, except around knots and crotches. 
Too many irons in the fire

SwampDonkey

Yellow birch is harder to split then white birch. White birch needs little effort to split.
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

barbender

Most white birch, I have into butt logs where the grain is curly and they were tough to split. But yes, usually the hardest splitting part of white birch is the bark👍🏻
Too many irons in the fire

SwampDonkey

Yellow birch is real twisty grain to split up this way. Just as tough as sugar maple. On some real old trees, you can see the spiral twist in it just from the bark. :D I remember big white birch left behind in piles roadside on crown lands. Great big logs. Well, in an area full of camps and DNR camp grounds that disappeared quick years back. :D
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

mike_belben

Soon as i read that i thought the same as southside.. 'He musta had a black gum.'  It can easily look like a sickly oak.


  That stuff stalls splitters to the point you get a chainsaw to free it. 
Praise The Lord

WDH

One of the first trees to develop fall leaf color, and the color is a pleasing deep red.  

Mike, I suspect that your blackgums are red now.  
Woodmizer LT40HDD35, John Deere 2155, Kubota M5-111, Kubota L2501, Nyle L53 Dehumidification Kiln, and a passion for all things with leafs, twigs, and bark.  hamsleyhardwood.com

wisconsitom

Down in my cedar swamp (white-cedar), a common associate is paper birch.  A forester once told me the whole area had burned in the 1930s and that had set the stage for the forest we're looking at now.  Cedar and birch both love nothing better than some burned up, charred ground to germinate their seeds.

From fire came the coolest, moistest, most "northern"-looking forest type.

One oddity is here and there a birch came up right alongside a cedar and the two have lived together, the birch trunk actually winding around the cedar trunk, then zooming up higher, being a faster grower.  They are friends for life!

Some big cedar back in there too, especially off my property and into the next twenty.  80-footers, that's getting pretty tall for 2nd and 3rd generation stuff.  White pine and balsam poplar, with a smattering of aspen, black ash, sugar maple, a birch that looks like a hybrid between yellow birch and paper, and which grows only in the wettest areas where all the springs are, one or two bur oak saplings, not an oak area, but cedar, white pine and paper birch are the main players.

Best paper birch stands I know of are up Barbender's way, along Minnesota's North Shore.  I bet that area burned up on one or more occasions.
Ask me about hybrid larch!

newoodguy78

That gum sounds like elm around here ,about your only chance of splitting it with a maul is after a week of subzero temperatures with a stiff north wind whipping. Even then it can make you wish long johns weren't put on that morning  :D

SwampDonkey

Quote from: wisconsitom on October 26, 2021, 09:01:31 AM
Down in my cedar swamp (white-cedar), a common associate is paper birch.  A forester once told me the whole area had burned in the 1930s and that had set the stage for the forest we're looking at now.  Cedar and birch both love nothing better than some burned up, charred ground to germinate their seeds.
I have a couple acres of 'cedar ground' that was clearcut, and it has a lot of white birch mixed with aspen and balsam poplar coming now. Of course the white birch had to have been there already. And the area did burn around 1910. I've found old cedar stumps with charred wood. And that also resulted in some huge aspen growing to 40" diameters in there and close to 100 feet. All decadent now, but dad cut most of them before they went rotten, 300 cords on 10 acres, just the aspen. Hauled a load every night to Houlton, Maine that February. Aspen after fire is way better stuff than from sucker growth.
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

mike_belben

Quote from: WDH on October 25, 2021, 07:26:43 AM

Mike, I suspect that your blackgums are red now.  
yes sir.  none of it quite pops like new england but id say we are at peak color right now.  still have greens and have not had the browns take over yet.  hickories are yellow and sourwood, gum and maple are bright red.  
Praise The Lord

SwampDonkey

Large tooth aspen, for effect. Champion of the north. ;D



"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

mudfarmer

Late to the party but have some yellow and grey birch Regen pics..

Last harvest on this site had quite a bit of patch cuts and wide wide skid trails due to wind throw. Where there was a seed source these are coming in pretty thick with birch. Where trees were left is filling in with beech.

50ac site, whether ridge top or valley bottom this trend is holding. These pics are from a ridge top, soil type: bedrock  ;D



 
Birch foreground


 


 

 

Likely seed source



 

Here through the beech you can almost see where some sugar maples etc were left




wisconsitom

Ask me about hybrid larch!

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