Firewood Coppice

Most trees, cut close to the ground, do not die but send up a cluster of new shoots from the living stump, and that stump - a stool - can be cut again for decades. A firewood coppice is a planting managed that way on purpose, to grow fuel rather than timber; nothing in it ever reaches sawlog size. Regrowth is quick because the roots are already there, the small stems split easily and dry fast, and the block can sit on ground too poor for food crops.

The first cut yields nothing: in year one the plants are taken back to the ground to force the multi-stemmed stool the system runs on. A fast shrub then reaches its first real harvest about four years from planting and is cut every three or four years after; a slower species runs six growing seasons first, then five-year cuts. Cutting is done in the dormant season, once the leaves are down and before the buds swell, and low, below about 15 cm (6 in). A stool cut high or at the wrong time may not resprout, and there is no fix but replanting. Firewood is stacked in cords, a pile 1.2 by 1.2 by 2.4 m (4 by 4 by 8 ft), so the area to plant is a year's burn divided by the species yield.

Weeds kill a young coppice: competition in the first two growing seasons is the commonest reason a planting is lost before it is ever cut. After that the stools die off quietly - a stand loses several percent of its stumps at each harvest and the survivors give less wood - so a block is replanted after about two decades rather than cut forever. One species grown alone invites a pest outbreak a mixed planting resists. Cut wood is not yet fuel: split and stacked it needs six to twelve months to dry enough to burn cleanly, so the planting needs covered stacking room for a year's cut as well as growing ground. Resinous species are avoided however fast they grow: they coat a flue with tar and risk a chimney fire.