Burning hardwoods

[deerbuster]

This past weekend I set out to finish up burning on our farm for the year. I had a good wind most of the day until I got a stiff swirling wind that caused the fire to get too hot and jump the breaks. By the time I decided to call forestry and for them to come cut additional breaks to contain the fire, it had gotten into some of my hardwoods. My question is, is there a possibility I could have damaged these hardwoods? Most of them are pin oaks and water oaks. Thanks for the input!

 

[Longhorn 16]

Do you have any pictures?

 

[Elkbane]

Depends on how hot they got. The USFS typically lets backfires creep through bottoms on national forest with no damage, and hardwoods can take a fair amount of heat. Really hard to predict, but at this point, they've had fire in them and you can't change that.

If the fire charred through the cambium, they're toast. If not, you have a decent chance that they'll survive, but they may not be very productive for a year or two. I've seen mature oaks burned on National forest I was sure were toast that looked puny for a year, then were fine.
Elkbane

 

[deerbuster]

Do you have any pictures?

I do not have any pictures. Some of the trees had fire lick up about waist high, I’m sure I probably lost those.

 

[Gut_Pile]

Cut some of them down and get some sunshine to that freshly burned floor

 

[antharper]

I live close to and hunt corp property and they burn hardwoods often and it doesn’t seem to hurt them !

 

[deerbuster]

Will add some pictures next time I’m on the farm. Hopefully there won’t any negative impact, only positive!

 

[Dirtroad Johnson]

It's hard to say for sure not knowing how hot the burn was. I know your burn wasn't intentional, I have a lot of hardwoods on my place & a forester told me a long time ago to slow back burn thru hardwoods before green up starts or while dormant. Hope you have a positive outcome.

 

[Plazadweller]

In my experience the fire itself doesn’t kill them. It will hollow out the bottoms of the trunks and make them unstable. If you have a lot of heavy rains, they can start toppling over.

 

[chehawknapper]

What diameter at chest high were they? Hardwoods have generally thinner bark with poorer insulation properties than pine. Dormant season burns on large, older hardwoods should not have caused much harm depending on amount of fuel and weather conditions on the day of the burn.