Kitchen Garden Forum

I have a four year old hazel on the allotment. I would like to coppice this to give me hazel poles. When do I do this and how low do I cut the branches?

hi angi, just chop the lot off as low to the ground as you can get. they will shoot again from ground level. any time over the winter before the buds start to break again.

Thanks, Richard. I'll be down to do it tomorrow then!

Hello Angi
There is an excellent little site at

http://www.allotmentforestry.com/fact/growown.htm

on growing your own beanpoles - explains in several pages how to set up and manage your mini-coppice to get a regular supply of poles.
It's been on my ToDo list for several years now to set up one of these but I've never got round to it! I'm afraid I use bamboo as poles - not very environmentally friendly though.

There's lots more useful stuff on this site such growing peasticks and making rustic stuff from hazel.

http://www.allotmentforestry.com/fact/facts.htm

John

Does anyone know how much eight foot Hazel beanpoles cost.

just to warn you my neighour accidentally got herself the start of a hazel hedge as her bean poles rooted. Stick the lower end in a bonfire or under a blow torch for a minute to make sure they can't.

Hi Di,
I would suggest that your friend is a very lucky person because it is virtually impossible to strike a Hazel cutting.
JB.

Hi
We have an area of Hazel on our allotments, planted specifically to provide pea sticks and bean poles. It was planted in 1996 and we first coppiced (part of it) it in Feb 2006 for pea sticks and re-growth was very rapid so it was coppiced again recently. There are some bean pole lengths but there hasn't been much demand for these - the most demand on our field is for pea sticks. We'll be using the 'bean poles' to make a barrier to hold back the blackberry briars in our wildlife area. Since the first coppicing we've given them frequent mulches of grass from mowings of our wildlife area pathways and this seems to have helped with the re-growth.
We've left part of our Hazel area to grow as mature trees because its a very popular area with the birds for nesting but we do cut out individual long straight poles.
Jea

The Agrofostry link is very useful thanks. I have two hazels in the hen run, one a Kentish cob and the other a filbert and have hard pruned one to encourage long poles and I've not been so severe with the other so that I get some nuts (if I can beat the squirrels).

I discovered by accident that Cornus is brilliant for weaving when I noticed how pliable the bits I had used for pea sticks were. I wove and twisted them into hoops for the low growing peas and they looked really attractive - lovely deep red. Also quite a few had rooted at the end of the season so I've potted them up to add to the hedgerow.