You must have tough hands to go at that without gloves, lol! I just pollarded my oldest patch at about 6 feet. They were planted from root cuttings in the fall of 2012. The tops yielded up some nice 12-16 foot deer fence poles. My first harvest. I'm going to dig some root cuttings this year as well to sell. I planted all this area on sand piles spread to about 6" high. It was a damp area in the spring and this trick worked well. They're root propagating like crazy. I appreciate these videos and subscribed immediately. When I started my locust journey , about 15 years ago there was little information available. About 10 years ago I spoke with a gentleman down your way who grew up on one of the states oldest vinyards and owns some beautifull land on the shores of a Finger lake and told me of his "ship mast" locusts origin story.
Its easy to coppice or pollard something, but the more important bit is the follow up management so it can become something again. I don't see a lot of info on that part of it so it felt important to share a little.
This is so helpful! I think this is the best material on YT for someone like me who is completely new to these methodologies, I mean pollarding, coppicing and such. I recently purchased a tree endemic to my country which is the Philippines. The local name is Kalumpit (Terminalia microcarpa). I saw the tree in the nursery so I know how it looks like, it's just that now that it is in the garden, the more I look at it the more I got curious as to why it was done on the tree, I didn't even know what the process is called until I read about pollarding on the internet, but seeing your video makes me appreciate the tree even more... it is in a big container (space constraints) and I have the right amount of vermicast mixed into the loam soil, so hopefully it will fruit. I was told by the person in charge at the nursery that it fruited a few times and it was just in a huge black nursery bag, the tree by the way is about 15 ft tall, in the wild it can grow up to 30 meters tall so I am happy it was pollarded earlier on. Thank you soooo much for making this episode! I really learned a lot! More power to you!...... I love my tree!..
I am interested in tree hay. Thank you for showing the aftercuts. Hoping to learn more. There is little info on aftercare of pollarded trees. Hope to see more before cutting mine again.
Pollarding ties in very nicely with small animals. Chickens, rabbits and goats come to my mind first. Most tree leaves are first class forage and are there to feed during the summer dry periods.
Oh, the forest is looking beautiful! If I only had trees big enough to pollard/coppice. I'm still in that early stage of hoping things pull through the winter. I planted quite a few baby locusts last year I hope at least one makes it.
I would think Black Locust should do wonderfully for you! I've had almost entirely good success with them as trees, once they get going they tend to be explosive in how they grow!
My experience here in Belgium (but I did coppice and my BL are in an open spot) is that the regrowth was such that lots of the tall young shoots broke off due to strong wind. Also I had a lot of shoots coming up everywhere. Later I tried to grow BL with several stems from the ground. I did this by pruning the young shoots after only 1 year to a height of about 20cm. This way when I harvest wood I only take 1 stem (of about 3) and have no problem with 'rootsuckers'. In the mean time I have to add that the space became less open due to the remaining stems all around. Thanks for sharing your experiences.
Thanks for sharing this. This is a pretty sheltered spot from wind, but the deer browse is massive, so this is just about the only way I can experiment with managing them in this particular context... They seem pretty stable so far, and if some break off that should be fine since I'm mainly growing it for mulch and fodder and perhaps firewood if it works out.
Have you made an update on these trees? I am planting fruit trees in my front yard (it's actually city property, don't tell them) and I'll need to pollard them eventually.
Might help to also explain to folks what you are doing in regard to the soil when pollarding/coppicing nitrogen fixers like locust. As I understand it when you significantly reduce foliage the tree temporarily sheds an equivalent amount of roots and where those roots have rhizobium nodules those nitrogen stores are released into the soil to feed other non nitrogen fixing plants and microbes.
I'd like to plant a black locust to use as a green manure tree - i.e. pollard/coppice it regularly every couple of years and not let it grow into a tree. Will this work or is there a frequency of cutting back where the tree gives up? Thanks for any info on this.
I think if you want a green manure tree for mulching you may want to avoid black locust as the spikes are quite tough to work with on younger wood. River Locust may be very worth exploring as a more gentle alternative for this goal
Thanks! - I'll leave that plan then... So far, river locust has struggled a bit with our dry summers but I think I may just need to plant them inside a swale or moist dip for it to work. I'm also going to see how using one or two thornless honey locusts works. Even though I read your caveat about them getting thornier with pollarding, I'm quite curious to observe this tree defence mechanism in action - just as long as it doesn't morph into 1950s-style "Attack of the Honey Locusts".
