Brush, what to do with it?

[Diggin It]

I've done all of the above, plus burning some of it in the wood stove and shredding some of it to be worked into the ground as mulch.

 

[Smokeydog]

Termites will live in wood chips. I can get wood chips for free. I pay $35 for truck/trailer load of bark mulch from the sawmill for the flower beds. Bark lasts longer and less bugs near the house. Termites rarely get into bark. Nurseries sell the same stuff from the same place for 3-4x$ I’ll use sawdust or shavings for bedding in the barn. Careful where you place wood chips.

Tennessee conservation and agriculture folks are good about teaching the stewardship of farming and using brush piles to help wildlife and water supplies. Think their numbers are beginning to out number the farmers.

 

[Jchonline]

I had about 25 acres of beetle kill pine (dead standing or rotten/fallen) masticated 3 years ago. Most of the smaller pieces are decaying. The bigger chunks stick around. I may pile them up somewhere to let them rot. I have a WC88 chipper that we use on all newly cut wood. I just dont want to gunk it up with the 1/2 rotten and dead/dry stuff. Still have tons of work to do, but we plan on using the chips to prevent soil erosion and for trails.

 

[johncanfield]

I built about a 100' long windroe for our ranch critters to hide behind in winter, it also makes a good habitat for birds, etc. I also use brush and rocks I dig up for erosion control.

 

[747driver]

We live 60 miles south of you Smokeydog in the Cherokee National Forest ! We have 27 acres with most of it all forest. So yes we have numerous gullies in which i pile my brush and tree limbs. They are in remote areas that don't interfere with everyday living. It does all rot and decompose fairly quickly. I save enough of the smaller stuff and run it through my 3 pt chipper for trail mulch and flower beds.

 

[ruffdog]

A giant gully for brush.....Sounds like a big compost bin to me.:thumbsup:

 

[shooterdon]

Sold my chipper a month ago. Waste of time. Pile brush up in a remote are works for me. If the pile gets too big, burn it in the winter.

 

[Diggin It]

^^ I found that if I lay the smaller stuff out right, I can run over it with the field and brush mower. That makes it all but disappear. Fine chips, almost coarse sawdust-like.

 

[Gordon Gould]

I spend half my life working with brush. I use many methods - burn, pile, drag out of sight, chip, and let lay. Around the house and along the main drive I either drag into the woods out of sight, chip, or load it into the dump trailer then dump it in a pile somewhere. The brush and slash I create in the woods from cutting I just let lay unless it ends up on a tractor road. Then I clean the road and pile it for the critters nearby like this maybe.



I get a lot of slash cutting softwood and it takes longer to rot than hardwood. I usually lop it up a little.



Several years back I cut a small area of fir and took a picture from the same spot every year so I could see what happened. This is right after I cut.



After 2 years



After 4 years



After 6 years



It looks messy for a while but it is better ecologically to leave the slash allowing the nutrients to return to the soil, maintaining moisture, and helping reduce erosion. If you look at a natural woods you will see that mother nature is also very messy about the way she manages her woods.

gg

 

[BRMyers]

We have been taking back the farm for a little over a year. We have used the larger brush/logs to fill in washouts and help control run off. The smaller brush we were chipping, but that became to time consuming. So we dug out a large hole and started burning the small brush.