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Cedar Silviculture

Started by PoginyHill, March 05, 2021, 11:32:55 AM

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PoginyHill

I have a section of my property that my management plan states to manage for eastern/northern white cedar. Specific treatment includes cutting red maple, popple, and grey birch - leaving deadened and limbed trees on the ground. (I am cheating a bit and removing some usable firewood/popple logs) There seems to be rather limited resources available for cedar silviculture and what I've read doesn't address some of my specific questions. Much of the resources mention deer as impediments to regeneration.

There is actually more fir among the cedar trees than the species listed for removal. Is there a reason to leave them? My intent was to take only those that appear to be crowding a decent cedar tree or two. Most of the cedar growth is rather young, probably less than 60 yrs old, saplings to maybe 12" diameter. Very few any larger. Besides the fir question:


  • Most of my cedar is clumps of 2-4 trees. Some curl around another and obvious candidates for removal, but how about 2 or 3 well formed trees? Leave in the clump or leave only the best single tree?
  • What is best to encourage seed re-generation? Is that the purpose for the deadened trees? Do seeds need sun/open areas? Or best left shaded? I have not noticed any seed re-generation of seedlings. Youngest/smallest stand-along trees are 2-3" in diameter. So nothing appears to be "in the wings" for the next generation. I have some deer, but I would not say excessive. There appear to be many live cedar within deer's reach, so they don't appear to be eating everything - maybe they prefer any seedlings that sprout up instead.
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SwampDonkey

Up in New Brunswick here, the fir growing on cedar ground isn't worth bothering with. Try to leave spruce if you have any. It will grow in thick sometimes and never get bigger than fence posts. Yes, deer can impede cedar regeneration. I have hardly any deer so my cedar grow plentiful. I would leave a few single stemmed red maple and healthy popple, preferably big tooth, but the grey birch should go.

Leave the best single trees over anything in clumps. Those have probably been browsed.

Seed in mature cedar cones is only 30 % viable. They need sun and moisture. Sun you can control, moisture you can't. My cedar ground is organic on top and a gravelly soil just under it that is imperfectly drained. The water drains through and does not pool up. I've had lots of regen. I had beavers flood out one patch along a creek that was thick as grass.

Might pick up something useful from this publication.

https://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/gtr/gtr_nrs98.pdf
"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)))

PoginyHill

Thanks, SD. I have reviewed that publication - but thanks for sharing the link. I have a few red spruce intermixed. What's the rationale for leaving those? The couple fir I've taken are actually solid - no butt rot. Ground is ALWAYs wet small pools of water exist almost all summer. Rocky and clay. No bigtooth for me, only quaking aspen.
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SwampDonkey

The spruce will live longer and do better than fir on wetter ground. I've planted some spruce through my cedar up here. The natural fir go yellow/necrotic and don't amount to much on wet ground. I like fir like this. ;D Although this particular one is over mature and not much good for a log. It is 20", but past it's prime. It's probably 80 years old. If you get the ones that grew with better light and get 20", those are the nice ones, around 45-50 years old.



I like these better, much younger and 12-18" leader growth. ;D Spaced in 2007.

"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)))

SwampDonkey

Here's my cedars. I'm putting off thinning until the limbs prune up. They'll sucker off any live twig left on a  stump. ;D This photo is from awhile ago. I have a little balm of gilead with them. Mine are single stem.



"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)))

Clark

If you have any deer then you need to give cedar more light so it can grow beyond their reach faster. I've heard that cedar seed also needs higher temperatures to germinate which is another reason to open things up. I agree with SD about fir vs spruce. However, the people who have done work on how the forests of MN historically regenerated indicate that cedar and fir tended to come up together. This makes sense in the current age of higher deer populations because they won't find as many of the cedar if the are hiding amongst the less palatable fir.

As always, SD is spot on about pre-commercial thinning. It always works and if you have a good catch of fir and cedar then you will have an easy job of thinning down the road.

