Hedgerow
HACK
They grow best in climates that get a reasonable ammt of rain and don't have extended periods of extreme cold. Maybe the weather trends were a bit warmer from 1870 to 1970 on the east coast... I don't know what's normal...
Hedge
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They grow best in climates that get a reasonable ammt of rain and don't have extended periods of extreme cold. Maybe the weather trends were a bit warmer from 1870 to 1970 on the east coast... I don't know what's normal...
Arbonaut
Go Climb It
My best friend had a big old police dog like a German Shepard but with long hair, they claimed she was a legitimate breed. His family was chefs and lived above/managed a 40 acre country club. Any how the club was (is) lined all down the #1 fairway with some of the biggest Osage Orange trees in the country. The dog , "Pepper" was a local legend as she was mean as a cur and every bit of 150#. You could fire those Hedge Apples as hard as a kid could throw right at her face and Pepper would catch every one. She loved us, and when it came to catching hedge apples, she was an athlete and would not give up till you was ready to quit. (Which wasn't until we had to go inside to wash dishes at the club restaurant or when it was dark and Mom called.) She did it from when they got her when I was in fourth grade until I was Twenty and she died.
Hedgerow
HACK
Ah, hedge apples... Those things are as useful as a shirt pocket... I like them for rifle targets best... They explode when ya hit em' center mass...
Mac88
Addicted to ArboristSite
Yea, I read somewhere that they still range as far north as Massachusetts, but don't quote me on it. Maybe someone up in that area has seen them.
Morgan in AR
ArboristSite Operative
if anybody had the good sense to make fence posts out of them, they are still around.
Arbonaut
Go Climb It
In one of my firewooding hunny holes, I'll always cut the straight 7-8 footers especially the ones around 8" diameter. Those are corner posts. I stack them for the landowner and they love it. He and his brother manage the farm and they won't ever run me off, see it's reciprocal. :flag:
Red Elm
Ridgerunner
Seems like my life is a love/hate relationship with the mighty Hedge. When I'm not cutting them for firewood, I'm cutting them out of fencerows, or trying to keep them from taking over a pasture or cutting them for fence posts.
And the THORNS! Good golly Gomer, the thorns. My wife and I laugh at the young guys with thier barb wire tats, I got barb wire and hedge thorn scars all over my arms, the wife says I dont need the tat, I got the real deal. Got a bad hedge thorn stab on a finger last winter, this summer the doc over at the VA hospital took a benign cyst the size of a large garden pea off of it, he said without a doubt a result of the hedge thorn.
I still love the mighty Hedge.
And the THORNS! Good golly Gomer, the thorns. My wife and I laugh at the young guys with thier barb wire tats, I got barb wire and hedge thorn scars all over my arms, the wife says I dont need the tat, I got the real deal. Got a bad hedge thorn stab on a finger last winter, this summer the doc over at the VA hospital took a benign cyst the size of a large garden pea off of it, he said without a doubt a result of the hedge thorn.
I still love the mighty Hedge.
Hedgerow
HACK
The tree that bleeds requires a little blood of the harvester in return for it's BTU's....
:hmm3grin2orange:
I've planted bare root seedlings of both black locust and osage orange. The locust grows wild here but I've never seen a osage orange tree here... The locust seedlings shot up like crazy and some are 12' + high after a couple years. The osage orange seedlings have survived but have not grown much so I'm thinking the conditions here in southern MN are not ideal for it.
Mac88
Addicted to ArboristSite
Doesn't look like it. Go here for a USDA range map:
PLANTS Profile for Maclura pomifera (osage orange) | USDA PLANTS
General FYI: I don't think USDA competes with AS sponsors.
The only hedge in my area was planted as a buffer around the old canals. They used it as cattle guards, and as it grew taller, a lot was used for timbers in the canals themselves. Of course, some spread from there, but they are not real numerous here, even though the map shows all of Ohio as in its range.
Mac88
Addicted to ArboristSite
If you can snag some for firewood, it's worth the effort.
Arbonaut
Go Climb It
I have a Hedge spot on a creek that is about 200' wide and several miles long. Nothing in it has ever competed with the Hedge trees--that's it.
Every year, the farmer dozes out a little and I block it up and haul it off. Those entanglements is where I truly learned how to deal with the pressures logs can create. You wanna break you leg or bloody yer nose, start out cutting Osage Orange bulldoze piles rolled up with a D-6. A close call or two you learn quick.
