Cultivation of apple trees for firewood
Many people think that apple trees only have one purpose, which is, of course, to produce apples to enjoy eating, but apple trees have other uses. One such use is as firewood. If you have a wood stove or fireplace, you know that certain types of wood are better for burning. The types of wood that are best for generating heat are dense woods that have a high BTU rating. Firewood is graded by its heat content per MBTU or Million British Thermal Units and pounds of weight per dry cord of wood. One of the densest forests in existence is Osage Orange; its MBTU rate for 1 cable is ~30 MBTU. White oak, another popular hardwood used for firewood, is rated around 28 MBTU and pine, a lightweight softwood, is rated around 15 or 20 MBTU. Wood from apple trees falls in the range of 25 MBTU per 1 cordon of dry wood.
So with these numbers, you can see that apple wood is a dense word that contains a lot of energy that can be released when properly burned in a wood stove. Another characteristic of apple wood is that it is very fragrant when burned. This makes it a pleasant wood to burn because the smoke is not as unpleasant or acrid as it can be with other woods. Because it is so fragrant, applewood is also commonly used to make natural incense and to smoke meats. If you have a smoker at home, applewood would be a great source of smoke. Burnt wood also produces a dense hardwood charcoal that can also be used for outdoor smoking or barbecuing. Now that you are convinced that you are growing apple trees for both fruit and lumber, I bet you are wondering what kind of apple trees you should be growing.
Well, you may have to grow a few different types of apple trees to meet all of your needs. If you prefer a particular variety of apple to eat, then by all means grow that variety. You probably won’t be able or want to harvest much wood from your apple trees to eat. Of course you will want to prune them and you can always collect sticks and branches that will fall. These would be great for smoking or giving off fragrance when dried, but to actually use an apple tree for firewood, you’ll need to grow a tree to maturity and harvest the entire tree. The most practical way to do this is to find a type of apple tree that grows very fast. Red Delicious, one of the most common eating apples, is known to be a fairly fast growing tree. When choosing a type of tree for firewood, it is important to select the standard or semidwarf apple variety. You don’t want to select the dwarf variety as they will produce very little wood for you. It will take years for the tree to mature to a size where it can be harvested, but if you plant a crop every year after the first planting, once the first crop is ready to be harvested, you can harvest another crop every year after that. that. This way you will have an unlimited source of apple wood heat for your home.