@Ni-dk7ni Thanks so much for posting this! That's really encouraging. I have a whole load of young river locust seedlings and when they are bigger they will get swale or similar plantings. Slowly my biomass deficit is improving as I find out more about specific plant needs.... so thanks again!.
For deer in Washington (Black Tail) those cuts would be too low to avoid browsing. Are you working to completely keep the deer off the tree, or measuring to let the deer have some?
I'm OK with some browse, but you are right that if I wanted 100% protection I should consider a cut much higher. It's a balance because if I do the cut super high then it's 1) harder to manage for me and 2) seems to make a less structurally sound and wind resilient pollard. So I split the difference...
Do you have any issue with shoots coming up from the roots around the pollards? I'm thinking about growing some black lotus for this use but if shoots are common I might not be able to put there where I would like to. I have seen very large black lotus trees send up a ton of shoots from their roots when cut but I have not tried it with smaller black lotus trees.
I should plan an update... They are actively growing and are quite a bit larger now. We did another round of cutting the other week and reset a number of them. If I can remember I'll plan to put an update forward.
Thank you for the explanation. Can pollarding be done on a much larger/older tree? We have a few large honey locust trees that have been maimed by utility pruning along our road. I'd like to be able to use them as fodder in a year or two, but the leafs are too high. There are no sprouts from the huge limbs the utility took off, so I wonder if pollarding works only up to a certain age of tree. Thanks.
From what I understand, the older the tree, the less positively it responds to both coppicing and pollarding. That being said, if the trees are severely damaged from bad pruning above and have their fate set to pass away from large wounds or poorly managed branches above, it may be reasonable to try. Perhaps you choose one tree that is the most damaged by the utility folks and coppice it... I wouldn't recommend pollarding a very large tree at any height above a foot or two, since it would look incredibly strange and probably wouldn't be the happiest regrowth. You can see how it responds. Best timing would be late winter just before the ground starts to warm up. I wish you luck!
I coppiced a large red alder (15 inch diameter at base) two years ago and the tree lay over nicely and still thrives. Alder is well known for laying over on its own and regrowing. I will be trying out larger evergreen species this coming winter. I bet your locusts would make it, if you cut at the right time. Try one and see!
I can't imagine evergreen working with this treatment. The only exception I can think of is Larch which I've seen re sprout a little here or there. But I'd be interested to hear what happens for you!
@@eecforeststewardship640 For evergreens, you might want to prune above the lowest living branches. I haven't tried this myself, but given the growth habits of evergreens, keeping some living growth for the root nutrients to flow into and photosynthetic branches to continue... photosynthesizing, would likely increase your success.
I hate locusts! The only kind we have is the one with huge thorns! But now... Humm... I'm not sure! Maybe I should let some of the little trees grow this summer.... (I always weed them out)
Technically, Sean, you are not pollarding here, you are topping the black locusts. Pollarding involves TRAINING a tree to form a pollard "head", which can only be done if the initial pollard cut is done when the stem of the tree is alive throughout its whole diameter. Your BLs are too old to pollard, and will, eventually, begin to rot from the center. Of course, it's black locust, so that may take a long while!
I am finding what you share in your videos very beneficial! I'm just learning about permaculture, so thank you for sharing your knowledge. Would you mind sharing the brand of pruning shears you are using in this video? Sorry, I know it's not the topic but I could sure use a pair like those. Thank you! 😊
I think those would have been my standard Felco #2 pruners. Good fit for a larger hand. They have different numbers for different sized hands, but basically are my favorite brand for pruners.
You must have tough hands to go at that without gloves, lol! I just pollarded my oldest patch at about 6 feet. They were planted from root cuttings in the fall of 2012. The tops yielded up some nice 12-16 foot deer fence poles. My first harvest. I'm going to dig some root cuttings this year as well to sell. I planted all this area on sand piles spread to about 6" high. It was a damp area in the spring and this trick worked well. They're root propagating like crazy. I appreciate these videos and subscribed immediately. When I started my locust journey , about 15 years ago there was little information available. About 10 years ago I spoke with a gentleman down your way who grew up on one of the states oldest vinyards and owns some beautifull land on the shores of a Finger lake and told me of his "ship mast" locusts origin story.
you are one of the few people doing it big and doing it right, thx as always for sharing the journey
Its easy to coppice or pollard something, but the more important bit is the follow up management so it can become something again. I don't see a lot of info on that part of it so it felt important to share a little.
