The Forestry Forum

What season is best for cutting paper birch to ensure good regeneration?

I don't have a large stand , only a few scattered here and there among the poplar. I would like to grow more birch so - should I clear cut an area around each stump?
or should I leave the birch on the stump and clear a bit around it?
would they reseed themselves then?

What kind of 'poplar' do you have growing around it?

Look for a heavy seed year and harvest in early fall. For best results scarify the ground a bit with the skidder by skidding tree length or scuff with the blade. They germinate best on well drained, but moist soil. Your skid paths will usually be over come with new birch regen. But aspen will be a lot thicker and more dispersed because of suckering. Leave a few scattered seed trees and harvest them next in the winter after Christmas.

Thanks SD

Brian I have aspen and cottonwood around most of them.

The aspen is going to be a pain to control and will likely interfere heavily with your desired paper birch regeneration after a cut. My best suggestion would be to harvest the aspen right after it uses most of its resources to leaf out and leave the paper birch as seed trees for a year or 2 to get some regeneration going. Someone from up that direction may have a better suggestion as what to treat the cut aspen stumps and/or suckers with, but I would think that a remedy/diesel mixture would do well to finish them off. All that the suckers may need to be killed would be about a 25% glyphosate solution though...a little cheaper, but likely not as effective. SD's suggestion sounds like he's 'been there and done that', so that sounds like it's definitely as strong of an option, too...but I would think waiting until early fall to cut the aspens would just be setting yourself up for dealing with an enormous amount of suckers the following year.