Cut away turf bank .

Pat McGroin

Hi all , looking for a few answers and would be thankful for any help.

We've just cut the last round of turf out of our bank and now we're left with about an acre and a half of flat fairly well drained bog and are wondering what the best thing to do with it is .

Options are :
1. plant it with some type of fast growing trees to be harvested as fuel in the future .
What type of trees would you recommend growing and how long would they take until they could be harvested ?
Also how much fuel would it produce (in comparison to turf)
Lastly , would anyone have any idea how much it would cost to plant ?

2. Drain and improve the soil and make a field to perhaps cut hay off in summer .
Would it take much to make the soil better using dung and ploughing etc to improve soil structure etc. ?

3. Check out what grants are available for set aside land or sowing a cover crop in it .

If anyone has any helpful input or stories of experience or even another idea of what could be done with it , I would appreciate some advice on the subject . Also this bog is not in the list of ones that are closing so at least that won't be an issue .

Thanks in advance .

Pat

GY A1

have any of the other bank owners adjacent or near to you still got turf left in their banks,
if so i'd ask them would they sell you some of their turf to put out on your bank.
maybe, maybe not, but i've seen this done before

blue5000

Pat McGroin wrote: »

Hi all , looking for a few answers and would be thankful for any help.

We've just cut the last round of turf out of our bank and now we're left with about an acre and a half of flat fairly well drained bog and are wondering what the best thing to do with it is .

Options are :
1. plant it with some type of fast growing trees to be harvested as fuel in the future .
What type of trees would you recommend growing and how long would they take until they could be harvested ?
Also how much fuel would it produce (in comparison to turf)
Lastly , would anyone have any idea how much it would cost to plant ?

2. Drain and improve the soil and make a field to perhaps cut hay off in summer .
Would it take much to make the soil better using dung and ploughing etc to improve soil structure etc. ?

3. Check out what grants are available for set aside land or sowing a cover crop in it .

If anyone has any helpful input or stories of experience or even another idea of what could be done with it , I would appreciate some advice on the subject . Also this bog is not in the list of ones that are closing so at least that won't be an issue .

Thanks in advance .

Pat

Planted mine in '04, really wet places got alder, best of it got norway spruce and sitka on the in between stuff. Best alder trees are about 6-8 meters high with a dbh of 10cm. Best sitka is about 5m high with dbh of 9cm, Norway is slower to grow but will have better quality timber in the long run.

Have a look on the smallholder forum, good thread there on firewood.