This is so helpful! I think this is the best material on YT for someone like me who is completely new to these methodologies, I mean pollarding, coppicing and such. I recently purchased a tree endemic to my country which is the Philippines. The local name is Kalumpit (Terminalia microcarpa). I saw the tree in the nursery so I know how it looks like, it's just that now that it is in the garden, the more I look at it the more I got curious as to why it was done on the tree, I didn't even know what the process is called until I read about pollarding on the internet, but seeing your video makes me appreciate the tree even more... it is in a big container (space constraints) and I have the right amount of vermicast mixed into the loam soil, so hopefully it will fruit. I was told by the person in charge at the nursery that it fruited a few times and it was just in a huge black nursery bag, the tree by the way is about 15 ft tall, in the wild it can grow up to 30 meters tall so I am happy it was pollarded earlier on. Thank you soooo much for making this episode! I really learned a lot! More power to you!...... I love my tree!..
I am about to be cleaning up some one-year pollards and this is sound advice! Thanks.
I am interested in tree hay. Thank you for showing the aftercuts. Hoping to learn more. There is little info on aftercare of pollarded trees. Hope to see more before cutting mine again.
If you are on FB, we have a group. facebook.com/groups/treeHay/
Pollarding ties in very nicely with small animals. Chickens, rabbits and goats come to my mind first. Most tree leaves are first class forage and are there to feed during the summer dry periods.
I like to practice now so someday if/when we have goats and sheep in this landscape we'll be really ahead of the curve :)
Oh, the forest is looking beautiful! If I only had trees big enough to pollard/coppice. I'm still in that early stage of hoping things pull through the winter. I planted quite a few baby locusts last year I hope at least one makes it.
I would think Black Locust should do wonderfully for you! I've had almost entirely good success with them as trees, once they get going they tend to be explosive in how they grow!
My experience here in Belgium (but I did coppice and my BL are in an open spot) is that the regrowth was such that lots of the tall young shoots broke off due to strong wind. Also I had a lot of shoots coming up everywhere. Later I tried to grow BL with several stems from the ground. I did this by pruning the young shoots after only 1 year to a height of about 20cm. This way when I harvest wood I only take 1 stem (of about 3) and have no problem with 'rootsuckers'. In the mean time I have to add that the space became less open due to the remaining stems all around. Thanks for sharing your experiences.
Thanks for sharing this. This is a pretty sheltered spot from wind, but the deer browse is massive, so this is just about the only way I can experiment with managing them in this particular context... They seem pretty stable so far, and if some break off that should be fine since I'm mainly growing it for mulch and fodder and perhaps firewood if it works out.
It’s a good idea cut to close to a bud or recut to a branch once it has grown so the tree can occlude the cut.
For sure
Have you made an update on these trees? I am planting fruit trees in my front yard (it's actually city property, don't tell them) and I'll need to pollard them eventually.
I haven't made an update but for the most part they are all doing great.
Might help to also explain to folks what you are doing in regard to the soil when pollarding/coppicing nitrogen fixers like locust.
As I understand it when you significantly reduce foliage the tree temporarily sheds an equivalent amount of roots and where those roots have rhizobium nodules those nitrogen stores are released into the soil to feed other non nitrogen fixing plants and microbes.
Thanks for adding this detail. Very helpful.
I'd like to plant a black locust to use as a green manure tree - i.e. pollard/coppice it regularly every couple of years and not let it grow into a tree. Will this work or is there a frequency of cutting back where the tree gives up? Thanks for any info on this.
I think if you want a green manure tree for mulching you may want to avoid black locust as the spikes are quite tough to work with on younger wood. River Locust may be very worth exploring as a more gentle alternative for this goal
Thanks! - I'll leave that plan then... So far, river locust has struggled a bit with our dry summers but I think I may just need to plant them inside a swale or moist dip for it to work. I'm also going to see how using one or two thornless honey locusts works. Even though I read your caveat about them getting thornier with pollarding, I'm quite curious to observe this tree defence mechanism in action - just as long as it doesn't morph into 1950s-style "Attack of the Honey Locusts".
@Ni-dk7ni Thanks so much for posting this! That's really encouraging. I have a whole load of young river locust seedlings and when they are bigger they will get swale or similar plantings.
