Clearing Woods ...Observations - Part 1
When you spend every daylight hour possible for the better part of three months clearing and grubbing (crawling, actually) through the woods, you get to know your woodland on an intimate level. I've made a number of discoveries and learned a good deal about the land, the soil and the plants that form the ecosystem in this small corner of the world. Your bit of woods - if you have one - may (I hope) not be identical in flora, but you may be facing some similar challenges if you want to tame it a bit.
Preamble
Why, you may ask, would you want to spend an entire summer (to the intense detriment of the rest of the garden) clearing woodland? Well, truth to tell, it was not actually on my list of things to accomplish. However, it became clear this year that my local herd of white tail deer was winning and if I wanted to continue gardening, something drastic had to be done to keep them out of the area in which I garden. Thus, I determined to clear a swath and erect a ten foot ( 3.04 m) high net and heavy plastic mesh barrier around the entire perimeter - some eight hundred feet (243m) or so. This project is still on-going, but nearing completion.
My Woods
My woodland is not a pristine old-growth forest. About fifty-five years ago, it was pasture land. The forest is very definitely second-growth, although it contains some immense trees at this point. I don't even think of it as "forest", a word that connotes something much nicer than my lot. Scrub woods comes closer to reality. But, like a "real" forest, it is layered. Large trees form the canopy that casts fairly dense to mottled shade on the understory shrubs and small trees, who, in turn shade the forbs competing for light on the floor.
When we built here, some twenty-five years ago, we cleared only enough ground to erect the house, with one exception, an area where tree stumps were pushed and buried by the bulldozer. That swath has been a lesson in natural succession from bare clay to trees. Over the years, we've cleared a bit more for additions, drives and other expansions and I've pushed back into the woods here and there to develop my gardens.
The house is located at the western end of the property, towards the top of a relatively steep slope - the ground folds into a ravine formed by storm water over the years - that terminates in a narrow, shallow but fast-moving creek that eventually ends up in the Potomac River. The creek seems innocuous, but must have been flowing for many years as the banks are high and steep.
Latest Articles