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I have about 5 acres of pasture in western Pennsylvania. I want to plant it with trees for for firewood. I have been researching on the internet and I am thinking white ash would be good since it is good firewood and grown quickly. How much firewood will 5 acres be able to produce per year? What other type of tree might be better to grow instead of ash?
i would not chose ash because emerald ash borer will probably kill them. it went through our forest and killed most of the ash we had. a lot of it is still good wood but it will all be rotten before we can use it all.
From talking to some of the locals I understand that emerald ash borer mostly kills the larger trees and not the smaller ones. So if they got to the point where they were large enough to be killed by the borer I could cut them into wood as they die. And since they reseed so well there wouldn’t be any problems getting replacements.
Why would you only want to plant one type of tree? I would suggest you plant several different types of trees the same as a real forest. Then you will have several types of wood and if one species doesn’t do well, you have others to take its place. With five acres you have room for a lot of diversity. I would suggest ash like you say, hickory, cherry, black locust and even some pine. If you are doing this exclusively for firewood I would definitely plant black locust. I may even do an acre of fast growing poplar. It may not make the best wood but it would give you wood faster while you are waiting for the other trees to get big enough.
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