Around 1988, a guy who owned a muffler shop in town caught me at the gas station with a load of Hedge. It is all cord wood from this area, (here that's what we call 4-6" logs that you can use without splitting). And technically it's cut in four foot lengths to facilitate hauling, cut it up stove length @ home. That's the thang wit Hedge; it's all heartwood. It don't matter if it is a stick, she burns hot as coal.
So Dad-D Muffler wanted a load. Seventy five bucks--deal. It was to go out to his house where he had the Swedish airtite box furnace out in a storm shelter and had a pipe buried to blow hot air to the house. I happened to know he kept cases of Stag longnecks on the steps to the furnace room and the corridor there was just above freezing. OK, still with me?
Cold beer, Mac, wood heat, countryside, dogs and a heaping load of green Hedge roots. Do you know where this is goin'? Ha ha.
Dad-D Muffler was proud of his $75 load of Hedge and I was proud of my beer buzz and $75 bucks. He started pourin' the coals to her. Pretty soon we was in T-Shirts standin' out in the snow. After awhile there was a flame coming out the top like a torch. The masonry chimney started popping like popcorn from the top down several blocks till he got her snuffed out. To my knowledge he never burned green hedge again.
Every year, the farmer dozes out a little and I block it up and haul it off. Those entanglements is where I truly learned how to deal with the pressures logs can create. You wanna break you leg or bloody yer nose, start out cutting Osage Orange bulldoze piles rolled up with a D-6. A close call or two you learn quick.
Around 1988, a guy who owned a muffler shop in town caught me at the gas station with a load of Hedge. It is all cord wood from this area, (here that's what we call 4-6" logs that you can use without splitting). And technically it's cut in four foot lengths to facilitate hauling, cut it up stove length @ home. That's the thang wit Hedge; it's all heartwood. It don't matter if it is a stick, she burns hot as coal.
So Dad-D Muffler wanted a load. Seventy five bucks--deal. It was to go out to his house where he had the Swedish airtite box furnace out in a storm shelter and had a pipe buried to blow hot air to the house. I happened to know he kept cases of Stag longnecks on the steps to the furnace room and the corridor there was just above freezing. OK, still with me?
Cold beer, Mac, wood heat, countryside, dogs and a heaping load of green Hedge roots. Do you know where this is goin'? Ha ha.
Dad-D Muffler was proud of his $75 load of Hedge and I was proud of my beer buzz and $75 bucks. He started pourin' the coals to her. Pretty soon we was in T-Shirts standin' out in the snow. After awhile there was a flame coming out the top like a torch. The masonry chimney started popping like popcorn from the top down several blocks till he got her snuffed out. To my knowledge he never burned green hedge again.
Mac88
Addicted to ArboristSite
Burning hedge is not for the uninitiated. ;o)
Red Elm
Ridgerunner
The only problem I have ever found with burning Hedge is that it will turn you off from ever wanting to burn anything else!!!
Arbonaut
Go Climb It
Single digits down, I burn only hedge. You gotta stay on top, though cause it burns fast. Needs a little buffer to blend the right gas in the smoke.
Hedgerow
HACK
Control your air, and it will burn longer than anything else of similar moisture...
BTU = Stored energy
It's up to the burner to work it to his advantage...:msp_thumbup:
haveawoody
Addicted to ArboristSite
Hedgerow,
I was talking to a logger buddy today that told me hedge exists in southern ontario canada.
It was planted for the same reason in the USA as hedge.
Seems like southern ontario is as far north as it goes though.
I was pretty sure i saw it on a site removing a tree but it looked more like a shrub than a tree so i guess it was old hedge near it's limits of growth season.
I was talking to a logger buddy today that told me hedge exists in southern ontario canada.
It was planted for the same reason in the USA as hedge.
Seems like southern ontario is as far north as it goes though.
I was pretty sure i saw it on a site removing a tree but it looked more like a shrub than a tree so i guess it was old hedge near it's limits of growth season.
Hedgerow
HACK
Hard to say... It's a tough tree once started, but if it don't like it's conditions, it won't prosper...
Sorta like me planting an Orange tree here in the Ozarks... It might live, but it won't thrive...
Hell, maybe it took 50 years to reach shrub status...???
Put some hedge in the stove and you will have coals in the morning. heck you can sleep tell noon and you will still have coals.
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