Clark
SAF Certified Forester

SwampDonkey

Some sites will be a carpet of red spruce with some cedar mixed in to. Thinned some of that in 2019, they called it fill plantation. I never saw a planted tree. Rate was no good to. :D :D I've thinned some really thick red spruce sites, you barely cut 0.5 an acre a day, 8 hrs. Swinging and pitch'n. :D Stagger out to the truck at days end, everyone else gone home, just me and the song birds. :D Versus lighter ground where you cut an acre or even 2 a day. All same rate to. ;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)))

PoginyHill

A couple samples of my cedar stand...

First one is typical (as @Clark  mentioned) - a large fir crowding a pair of cedar (cedar is barely visible in front of the fir). I have since removed the fir and smaller cedar winding around the larger one.


 

The second pic is typical of a single stem adjacent to smaller fir and a larger popple.


 

Another single cedar next to a slightly larger fir.


 

The last pic is probably about half of all my cedar - growing in clumps...


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SwampDonkey

The clue for me in fir not doing well, is very short leader growth, thicket and small stem size, usually a lot of rot. Do you get a lot of rot in your fir PoginyHill? I've thinned in a lot of old fir, that was only sound around the sap wood. This is mill ground. If I hauled the type of fir I'm talking about to a mill they would direct me out the gate. I've seen it happen to some local loggers. Yet they will bring it in and use it off public land. DNR wants stumpage, so they find a way to process.
"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)))

PoginyHill

Quote from: SwampDonkey on March 08, 2021, 11:29:33 AMDo you get a lot of rot in your fir PoginyHill?
I do not get a lot of dry rot in my fir. The handful of fir I've taken from this stand is very sound - a few dry rot, but most clears up in 2-4 ft from the butt. I actually have more dry rot elsewhere on my property where the soil is more dry. The fir I took down in the first picture was sound all the way through - got two 16 ft logs.
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SwampDonkey

Those smaller ones are just as old, and lots of rot I suspect. A dominant tree will always be in better health baring injuries and bugs. I wonder how old the dominant fir are? They don't look to be putting much height on the last few years. At 40 years, a fir should be 50 feet tall, at 60 years 70 feet. But that is on good ground. Up here 75 feet is pretty much it for fir, might be an 80 ft once in awhile. They grow right up past a spruce initially, then slow way down near the end and the spruce grow over the top by several feet.

Here's a cedar, red spruce, fir stand. The fir all dead and falling down. The dominant spruce in there is 100 feet and you can see how small the dead fir is in comparison. This is a flood plain on the Wapske River.



Fir understory



Fir is short lived and has to grow quickly, produce seed like crazy and fall down.
"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)))

PoginyHill

Agree on the fir. My management plan for the spruce/fir/white pine stand has me favoring spruce and white pine for the reasons you mentioned. The fir is about 60 yrs old. And yes, it is a rather even-aged stand; whether 3" diameter or 14". I'm guessing the same for the cedar, but not sure.
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PoginyHill

Until winter logging weather sets in, spending the fall doing some "housekeeping". Currently around my cedar stand. Cleaning up decent cedar, cutting multiple stems, removing poor quality fir and red maple that is crowding good cedar. First pic is before/after treatment of a couple good cedar. Second is a wider view of the same area. Leaving good fir that is not crowding cedar too much.



 



 
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wisconsitom

Pog, we do that too.  Same deal-clear out multis, dead lower limbs, thin a bit if warranted.  Sure makes it nice to walk thru.

Is white-cedar distributed widely in Vermont, or more bunched up in certain areas of the state?  Northern Logger magazine had a feature about a year ago about a Vermont mill that specialized in sawing white-cedar products.  Very cool, although with cedar, I'm always concerned about the long-term supply/outlook.  The deer thing, ya know.
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wisconsitom

Gentlemen, I did not realize I had responded to a thread already well in progress.  Now that I'm caught up, let me first say this is a topic near and dear to me.  This is the kind of land I own and these are among some of my favorite forest types.  I had actually sought similar info in a previous incarnation on this board, where I had briefly existed as "Cedarman".  Later lost my credentials and re-upped as W-tom.

