Learning more about trees
As part of thinking about what we might someday plant in our woodlot, I looked through a great paper produced by the NSW Dept. of Primary Industries (see this post) and I was immediately drawn to the qualities of the Sydney Blue Gum, Eucalyptus saligna. According to the chart it is relatively tolerant of frost and it likes a well-drained, sandy loam to clay loam, with moderate to good fertility. Intrigued I googled Sydney Blue Gum and came across the Australian Hardwood Network, which provides quality information on the technical specifications and applications of native hardwood timbers.
On site they have a species guide, with information about the Sydney Blue Gum. They talk about the properties of the wood in terms of density, hardness, durability (they have classes of durability), strength, joint group and timber grade. Most of which I know bugger all about, but it’s meant for the timber industry. Interestingly they also grade trees by their natural resistance to termites, which is pretty cool. ‘Some species of timber offer higher resistance to incidence of termite attack than others’. That would be something to think about, especially if you grew a lot of one type of timber.
Great site, check it out
Back to the Blue gum though, apparently they can grow over 70 metres tall. How beautiful would that be?
New shoots
A few weeks back we took some drastic measures and cleaned up most of the growbeds. Why? Well it’s spring, all our winter crops had already yielded (broccoli, etc) and, to be honest, it was just out of control, not in the sense that nature needs to be controlled but in the sense that some plants were dead or dying and sometimes a pruning process is required. That’s what we did, we removed the old tomato plants, old basil and removed dead roots, etc . After that well needed pruning, I planted some basil and coriander seeds that we got from greenharvest.com and, less than a week later we already have little green spots.
Planning a woodlot
I think designing a garden is like designing a patchwork quilt – you can collect lots of little ‘squares’ of information and pull them all together into a big bright tapestry when your hand is ready to hold a spade. Right now I’m thinking about the farthest reaches of our new house, at the very back of our cleared, gently sloping paddock. I’m thinking about a woodlot.
We have two wooden stoves and so my first priority for our woodlot would have to be for firewood. Who doesn’t like a nice toasty fire in winter? Also since I’d also like to have a beehive for honey one day, trees that feed hungry bees would also be most welcome. Why not throw in the potential for a bit of timber too, while we are at it? Anything we plant would have to be frost tolerant, low maintenance, it would have to love a heavy clay soil, and be very good looking, (just like me). See, not that’s not asking too much, surely 
I’m also open to the idea of planting a couple of different mutually beneficial species, and having different layers in my woodlot, maybe even a food forrest.
So I began researching about what trees would work in our area, bringing all of these strands together. I was pointed in the right direction by the permaculture forums, (all praise the goodness) to some documents available on the NSW Department of Primary Industry website. There I found the perfect resource! It’s a paper called ‘Farm Forestry NSW: trees for coastal regions and nearby ranges‘, and in it they list the qualities of native and non native trees, including
- Species name;
- Common name;
- Height (m);
- Minimum rainfall (mm);
- is it useful as stock fodder?;
- is it useful as timber?;
- useful for honey bees;
- what is it tolerant of;
- what it prefers; and
- what to avoid
I’m so happy – I’ve been reading it over the last few days, narrowing down trees that might work for us. Other good publication titles that may be of interest include: