biodiverseed:

biodiverseed:

Edible Forest Gardening 101: Why Pollarding?

Pollarding is a pruning method that is much like coppicing, but branches are removed above the grazing line to avoid damage by herbivores; traditionally it has been performed to harvest food, fuel, and fodder on rotations that were between 2-15 years.

The practice of pollarding has evolved into an aesthetic of tree maintenance that is common in urban areas, where trees cannot be allowed to grow to their full dimensions. Like many modes of forcing plants to maintain juvenile tissues (ie. bonsai), pollarding often makes the organisms that undergo it live longer.

The apple tree above is almost pollarded: as you can see, I took away a huge amount of the canopy.

This several-decades-old tree was not well-maintained, and fruit production was waning, so I opted for a drastic pruning strategy. Over the next three years, I will cut each of the three leaders down another metre (one per season, so as to avoid over-stressing the tree, and to maintain fruit production). I don’t think there is much of a point in having an apple tree in a domestic garden if you can’t easily reach up and pluck a fruit, and that’s not happening when the fruit-bearing limbs are 3 metres off the ground.

I had great success renewing an old crabapple tree using this method, cutting the two leaders down to shoulder-height stumps, reducing the tree to 1/3 of it’s former height, and provoking dense new growth.

I suggest this renewal strategy to a lot of people trying to add new trees to an established landscape. Pollarded trees allow more solar energy to reach shrubs, perennials, or seedling trees, and the process of pollarding generates resources like firewood, mulch, and timber for hügelkultur.

The lichen-covered wood from this single old apple tree made a dense hügelkultur mound that spans 5 metres in length, at 0.5 metres in height and width.

Adding these composite organisms, and sequestering the carbon from the wood to the soil does wonders for my soil fertility and feeds mycelial networks (on which bees are dependent). Before I cover these mounds in soil and compost, they also form an important habitat for a number of beneficial insects.

New forests grow on dead trees; therefore wood is one of the most important soil-building resources in a forest garden.

Related: Plant a Mini-Orchard, with Columnar and Cordon Trees

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*** I am happy to report that despite the drastic winter pruning, this tree is
alive and kicking this spring, as is the crabapple I pollarded last year!

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