Coppicing Team Training Session
- Friends of Oxleas Woodlands 3
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
Oxleas Wood
About half of the coppicing team spent the morning of Saturday 25th in Oxleas Wood improving our knowledge and skills in coppicing.
Tony Day, ecologist and adventurer, from the Greenwich Peninsula Ecology Park joined us for the morning to share his enthusiam, knowledge and skill. He briefly went through the human focussed reasons for coppicing, then talked more in depth about the ecological reasons for the work and the reasons a mix of successional habitats close to each other are so important.
Tony also spoke about some of our more troublesome woodland residents, and which ones he considers problematic himself. Did you know there are native insects that can only overwinter in the broken ends of bramble stems? It's lucky we have such an oversupply! Or that some trees are chemically suppressing other plants? Not co-incidentally, these are trees we find over competitive in our wood.
With a bit of theory under our belts, Tony walked us through the tools we'll be using. He spoke about which tool to use for what purpose, when to stop and use a different tool, and gave us some tips on which sort to buy next time we need new bow saw blades. He went through a range of tool safety tips.
Once that was covered, Tony walked us through his process for making a tree ready to work on - inspecting the area for hazards, being aware of others in the area, clearing back leaf litter around the stool and taking out any fluffy leafiness that could get in your face as you are cutting. Then we went through an example of deciding how to unpick a stool, so that all the branches can come down in a controlled fashion and we get as few suprises as possible.
After that, it was time to group up and have a go. We ended up with 2 and a half nice stools (the half is part of a double stool that we'll finish next time), which should re-grow in a way that is nicer for us to coppice next cycle. We also ended up with several small piles of graded hazel - we hope it's still like that next session!
Tony will be sharing his notes with us to spread around the group, and we'll be doing our best to cascade the information we got to the rest of the team. Sadly, we probably won't be as entertaining as Tony.
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