In any case, one final ingredient to getting white-cedar seed to germinate is some kind of soil disturbance, something to expose mineral soil.  I've recounted this before, but evidently, where all my cedar is burned back in the 1930s.  A forester told me this species likes nothing better than a charred landscape to drop its seeds into, so yet another fire-responder.  Other methods would be scarification and the like.  In the area where my land is, you can see where nothing more than a grader or gradall working the ditch and bank areas after a road rebuild will result in hundreds of cedar coming up.  You can literally see where the blade got lifted...and no more cedar, just junk grass, brush, green ash or something.  The cedar came up where the ground got plowed up by some process.

Brush walls may be useful where deer are merciless towards this species.  A planting surrounded by logging slash can grow quickly out of reach of hind-leg deer.

On my land, some cedar is definitely down in saturated soil, but lots of it is actually on higher ground that is not wet at all.  It is slowly advancing into the small amount of old-field I've still got there, as is white pine and balm.

Ask me about hybrid larch!

PoginyHill

Quote from: wisconsitom on November 04, 2021, 08:45:57 AM
Pog, we do that too.  Same deal-clear out multis, dead lower limbs, thin a bit if warranted.  Sure makes it nice to walk thru.

Is white-cedar distributed widely in Vermont, or more bunched up in certain areas of the state?  Northern Logger magazine had a feature about a year ago about a Vermont mill that specialized in sawing white-cedar products.  Very cool, although with cedar, I'm always concerned about the long-term supply/outlook.  The deer thing, ya know.
I think you are referring to Goodridge Lumber. Close by and I know the owner - excellent family and business. They don't ever seem to be low on logs; they normally have close to 1mmbf in inventory. I don't believe they buy in the summer.
Cedar is rather widespread in Vermont, but - as you know - isolated to wetter areas. Harvesting is exclusively on frozen ground. On my home property, cedar dominates only about 10 acres of the 40 wooded acres. On my woodlot 2 miles up the road, nearly all hardwood, almost no cedar.
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wisconsitom

Yes, Goodridge.  Nice article.  

Mentioned elsewhere-there are "friends for life" in my swamp, consisting of white-cedar/paper birch combos, growing twined around each other, with the faster-growing birch eventually swooping up overhead.  At least three such combo trees back in there, and they aren't small.

Although "swamp" this groundwater is in motion, albeit slow motion.  And there are mineral nutrients in this water-calcium, magnesium, and the like, which is beneficial to these trees.  There are springs bubbling up back in there all winter long.  

In the western UP and northcentral Wisconsin there are vast swamps of cedar and black spruce primarily, but in these settings, growth is poor.  This is truly stagnant water, perhaps resulting from a highway damming up a stream back in the day, and tiny growth increments are the result.  Foliage color is poor.

Go east, into more basic, less acid soils, and everything gets better for cedar.  Best in this state is in counties like Door, Manitowoc, Kewaunee, where limestone bedrock-actually dolomite-sits close to the surface...or in nearby areas, like my own Oconto County setting, where even though sandstone-based, the soil is still relatively fertile in these types of nutrients.  We're right next to where the limestone dives deeper underground.

