What's most important in preparing the sugarbush for tubing?

[Hurdhaven Farm]

I orginally planned to stay with buckets for another few years as I gradually cleared the sugarbush of most of the softwoods,beech,birch,poplar and ash as I prepare for tubing. I would be able to go to at least 500 taps and I really do not want that many buckets. After this season I am speeding up my timeline and would like input and ideas as to what sugarbush management tasks are most important prior to installing mainline. I have read that there can be problems with opening up a woods too fast (sun scald). Has anyone experienced this?
Should I just take out the trees most likely to fall on lines and a few of the trees shading the maples and put up mainlines knowing I will need to thin more in the future? Thanks for your thoughts.

[Daren]

I have not heard of opening things up too fast. I am sure that there may be conditions that could cause problems such as a very dry or very wet year that may be made worse by lack of moisture retention (with evergreens gone) or erosion problems exposing root systems to the air (very wet runnoff problems). With that said, forest regeneration will start taking place almost immediately to combat these problems. I think the biggest problem will be with ice or snow loads on tall spindly trees which seem to be the norm with choked canopies. THey tend to get bent over and will snap or otherwise be dammaged during heavy ice or snow events. As you can tell, I wont commit to either way of thinking completely. In my experience, open it up before the tubing goes in....it will save you on repairs to your lines over the long haul and I dont think it will adversely harm your woods. Just be careful when dropping the cull trees as dammage to the maples you are trying to free up can cause a few years of minimal growth and crown development. Also, watch out for rubbing the bark off when pulling all the dead and downed stuff out. THe more dammage to the remaining trees, the slower you will see the rewards of giving them room to stretch out their arms.....

[brookledge]

I have heard of sun scald but never experienced it.
Keith

[Russell Lampron]

I had my woods logged off 5 years ago and had the loggers leave the maples. The biggest problem that I have had is blow down. Sometimes it is just a section of a tree and sometimes the whole tree came down. The crowns have filled out nicely now and for red maples they gave up alot of sap this year. I don't know what sun scald looks like in a tree so I don't know if I had any or not but the trees that are still standing, which is most of them, are doing fine.

I would get all of the trees that are shading the maples and the ones that might come down on your tubing out of there being careful not to damage the trees that are left standing.

[Hurdhaven Farm]

One section I did last fall, about 2 acres, is almost pure maple. 80% sugar 20% reds. About 75 trees are 10in. DBH or larger, with a whole bunch of pole size and smaller. I did not hang buckets in this section this season but want to setup on tubing for next year. I want to release the crowns more on the larger trees so I have to take out quite a few of the smaller maples. I am just a bit hesitant because I did have a few blow downs this winter on what I thought were pretty healthy young trees I released last fall. Some of the books say ideally you should space crop trees 35 feet apart, but my fear is if I lose one of those I have a big hole with nothing taking it's place. Am I off base in my thinking of not thinning as aggressively as I should?

[dano2840]

clean out ALL THE DEAD WOOD, trust me you dont want to be tripping over logs and branches all the time, especially in winter when the snow covers it and you dont know its there until you trip over it, when it comes to thinning, thin out the trees that shade the maples, if theres a hemlock standing on its own smaller than the maples and not doing any harm then leave it, like any tree it has a roll in the ecosystem, try and leave ash trees, and ironwood or hardhack because their leave when they fall in at the end of the year contain nutrients that are esential for the maple trees, is what i was told by a professional forester said it was like taking 50 bags of fertilizer and dumping it on the ground. also its good to leave soft wood trees and such around where you plan to end your main line to tie the wire to, one of my things is that i never anchor the wire to a maple but thats just me

[dano2840]

as for the crop trees being 35 feet apart- im not a forester but i say thats wrong i have places in my woods where there are 3 or 4 18"+ healthy maples that are growing with in 5- 10 feet of eachother and have nice big healthy tops (except for the side where the other tree may be) and they produce alot of sap and dont show any signs of lack of nutrients but thats my woods yours may be different, if there and a couple of big healthy trees that are growing close to each other and their tops aren't competing for sunlight than leave them be but if they are competing that one or 2 are probably going to die any way so take the worse looking ones and leave the best

[Snow Hill Farm]

When I started working my sugarbush 10 years ago I immediately put in the lines because that's all I had time for. Since I burn wood in the sugarhouse the thinning process has provided a steady supply of fuel. It would have been nice to thin it all before but I was busy building a house, etc. The method I'm using is working well and I have found one very important thing to plan for, access! If there is a need to drive a tractor, 4 wheeler, etc. in the bush then plan for access roads when laying out the lines. My biggest issue has been learning to not drop trees on the main lines! Also, I have read studies from Proctor Maple Research that show the sugar content in mixed bushes is no lower than pure maple stands. If there is a mature hemlock, pine, etc. with nothing but small maple saplings around it might as well leave it. Makes a great anchor for the main line and better yet, shade which is important to keep that sap cool!

[forester1]

I've only seen sunscald on maples that were about 4 to 6 inches in diameter that were left all alone in a very heavy cut. If you release the crown on 2 sides you should be ok. Some trees can be released all around the crown if they are less than 9 inches in diameter. I've released crowns all around at any size if the tree is vigorous. On my own land, I released one tree that is 26" diameter all around with a crown starting 10 feet up like a road tree, since it is still growing rapidly. If you do a portion all at once then it will be ready to do again in 10-15 years. You can expect some blowdown, mostly in the softwood, the maple is more windfirm. Acute forks will split however, you should discriminate against them.

[PerryW]

I would concentrate on cutting the trees that are in direct competition with the sugar maples.

[MannsvilleGold]

Yes I have experienced Sun Scald, it occurred when thinning a sapling stand of hard and soft maple. After releasing the dominant and co-dominant stems I found after the next winter some of the stems had what looks like a lightning scar on the southern side of the tree. This occurs with a quick warm up after a sub zero freeze for trees with a southern exposure. Thin such a stand lightly and plan on re-entering as the crowns begin to get crowded out. Best bet is to leave a sapling stand to thin itself which it will in time, then release the pole and small sawtimber at a later date. Lighter is better.

[ibby458]

We thinned out about an acre yesterday. I took out all the trees competeing with future crop trees, and all the cedars and dead wood. If it wasn't a maple, but didn't directly comete, I left it, at least for now.

I pictured in my mind how I want that section to look 10 years down the road, and left 3 times as many trees as I want to end up with. In a few or 5 years, I'll go back and take out another third or so.

I've never experienced sun scald, but had a few other problems with aggressive thinning. The tall spindly ones tend to bend over if thinned too much, or simply break off. Also - the **** porcupines tend to target recently thinned sections and can girdle a lot of small trees in a few days. leaving 3 times as many as I want seems to work for me.

I HATE cedars in a sugar bush. Those dead lower limbs always manage to poke me someplace tender. Since I need a lot of posts anyway, Off with their trunks!

EVERY tree that gets left has all the limbs lower than 8' pruned off. Makes working a tractor in there a LOT easier.

[KenWP]

I have a lot of cedar also and use it for firewood. I slowly am trying to get my maples uncrowded by them. I have some big maples that never really warmed up untill they budded becasue they never got enough sun on the trunks. I also had a micro burst come through and took down a lot of trees . Looks like pick up sticks back there.