I have a couple of mostly dead crabapple trees, and a large yew I want to remove. They are small enough that I have no issue with removing them myself with a chainsaw, but I still will have a fairly large amount of wood to dispose of.
I really don’t know what to do with the wood. I’ve already got a huge pile of firewood that it’s going to take me several years to go through as it is, and it’s becoming quite unsightly, so I don’t want to add to it. I don’t own a wood chipper, and renting one large enough to handle the 8 inch diameter trunks, is a 1900 pound piece of equipment that I can’t move around my yard.
One issue is that my backyard is about a 20° slope for about 100 feet, then it flattened out. So, anything I take down there I have to be able to get back up the hill.
Eventually, yeah… But it’s going to be very “green” at first.
I’d actually love to chip it and use it as mulch, but the area I where need the mulch is down at the bottom of the hill. As I said, there’s no way I can push a several hundred pound or larger chipper back up that hill.
I know myself well enough to know that if I chip it at the top of the hill, it’s probably never going to make it to the bottom of the hill.
I used wood to make raised beds on slops. You first build the frame looking like a pocket, then fill the deep part of the bed with cut wood as tight as possible, then place soil on top(at least one foot deep). Eventually wood gets rotten and soil settles down, but I add compost every year, so it compensates .
I burn green. I dump some diesel fuel on it and use a hand sprayer with diesel. Burns very well for me. I do entire trees from time to time as many as 10-20 at a time…
I used to burn tree prunings etc. usually where I was going to plant a tree.
Now I think of this as a wast of organic matter.
I make a pile ( usually where I am going to plant a tree, or sometimes at the base of a exiting tree)
After stacking the branches as tight as I reasonable can, I take a chain saw and cut down through the pile many times , until it is very compact. Throw some leaves or hay over it and a few shovels full of dirt ( dirt really helps it rot) in 2-3 years this is a nice pile of compost.
The un sightlyness of this is in the eye of the beholder
I love seeing piles of organic matter around.
I believe this to be more environmentally friendly than chipping or burning
I’ve done this and it works great. also keeps the carbon in the soil. all my raised beds are 1st filled halfway with smaller wood then branches in between with some compost or manure. then capped off w/ 12in. of good topsoil. as the wood breaks down over time just add more soil. after 5 yrs the wood is all broken down, i start another raised bed the same way and add the soil from the 1st raised bed. can do bigger mounds with the bigger wood.
Typically if wood is diseased I burn it eg. tree died of fireblight. If it’s wood from pruning I leave it in one peace or chip it up. Like many have mentioned getting organic material back in the soil is very important . Remember wood can steal nitrogen from the soil.
I am very happy with having buried dozens of spent mushroom logs, both under my fruit trees (4 per tree) and in the vegetable garden. It is a technique called hugelkultur. Except for nitrogen fertilization in the garden, the soil is fertile as it is. It does take two years to ramp up but I recommend it if you have a garden, a flower bed, or planting perennials. On digging a dead fruit tree (girdled by rodents in winter), I could see how fine the soil had become in just one year, both in texture and color.
If you simply want to get rid of your pile find somebody with a chipper and offer to take chips off their hands in return for chipping your wood scrap. Then take all the chips you can get down to the bottom of the hill and start thinking “terraces”!
I make a brush pile a safe distance from trees I want to protect…and burn in spring. (It makes wonderful spot to sow lettuce, tomato, or most any kind of seed…‘no till’).
In this area, any applewood (all fruitwoods really) put on Craigslist will go quickly for all the backyard grillers/smokers. I would post it in the free section and just make it a requirement they take the yew as well. Just call the crabapple apple wood, since that is what it is and some might be confused by using the specific crabapple name.
