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Shrub Willow
Going Green
Going Green: Shrub Willow
Shrub willow is an excellent renewable resource because it grows so fast. How fast? Just over a year ago, this plot was harvested when it was 30 feet tall and now you can see it’s already re-grown to the better part of ten feet.
It all starts with a shrub willow stem about the size of a pencil planted in the ground almost to the top as ESF researcher Tim Volk explained, "That’s what it looks like when it starts, like a little piece of stick in the ground. Then at the end after 3 years you’ll have a couple of stems that are this size on each of those plants and you’ll have a number of smaller stems."
And here’s what the harvesting looks like using a modified forage harvester.
So it goes through these willows, it cuts them down, pulls them through the machine and blows wood chips out the back end. That’s how on a large scale for commercial operations it will be harvested.
And then willows will just sprout back, from the root system or the stool that’s left in the ground. So we grow it for 3 years, cut it down in the wintertime and the next spring it sprouts back.
There are benefits while the willow is growing because it grows well on marginal land by preventing erosion, providing wildlife habitat and protecting watersheds.
Where you have a nutrient loading problem from a lot of agricultural land putting willows in buffers or in nutrient management strips between crops and water has a lot of benefits because the willows will take up the water and the nutrients that are in there.
And these are the wood chips resulting from the shrub willow. They’re pretty uniform. They can be used to create ethanol, they can be burnt for heat, or used to generate electricity. I’m Terry Ettinger for Going Green.
