Straightening severely leaning hardwood poles & saplings after harvest

[mn_timber]

Any practical advice on best practices for straightening selective high quality / high value hardwood poles & saplings that were leaned over during harvest?  Especially Yellow Birch, Red Oak, and Basswood.  This is in north central Minnesota.  This is a continuous cover shelterwood with White Pine, northern hardwoods, and Oak.  Some of these leaners are so nice that we hate to abandon them without trying to salvage them.  

Note that we are the landowner and the consumer.  We produce native Minnesota hardwood and White Pine millwork products including a whole lot of very valuable rustic grade products.  So we don't freak out over every bark scrape, etc.  If you're going to make an omelette you've got break a few eggs.  If you're going to perform a silvicultural harvest in a continuous cover shelterwood you're going to damage some high quality advanced regeneration.  It's a blessing to have it in the first place.  The Yellow Birch you see here had no business surviving the intentional felling and skidding that happened over and next to it.  It's a bonus survivor.  But we want to take advantage of our good fortune.  We're just telling you this to put it in perspective before you yell at us.

Thank you in advance and have a blessed and safe day out there!

[Ron Wenrich]

My opinion is to cut them down and allow a better one to grow.  The skinned bark is an avenue for future rot.

Shelterwood is a type of regeneration where you allow your reproduction to get started before removing the overstory.  It works if you thin out your stand to levels that encourage regeneration of more tolerant species but not so much to encourage lesser wanted and more intolerant species.  Eventually the overstory is removed to release the new generation.  Is this your mgmt scheme?  Or are you doing a system of continuous thinnings?  Or a series of diameter limit cuts?  Eventually you have to consider regeneration in the stand.

[firefighter ontheside]

I've pulled pines with ropes that were laid over from heavy snow.  It can work, but takes a lot of support in all directions to keep the tree straight until it grows enough new wood that will support it.  As Ron said, the bark on that tree is damaged and the tree probably wont produce the quality you're wanting.

[BradMarks]

Ron knows. That has a better use as small firewood.

[mike_belben]

There are hippies growing arched poplar and other fast growing species on purpose to make the curved frame pieces of their artsy mud huts.  


Personally i would also lament its booboo and cull it, but if i set out to save it, id treat it just like a tomato plant.  Lash a pole to it for support and straightening with loop lashings that can be tightened.  Use rug scraps to keep the lashings from hurting the bark.  Guy wire it up straight and give it time.  Water it during dry spells.  The wound at the buttlog is probably the biggest issue. 


I did save some draped over cherry this way.

[WV Sawmiller]

   I'm with Ron. I'd think if was over a couple inches in diameter the juice ain't worth the squeeze trying to salvage it.

[barbender]

I had a couple of bur oak yard trees that got laid over in a storm. I stood them back up (but oak is pretty flexible and tough) and 10 years on, one you can't tell and the other leans about 15°- fine by me for a yard tree. However, I did scrape them a bit and that damage would show itself in the wood. As a yard tree, I'm not concerned about that. If it was for future timber production, I would've pushed the "reset" button😊

[Southside]

Welcome to the Forum.  First, nobody is going to yell at you, if they do - let me know, my bite is way worse than my bark.  

Like the others said, likely it's a valiant effort for a lost cause.  I too have tried it, actually just this week I was over in a Yellow Pine patch that got beat up bad by an ice storm after I had thinned it.  Out of sheer determination, after the storm, I tried to save one based on the principle that I had left it for a purpose, it was going to make it, danG I was going to prove it would work, and have a success story to tell.  Did I mention I can be hard headed?  Anyway I happened to pass by that area and smugly detoured to look at how my work was coming along.  Happy to say, it was doing great - as worm food.  Snapped off 15' in the air and lying on the ground.  Now I have to remember to drag a saw with me one day and drop the dead stick so something else can grow in its place and make sure I don't trip over the section lying on the ground that will help the green briers get a good foot hold.   :  

[thecfarm]

I myself have never tried to save one like that. A quick nip at ground level lets something else grow. It's hard to save something like that. In my forest for every one that looks like that, there are 100 more that look match better. There are better trees to save!!

[doc henderson]

no harm in trying.  I would center the pith of that log for sure.  now we see where the stress in logs comes from.  :D

[Ron Scott]

What Ron W. said; especially if you have quite a few trees in this situation. 

Try to do damage control and release or remove any such bent or damaged trees concurrently with the logging operation.

[Clark]

If you're harvesting or skinning up any oak I would be more concerned about oak wilt than the advanced regeneration. 

Ron's questioning of your naming convention is spot on, it sounds like you are thinning hardwoods and not doing a shelterwood.

Clark

[Tarm]

Ron W. & Clark

A continuous cover irregular shelterwood is a regeneration method where enough canopy is removed to start a new cohort of tolerant and mid tolerant species. Good quality saplings and poles are retained for the next rotation. The overstory is never completely removed, maintaining partial overhead shade for the new seedlings. This is like a series of thinnings but attention is paid to basal area to promote regeneration and tree quality.

[mn_timber]

We appreciate the good comments and the conversation.

