SMALL Timber Stand management (TSI info)

I recently inherited 25 acres in southern Indiana. What resources can you suggest to educate me on Timber Stand Improvement (TSI) methods and practices?
Thanks!

I've added your post to Trees and Woodland forums. Hopefully someone here has some suggestions that are appropriate to your location. What sort of trees do you have growing there now? What are your aspirations for the site?

That would depend on so many things. What species and size are the trees? What is the terrain like? I'm in the hilly section of southern Indiana which is quite different from the flatter parts. Also, what do you mean by management? Do you want the trees to continue to grow in a natural way or are you planning to harvest for firewood or timber?

If for timber I won't be much help. When I had the forester here years ago looking to save money on taxes by putting my land in forest reserve, he got all excited about how my big sugar maple and oak were ready to harvest. I told him my hope is that they would eventually die of old age and rot where they fall, and that his visit was over.  Those big trees is partly why I bought the place.

If your intention is other, such as restoring a natural canopy by removing stunted or overcrowded trees, rescuing larger trees from grape vines and restoring forest floor plants like mayapples, ginseng and bluebells as well as mushrooms such and morels, I might have some useful input.

I feel it would be good to find out what your goals are.

Since this was in the Fungi Forum is this one of your goals?

Which species of trees do you want to improve?

What is the outcome you are wanting to make the improvement for?


And like the others have suggested are you just wanting to improve your existing timber?

Hi Nancy & Mark!

My father held the property for about 30 yrs and did nothing but small/light timber harvests (1 or 2 per acre, every 10 years). The last sale (2014) was exclusively white oaks sold to Louisville area barrel coppers.  

Like Mark, the property is in southern Indiana (hilly area).  It's pretty much old-growth white & red oaks, poplars and some hard maples. I want to continue the usage as agricultural renewable forestry but see the family adding it as a vacation destination. So, I've already spoken to a forester and the county about doing a CAP106 forest management plan to clean up some of the lower value beech trees and any invasive species found. The beech trees are chocking out the re-growth of the oaks and other forest floor plants so it needs some attention/maintenance.

I the time the family's helped the property, I don't think anyone has ever found any morels on it.

R

I've been told that oak tops, immediately after a harvest, are well suited for use as shiitake mushroom logs. so I was thinking that I might make an attempt to sell them too or attempt to grow some for the local market.

I'm sorry for your loss Ray, It seems odd to me for beech to be a low value crop! I found wood magazine which suggests that your beech is likely to be Fagus grandifolia, which does have uses. As it can be steam bent, even smaller pieces can be used for furniture. Hopefully someone locally can do something better than just burning it. Would biochar be useful on the site?

He is now retired, but Jim Birkemeier talks about an approach to Forestry that sounds exactly like what you are looking for. He wrote up a bunch of what he did on some old websites.

Timber Green Forestry

Spring Green Timber Growers

His forest is in Wisconsin, where he grows hardwoods until they won't grow anymore. Then he turned  them into hardwood flooring and other high value products right there on his farm. He calculated that someone could easily earn $100,000 per year by harvesting one tree per acre. He has some information about directional felling, and quite a bit about what he calls Arthroscopic Logging, or logging that does the least amount of damage to the landscape as is possible.

Hi Nancy, Per the Purdue University timber reports, beech trees tend to be about half the value of Red Oak and/or Poplar and that means it's just a quarter of the value of White Oaks

Thnx Jeremy VanGelder. I will definitely look up Jim's work. Much appreciated!

Hi Ray,

The oak tops and most of the tree would be very useful for a number of different types of mushrooms if you were so inclined.  For that matter, those beech trees could be useful as well.  Personally I like to grow mushrooms in wood chips both for the mushrooms and especially for the compost they yield up.

Just a thought if you were going to cut down invasive species.

Eric

In the Smokey Mountains there is a place called Joyce Kimber Forest, its two or three thousand acres of really big trees. On the campus of Indiana University and in the lawns of old churches and cemeteries, occasionally along the streets of old neighborhoods in the small towns along the Ohio River you can see some big trees. These trees are at least a hundred years old, in the case of Kilmer Forest some are several hundred years old.

What seems to be a big tree here is actually in human terms just adolescents, maybe an occasional teenager. People just think they are big trees because they have never really seen a big tree. A few of my trees are probably a hundred years old or more but they aren't as big as their cousins in the towns down by the river. That's because my terrain is steep and when the area was deforested 150 years ago to fuel the boilers of the glory days of steamboats all the topsoil washed away. My grandfather was born toward the end of that era, and he told me that when he as a kid there were hardly any trees in our hills. In my immediate area partly because the terrain makes them hard to get to, there are a few places where the trees are the first regrowth from that original assault and some of the forest floor plants have recovered to some degree. I just try to do what I can to encourage and protect what's left.  

I maybe shouldn't even be commenting in a tread of "timber stand management" when I'm actually a bit offended by the word timber. My trees aren't timber, they aren't a resource in a monetary way. To me, in a very real sense they aren't even mine. They are my neighbors and friends, not my property. They are where my hoot owls live, a big hollow sycamore is where the bats live. The only thing I harvest from them is their seeds which I plant all over the place.

When I hear "sustainable harvest" "renewable resource" "responsible management" and all that stuff regarding wild growing trees all I hear is bla,bla,bla, money for me!

Interesting thread.  I'm working degraded mixed-conifer north-central appalachian hardwoods across ~200ac.  It was mostly logged especially for tannery hemlock & then all burnt up 130-140 years ago.  Among the secondary regrowth there've been high-grading harvests & then deer resurgence such that there's no hardwoods regeneration & it'll all eventually go to white pine, + the drying & heating are leading to oak-hickory conditions while recent drought turning August matures & seedlings crisp promise eventual return of big fire.  I can't see any practicable way of preparing for fire as a benefit, tipping it back to quality hardwoods, diversifying with more species & more southerly genetics, leaving parents' grandchildren with something better they could live off sustainably, without decades of chainsaw work & timber management tax relief.  It doesn't have to be conventional rotational forestry.  

Jim Birkemeier's websites have disappeared into the great burnpile of the web. Probably the best place to get his information is from his books on Amazon. But I will also link to the Internet archive's edition of those pages I linked above.

Timber Green Forestry

Spring Green Timber Growers

Arthroscopic Logging

Thank you, Those archival links work!  This is the direction I've been heading, though our local forest conditions,  NYS management requirements for (high) property tax relief, regional conventional practices by cooperating foresters & their closely-tied loggers, have all been trail&error learning opportunities.  The biggest difference is perhaps that I'm looking at intermittent improvement treatments & harvests over a 30-year transition to desired perpetually-sustainable  state & operations.

Here's an idea for getting rid of the beech trees:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypsizygus_tessulatus