Slowly my biomass deficit is improving as I find out more about specific plant needs.... so thanks again!.
For deer in Washington (Black Tail) those cuts would be too low to avoid browsing. Are you working to completely keep the deer off the tree, or measuring to let the deer have some?
I'm OK with some browse, but you are right that if I wanted 100% protection I should consider a cut much higher. It's a balance because if I do the cut super high then it's 1) harder to manage for me and 2) seems to make a less structurally sound and wind resilient pollard. So I split the difference...
Do you have any issue with shoots coming up from the roots around the pollards? I'm thinking about growing some black lotus for this use but if shoots are common I might not be able to put there where I would like to. I have seen very large black lotus trees send up a ton of shoots from their roots when cut but I have not tried it with smaller black lotus trees.
They do send up shoots. Pretty easy to manage in the first year or two... But yes, something to consider for design challenges, etc...
I didn't see thorns on the black locust. Is this a thornless variety? Where can one get thornless black locust hardy for MN Zone 4?
There are thorns on it. Sorry! You can find thornless honey locust, though...
Do you have an update on this?
I should plan an update... They are actively growing and are quite a bit larger now. We did another round of cutting the other week and reset a number of them. If I can remember I'll plan to put an update forward.
how thick should you let the wood get for post? 4"? larger?
For a long lasting post, you'd probably want around 8" diameter or so if it is fast growing wood.
Thank you for the explanation.
Can pollarding be done on a much larger/older tree? We have a few large honey locust trees that have been maimed by utility pruning along our road. I'd like to be able to use them as fodder in a year or two, but the leafs are too high. There are no sprouts from the huge limbs the utility took off, so I wonder if pollarding works only up to a certain age of tree.
Thanks.
From what I understand, the older the tree, the less positively it responds to both coppicing and pollarding. That being said, if the trees are severely damaged from bad pruning above and have their fate set to pass away from large wounds or poorly managed branches above, it may be reasonable to try. Perhaps you choose one tree that is the most damaged by the utility folks and coppice it... I wouldn't recommend pollarding a very large tree at any height above a foot or two, since it would look incredibly strange and probably wouldn't be the happiest regrowth. You can see how it responds. Best timing would be late winter just before the ground starts to warm up. I wish you luck!
I coppiced a large red alder (15 inch diameter at base) two years ago and the tree lay over nicely and still thrives. Alder is well known for laying over on its own and regrowing. I will be trying out larger evergreen species this coming winter. I bet your locusts would make it, if you cut at the right time. Try one and see!
I can't imagine evergreen working with this treatment. The only exception I can think of is Larch which I've seen re sprout a little here or there. But I'd be interested to hear what happens for you!
@@eecforeststewardship640 For evergreens, you might want to prune above the lowest living branches. I haven't tried this myself, but given the growth habits of evergreens, keeping some living growth for the root nutrients to flow into and photosynthetic branches to continue... photosynthesizing, would likely increase your success.
Can we see what you do with the Burdock? Awesome video. Thank you for the knowledge.
That'll be in the late fall. I'll try to remember putting up a video then.
I hate locusts! The only kind we have is the one with huge thorns! But now... Humm... I'm not sure! Maybe I should let some of the little trees grow this summer.... (I always weed them out)
Technically, Sean, you are not pollarding here, you are topping the black locusts. Pollarding involves TRAINING a tree to form a pollard "head", which can only be done if the initial pollard cut is done when the stem of the tree is alive throughout its whole diameter. Your BLs are too old to pollard, and will, eventually, begin to rot from the center. Of course, it's black locust, so that may take a long while!
Thats good additional info, thank you!
I am finding what you share in your videos very beneficial! I'm just learning about permaculture, so thank you for sharing your knowledge. Would you mind sharing the brand of pruning shears you are using in this video? Sorry, I know it's not the topic but I could sure use a pair like those. Thank you! 😊
I think those would have been my standard Felco #2 pruners. Good fit for a larger hand. They have different numbers for different sized hands, but basically are my favorite brand for pruners.
6 years for that? Where do you live? You can’t find radial growth like that one white pine!
Thank you! Very helpful! :-)
Glad you found it useful.
What is the point of this.
did you watch the video?
Thank you #SaveSoil
pollard , just another fancy word for drastically topping of tree
M