We went back and inventoried the entire 12 acre harvest area closely and there were really only 3-4 high quality advanced regeneration leaners.  Other than Maple which we don't worry about because we have way too much of it (so we're weeding the excess out), and ironwood.  We went out of our way to mow down all the ironwood we could with the rotary saw head on the feller/buncher (note this is an amazing tool; this can't be done productively with a bar/chain of any type).  We scarred too many trees of multiple cohorts with our full tree skidding.  Many of these were bonus trees that were left on the edge of the narrow skid trails to protect the next trees behind, but nonetheless they are scarred.  Note that the skid trail width needs to be wide enough to provide the sunlight we want to favor the shade intolerants which we desire vs the shade tolerants which we always get too much of.

Good catch on the scarring of the Red Oak and the risk of wilt.  However, we are about 100 miles north of the wilt at this point.  We try to be diligent about oak scarring, but when it happens we don't concern ourselves with the risk of wilt.  This will change as the wilt moves north.

This type of management, which we find ourselves doing more and more, is a hybrid between even age and multiple ages and shade tolerants vs intolerants.  It is most definitely Irregular Shelterwood - Continuous Cover.  We have 4 cohorts (and now adding a 5th) on this site, and we are maintaining each of them.  It is a messy, complicated, expensive way to manage timberland.  But it is also ecologically authentic, fitting the natural disturbance pre-European history of this area and this timber type (mixed hardwood / conifer).  Look up and follow Robert Seymour from Maine on YouTube.   And if you want to dive deep, read Ecological Forest Management (Franklin, etal) and its companion Ecological Silviculture (Palik, DaMato, etal), focusing especially on the regeneration approaches.

Our biggest challenge right now is trying to find a safe and financially sustainable way to perform this type of harvest, and to minimize felling/skidding damage to quality advanced regeneration.  We are using the harvest activity to remove as much undesirable shade tolerant regeneration as possible.  My next experiment will be with a small rotary saw (not chain/bar) feller/buncher and a forwarder with bar, such as a Rotobec.  We will be cutting off the large tops from the sawtimber boles, leaving the big wolfy tops right where they lay without moving them an inch, carefully placed in the desirable regeneration to hopefully deter herbivory.  And leaving the pure pulp trees where they lay completely.  Undesirable regeneration will be mowed and left open (no tops) to encourage desirable regeneration.  There is little to no Aspen (a valuable pulp species) in these sites.  The hardwood (maple, birch, oak) and Balsam pulpwood is worth so little in northern Minnesota that it is worth less than its nutrient value, so we're leaving it behind rather than arbitrarily providing employment for the loggers and truckers (and avoiding the burning of climate warming fossil fuels in the process).  We get all the firewood we need from sawmill slabs and merchandising of the larger boles, and all of the biomass we need to run our sawmill, kilns and manufacturing from the chips that we produce from marginal/damaged faces of our sawlogs at the sawmill.  

Anyone have any experience with this type of logging?  Thanks.

[SwampDonkey]

Like some of the other fellas, cut them bent ones down. They are ruined. Yellow birch is pretty much ruined when bent. A sugar maple can stand back up if it is not one that reached 40 feet for light with a skinny stem. When I am thinning with a clearing saw, sometimes there is a patch of pin cherry with skinny yellow birch growing up into them. They want them cherry cut down, and so a lot of birch is mauled over. When they bend down I just cut them off. I direct the cherry as best as possible between them, but a lot get bent and ruined. If I had to go around and pull trees all day by hand I'd be played out and no money, I would just rather stay home. :D

[Clark]

Ron W. & Clark

A continuous cover irregular shelterwood is a regeneration method where enough canopy is removed to start a new cohort of tolerant and mid tolerant species. Good quality saplings and poles are retained for the next rotation. The overstory is never completely removed, maintaining partial overhead shade for the new seedlings. This is like a series of thinnings but attention is paid to basal area to promote regeneration and tree quality.

I will stand by my original statement and say this is a form of thinning. I don't see the need for a fancy name and if you told any forester or logger you were trying to regenerate red oak, paper/yellow birch and white pine it would be clear you are thinning it heavier than a traditional northern hardwoods thinning.

I think you are generally doing the correct thing for hardwoods in northern MN. No one manages them because they aren't aspen and the quality of maple isn't there. Very few people have been able to peer around the wall of "hardwood management is maple management" and look at red oak, birches and (dare I say?) basswood as timber species in MN. Also, managing for mid-tolerant species has proven very unpopular in forestry. Go after the easy ones found at the extremes of shade tolerance and call it a day.

Clark

[Tarm]

Ron W. & Clark

A continuous cover irregular shelterwood is a regeneration method where enough canopy is removed to start a new cohort of tolerant and mid tolerant species. Good quality saplings and poles are retained for the next rotation. The overstory is never completely removed, maintaining partial overhead shade for the new seedlings. This is like a series of thinnings but attention is paid to basal area to promote regeneration and tree quality.

I will stand by my original statement and say this is a form of thinning. I don't see the need for a fancy name and if you told any forester or logger you were trying to regenerate red oak, paper/yellow birch and white pine it would be clear you are thinning it heavier than a traditional northern hardwoods thinning.

I think you are generally doing the correct thing for hardwoods in northern MN. No one manages them because they aren't aspen and the quality of maple isn't there. Very few people have been able to peer around the wall of "hardwood management is maple management" and look at red oak, birches and (dare I say?) basswood as timber species in MN. Also, managing for mid-tolerant species has proven very unpopular in forestry. Go after the easy ones found at the extremes of shade tolerance and call it a day.

Clark

You know Clark, they taught me in school that if you use big words and fancy names you can charge more ;D.
Tarm