Irish forestry, along with many other types of forestry, goes through certain stages of development. The first major development is where the land is prepared for planting. This stage involves digging drainage ditches, clearing the top of the land of any surface vegetation that is likely to impede the growth of the young tree, preparing mounds on which the trees will sit for the first few years of their lives, fencing the whole property in, and planting the trees. Following this, there is an initial maintenance period where the trees are given a helping hand so to speak. This maintenance period lasts between two and three years.
The whole purpose of this maintenance period is to provide the tree with as much of an opportunity to rise above the competing vegetation by cutting back the vegetation, spraying around a tree, replacing any dead trees, and fertilizing trees that need some extra nutrition. Once this stage has been completed, the trees will be left to fend for themselves for the next 10 to 15 years. At this stage, the tree canopy should have filled in sufficiently to prevent anyone from accessing all but the first couple of meters. This is where Forest access becomes very important.
At this stage of the forest development, the decision must be made about the thinning the crop. This basically means that in order to allow the better trees to thrive, the underdeveloped or weak trees, or the trees that are obviously not going to produce the Irish Forestry must be removed. In the first thinning process, about one third of the entire crop will be cut and removed. Sometimes these trees will be used for pulpwood or fence posts. Recently, Irish forestry has begun to research into the idea of using this first thinning material as wood chips to fire boilers or other heat producing equipment. The production of biofuels from trees requires a bit of a different process in the thinning. The trees are felled and left where they fall. Over a year or two the timber will season, at which stage the chipping machine will process that timber into wood chips.
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