We have hills of sugar maple, white ash, etc. up there too, with no cedar.  But this is latter days.  These are not untouched woods!  Probably all hemlock, for just one example, got removed for the tanning industry at one point.  Then the deer population exploded in the cutover days and such species never had a chance to get back to what they were.  Cedar same way.
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SwampDonkey

Yep, where we bull dozed with C&H plow back a few years ago, along the edge of a cedar stand, I have thousands of white cedar. I thinned some out of the spruce plantation a few years ago, but any low limb that was green turned up and grew a tree. :D That is why I will wait until the cedar are like rails, with limbs at the bottom died off, before thinning it out.
"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)))

PoginyHill

Spent a good part my spare time last month or two thinning a couple cedar stands. I posted some pics of the first one under "what are you currently cutting" thread. This section is almost 100% cedar. A handful of red maple and fir, but very few. I removed one or two stems from a multiple stem root and larger branches. There is a local cedar fence company that will buy 10ft cedar as small as 4" for fence rails. I was able to collect about 40. A lot of work for not much to show for it, but better than nothing. I would have thinned the stand regardless. So a little gas money will be welcome.

I still need to thin this stand some more - crowns are all rather crowded. But done for this year.



 

 
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Ianab

Stand is looking good, like you say needs thinning. Realistically if the return from the thinning covers the costs of doing it, that's a win. Locally most thinning is "compost" and left to rot. So it's just another expense to add to the planting / pruning etc.  

But picture that stand with 1/2 the stems, but each one 2X the size,  ;)
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PoginyHill

Quote from: Ianab on April 07, 2022, 08:05:25 AMBut picture that stand with 1/2 the stems, but each one 2X the size,
That's what I'm shooting for. May not happen in my lifetime, but I intend to set the projection that way.
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wisconsitom

Good stuff Pog.  If I ever get caught up, wanna do some of that in my cedar stands.

Speaking of which, I noticed heavy dieback of lower branches, more than usual it seems. This on larger, older trees.  Deer also browsed more heavily on cedar on my land this winter, possibly destroying some pockets of regen.  Will have to see if they can green out.  Tough winter that way, rarely had browse issues up til now.
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PoginyHill

I have four deer that I routinely see around. In the early spring (before snow is gone), they'll munch on any cedar greens I cut up. But in my pic you can see the carpet of greens. I don't think they've touched them. They must have a better food source the snow melt has uncovered.
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SwampDonkey

Looking good. But yeah, white cedar can grow pretty huge diameter wise, but takes a long time. :)

I planted these spruce about 8 years after the cedar was cut. You can see all the old slash.  Then all the sudden the cedar took ahold.





A few years later





Then even more cedar took over before I thinned it. It took a long time from harvesting to getting it fully stocked with spruce and cedar. An adjacent stand was thick with cedar from the start.





And to end with a huge old cedar.





I find a lot of these left to stand or blow down on clear cuts.

"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)))

Ron Scott

Deer makes it very difficult to regenerate northern white cedar.
~Ron

OntarioAl

A few years ago the local Conservation Authority planted 6 ft. root balled 
White Cedar at their lakeside park. 
 Well by Christmas they all looked like Charlie Brown Christmas trees  ;D
Replanted with White Spruce in the spring
Cheers
Al
Al Raman

SwampDonkey

Where I lived in Grafton for awhile, all the cedar hedges where trimmed up nice by the 20 resident deer. :D

I'm lucky, or not, but deer don't stay up here in winter, they head south along the Presque Isle River to Charleston area. Another week or so I will see them start moving back up my way for the warm seasons. A deer wouldn't stand a chance around here in winter, with all the packs of coyotes within 4 miles of my place. Had a cousin who shot and snared 30 or so one fall, that winter there were still coyote tracks everywhere. :D
I seen more hare this year than usual in the thicker softwoods, and we do have lynx around here. I see one hare in normal times once in awhile. Last time I walked the extent of the woodlot I seen 4. Hares browse cedar to, the main stems of small trees as well as the leaves.
"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)))

wisconsitom

@ Ron Scott, yes, that is the premise from which any white-cedar discussion that I'm a part of is starting from.  Yet, from swamp donkey's and some other pictures we've seen, regen can be prolific.

In my situation, deer were not molesting cedar on my land.  Then, this past winter, they did.  That was the point.
Ask me about hybrid larch!

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