Bramble Wars

[Sparrowhatchforestry]

Well it depends if you want to remove brambles and retain regeneration of remove everything? burning, brushcutting etc removes everything. where as pulling is more selective and severely weakens the brambles growth next year, cutting off with loppers will just make then easier to manage this year but they will still return as strong as before. I cant say that iv ever heard of rolling brambles, only bracken. A good option may be lopping/pulling this year then any regenaration can be protected by tree tubes so you can see them and work around in the future?

[Sparrowhatchforestry]

In general i find it much easier to pull brambles when it is very wet ground conditions, and I wear the thick green stihl chainsaw gloves.
All different plants and flora have benefits to the enviroment, however it would be questionable bringing seed in from external sources, especially if your in SSSI, Conservation Area ect.
Also before introduciong seed you must look at why there are brambles growing and no grasses,could it be lack of seed, shade, soil type, moisture levels?

Depending on the species of deer depends on what they like to eat, generally muntjac and roe like to eat bramble, especially during the winter when other food sources are low, depending on the height of the bramble could they be providing cover and shelter for the deer? would removing it remove some pressure from the deer predation?

[martyn]

My preferred tool for removing brambles is a WW2 British army trenching tool which I use to undercut the shallow roots whilst gently pulling the stems just above ground level. This method I find requires relatively little effort and there appears to be no regrowth from the fibrous roots left behind. The stems I cut into shorter lengths with secateurs and scatter them on the ground where they very quickly rot down, apart from the older, thicker roots which take rather longer.

[Binz]

there's a thing called a 'lazy dog' (www.lazydogtools.co.uk) which you can use to lever up the roots so it's easier on your arms/back.

We just use a brush cutter. If the bramble is dense then there's unlikely to be much growing underneath it anyway, until you've cut it all back and the light gets to the soil. Then recut every so often to stop it taking over again (as there'll be less of it you could use loppers or pull it at this stage so you dont harm the other stuff). We've used this approach on bracken (cutting about 1/month) and it is a long term process but grass and other plants are now establishing themselves in what used to be a bracken monoculture.

[splodger]

we - or should i say my dad ( ) prefers to cut down using hooks etc and then grubbing out at the roots
i'd personally prefer brushcutter - but he doesn't like the sound of motors going all day long ( unless it's a chainsaw )
i am determined to convert him though - but that might take a while

[docsquid]

It depends what area you are dealing with. When we took ownership of our woods, we thought that we would be able to remove the brambles by brush-cutting. This worked until Spring happened, and we had no chance of even keeping up with the growth, let alone making headway of the huge overgrowth of brambles which was a result of livestock grazing over the better part of 100 years in our woods, and the subsequent over-fertile ground. The overgrowth was covering a large proportion of our (then) 11 acre ancient woodland and stifling all regeneration, as well as growth of normal woodland understorey and ground flora. The Forestry Commission recommended a tractor and rotary slasher. A rotary slasher is like a super heavy-duty flymo. It really does nuke the brambles, so you can't do this in the bird-nesting season, and need to be careful if you think any protected species, such as dormice, are living there (there aren't any dormice in our area).

The downside of this is that the kit is expensive. Our tractor (a Massey Ferguson 188) was bought from a farm auction and restored on our patio, to the amusement of our neighbours. But we are lucky, we live 1 mile from our woods, and also got planning permission for a tractor shed thanks to an existing concrete pad at the site. My husband is also very nifty with metalwork, which helped, as a number of parts were obsolete and the tinwork needed quite a bit of welding. The slasher we got at cost price from a dealer who wanted to clear his yard.

This is not the same as an agricultural topper - it is a piece of forestry kit, which is probably why the dealer was having trouble selling it. But, after a few years of mowing with the slasher, the brambles get the message and retreat. We have cleared paths and areas which subsequently show regeneration of trees, freed from the constraints of bramble. Then we can manage it with a brush cutter or even secateurs while the trees are young. We have also planted shrub-layer trees (hazel, mainly) over-dense in these areas, and these tend to suppress the bramble after a couple of years of growth - we can thin them later.

If you can get access for a tractor (our trees all have grazing damage from livestock, so few low branches), you don't have to buy one - you could get a contractor to do the job for you. Having said that, the tractor has been hugely useful in other ways too - like fitting a hydraulic log-splitter, a cambridge roll for rolling in meadow seed, and the bucket for doing all sorts of management tasks around the site. The down side is that you need a decent sized machine to run the slasher (not a toy tractor), and classic tractors are starting to get expensive as many people collect and restore them. You need one that isn't in the classic bracket, isn't so new that it is expensive, and isn't so old that it is completely worn out.

[Hobby]

Rather brambles than mosquito's, bleeding things are rife this year .

[Terry]

Interesting. When I bought our place, the house was under assault from bramble that was averaging around 7 feet. I went at it with a manual slasher(?) (was younger then and 6'6" which helped ) The bramble didn't seem to regenerate well from being roughly slashed which mean subsequent years just needed a bit of clearing up the few that did. Never pulled out many roots either - mostly they just seemed to fade away after a year of nipping off the regrowth??
Other areas that I never got to, and still havnt, proved to be good protection for naturally regenerated ash especially, which have now shaded out the bramble and other growth.
Our meadow we got a neighbour who carries out various agricultural contracting activities to clear with his tractor and flail - very quick and cheap and of course no scratches and all the hours of hard labour

[Emma S]

we've got brambles AND mosquitoes.

I think my worst combination to clear are a mixof bramble and long rangey dogrose, entwined on hawthorn and blackthorn

Lovely.

[RichardKing]

Brambles clearly have their place in the cycle of things.
I coppiced an area of overstood Sweet Chestnut two years ago, there had been a lot of dieback & less than half of the stools remain alive. Creating an opportunity to have a more diverse range of tree species.
I have been intending to plant some Ash seedlings, but now concerned by that imported disease attacking Ash.
Deer damage to the regenerating Sweet Chestnut was prevented by deadheadging & heaps of brash around them.
This has allowed a massive growth of Bramble, which is good in providing an additional barrier to the deer.
An additional benefit is that it has allowed natural self seeding of large numbers of young Birch and some Hornbeam as it has created an environment where they can thrive without being browsed off by the deer. I am also hoping to find some self seeded Ash as there is a very large on the edge of this coppiced area, from which previously no seedlings ever survived the deer predation. The cycle will continue by the bramble eventually being shaded out by the growing trees.