Topic: Coppicing/pollarding an Oak

[aquilegia]

I have a baby oak in a pot. The squirrels kindly sowed it for me and I thought I'd nuture this son/daughter of the local ancient tree.

But as I have a small garden I intend to keep it in a pot and keep it small.

When should I start pollarding/coppicing it? It's only about 6in tall at the mo.

How do I do it?

I'm hoping that when I get my big garden in the country, I'll be able to plant it there.

[Hugh_Jones]

You would not normally consider either pollarding or coppicing (they are two entirely different things) until the tree has become reasonably substantial (20 ft or more).  Pollarding consists of cutting the tree at a height of 10 feet or so (according to preference) to reduce the height of the canopy, while coppicing is cutting the tree off near the base to force a number of young shoots to break out  to provide poles for a variety of purposes such as fencing, greenwood turning or charcoal burning

[Mimi]

Aqui, why not go for a bonsai.  You could grow one in a pot and keep it outside all year round.

[dannylewis]

Hi there, last year i had a bonsai and my dad chucked it in the bin coz he thought it wos dead, cheeky thing, but i can get them at the garden centre were i go to for £1.60 for a baby plant, the seeds are £2.00 i think.

            dannylewis

[Doris_Pinks]

Having kept bonsais overseas and here for more years than I care to remember(!) you have to know they take a LOT of time and care to look after............and if you dare to go away for a few weeks holiday :o  :o thats why I don't do it anymore! (but it can become an addictive hobby!) DP

[aquilegia]

Bonsai sounds like too much work!

I seem to have been confused about coppicing and pollarding. Coppicing is the one I meant. When should I start doing it? Do I need to do it every year?

[Hugh_Jones]

Sorry, Aquilegia, I thought I had made it clear.  There is no point whatever in coppicing or pollarding any tree until it is at least 20 feet high.  Coppicing is simply a method of using all the timber from a tree whilst at the same time ensuring that the same tree provides several new trunks in the future - you simply get several new stems to replace the one you`ve cut down.  The process is not repeated until the new stems have themselves reached a size suitable for use for whatever purpose the original coppicing took place.

I suspect that what you`re really thinking of is to encourage multiple stems on your seedling.  You can, of course, simply take out the top bud and train up all the side shoots which then appear (almost as much trouble as bonsai), but that is not coppicing, and if you cut it off at the base while it is still small it will probably just die.

[Andy H]

will a pot make it stay small then?
Could one train a small oak in tub or planted out,to go along wires to get parallel branches?

[William O]

If you want to coppice it you'll have to wait untill it is quite mature as Hugh said.
After the first cutback yo will get a lot of new growth in the second year you thin this out untill you are left with som 8-16 sturdy branches. and when these are thick enough you cut back the whole lot again to the stool.

Since an oak is rather slow growing the cycle would take about 6-10 years

[Sarah-b]

We have an oak tree grown in a pot. It was sown in 1996 and it is still only about 3 ft tall. So for your tree Aqui, leave it in the pot and you never know in 10 yrs time you could have become vastly rich and moved to a mansion and then plant it in your arboratum.
Our pot is about 1 ft deep and 1 ft across. I think being in a pot will necessarily restrict its growth.
Actually, ours is an incredibly valuable tree. In '96 we went to Dodona in Greece where the Oracle of Zeus used to interpret the rustlings of an ancient Oak tree and they were the actual words of Zeus. There is still an oak tree there today which is a direct descendant of the original. And guess what? We found an acorn and have managed to grow a little tree.
Of course, we are still waiting for it to rustle out its first words!

Sarah.