Help! Advice needed on burnt out farm/woodland

[Spacemonkey]

Hi, I have just been told my farm in Catalunya has had a biggy bush fire run through it. As I haven't been out to clear the long dry grass away from the trees (that was booked for September when it cools again) the fire ripped through my patch. The whole valley has gone up in smoke, and half the village have lost their entire crops. ANyway, I have lost 480+ olive trees, and all the plumbing for watering the whole lot. 78 larger trees seem to be singed, but not burned. The leaves are brown and wilted, as the grass flared underneath, but luckily burned too quickly to damage the tree, bar scorching the leaves. The pine forests on my mountainside has gone up in smoke, and it now looks like I'm in the charcoal business!! Luckily, the outcrop where my house is survived untouched, as it has a wide track running all around it which appears to have acted as a fire break, thus protecting the pines around the house.

Anyway, has anyone experience on what is likely to recover? Do you think the larger olive trees with browned leaves will recover and when? There isn't likely to be any real rain til next November/December, maybe the odd shower, but the temp is rising all the time for the summer, where it gets into the 40's. What is likely to happen to my pine forest? How long til they grow again and is this likely to come from the roots already there or just wait for new seeds to find their way there naturally? I have been told that all the pines are burned out, but some are still standing.

I suppose it has saved me the job of clearing the grass....

All gone:

 

[ChrisKavanaugh]

Many natural ecosystems are meant to experience periodic burn cycles, Southern California being one. Your surviving trees should pull through. Check the trunks for severe wounds that might be vulnerable to disease or insects. You may miss a few crop sets while they recover. Don't do anything to further stress them, pruning, excess fertrilization etc. You can still kill them with kindness. There is controversy over emergency reseeding of bare slopes with grass. The idea is to stabilise the soil in case of heavy rain to prevent erosion. The results are rather mixed. Nature allready has pine seeds deep in this new, rich bed of burnt nutrients. The squirrels, birds and wind have hid them away and the fire likely scarified the shells to allow germination. This is an opportunity to walk your land and learn it's secrets. We have a naural fire cycle here with the chapparell of 7 years. Stupidity has led some areas to go 20 + years until Nature says enough. We usually find long missing cars that went off the cliffs, murder victims and new archaeological sites. Your land will undergo the natural progression of plant communities to the terminal sear of pine forest.

 

[Spacemonkey]

Thanks for the reassuring words. Do you have an estimate of how fast pine grows? How long I can expect til the trees are back as reasonable size. It's not something I have had the fortune to observe before!

 

[Mutley]

Pine, like all trees, take years to grow to their full potential. Depends what your "reasonable" size is.

Are they been seeded or planted by root?

 

[Tony]

Mate, I feel for you, that's a harsh thing to happen. I hope that something good comes out of it, even if it doesn't seem like it will at the moment

 

[Spacemonkey]

The pines are totally natural, that's why I chose this land, as over half is wild woods, and the rest is cultivated. In Spain it is highly illegal to cut down pine trees! They don't even seem to practice sustainable harvesting like we do here, so they just grow, and die. This is such a waste as the hills are covered in pines and nothing is done with them. I had a lot of dead wood that I was going to saw up this year, but i guess most of that is gone too. Spain has always had a lack of wood-all the gold they spumphed out of S America all those years ago went to the Italians for wood to build the Armarda, and we all know what happened to that. As I said elsewhere, it's the locals who have lost their entire crop that I really feel for. I don't live there yet, and it has set me back a while, but I am ok. I can earn more dosh to spend on replacing everything-they can't. Half of the village had their farms in the area that burned. Outdoor fires are illegal for most of the year and you need a permit for the rest. I guess that if they ever find out who started this, they won't be too popular, it was too far from the road to have been a passing car. I suppose now would be a good time to add a few more interesting trees to the equation, like birch etc.

 

[yowee]

I wouldn't be to worried about your pine trees they grow fairly quickly I'm guessing that they are probrably corsican pine, and depending on annual rainfall will recover well the reason that so many plantations use pine is that they grow quickly in this country with proper management they are harvestable in approx 20/30 years, but pine recover well from fire and some even need it for there life cycle in some species the cones only open in fires, the grass should recover and you could be suprised by rejuvinated land as it will use the nutrients released from the fire, if you have areas that are unburnt you may want to consider firebreaks to protect your house etc. watch out for areas of bare earth that may loose thier topsoil and be exposed to erosion problems if you get heavy rains. I'm sure that wildfires are part of the landscape in that area, even national parks are now realising that fires need to happen otherwise it can lead to habitat change and even health problems for the trees, for example the mountain pine beetle effecting large areas of the canadian pine forests because the fires used to control the beetles numbers, so they are now conducting perscribed burns.
Hope this help, don't worry nature always finds a way.

 

[mcconk]

We have a house in the south of France and had a fire near the village three years ago. Most of the vegetation looks like your photo. Our fire needed 150 firemen and 40 mountain going fire trucks to control and came within 100 metres of the village. It was pretty scary at the time, but impressive as well!

The grass grew back in a year or so, which helped with the depressing view of charred earth. As an aside, in the autumn you should go looking for mushrooms as we had them popping up all over the place.

Now, we have the shrubs back, and the dead pine trees are falling over so it doesn't look too bad at all. The locals reckon it takes about 10 years to get back to the pre-fire state.

As far as olives go, we haven't had any damaged by fire, but we have just planted some (only 40 though). A horticulturalist friend who helped us is paranoid about making sure that we leave a big fire break around the trees as he says that they do not tolerate fire very well at all.

I suspect that the previous poster who said to leave them alone is probably right. Wait until next year to assess the damage on the scorched trees and hope for the best.

 

[Spacemonkey]

Thanks everyone. I'm going to try a Ryanair flight for a weekend date with a digicam and my charcoal collection. 10 years isn't too bad to wait i guess. I chose this land because of the large forest area though... How much did your little olives cost if you don't mind? I have probably lost 500 smaller trees, but it's not too bad if the larger ones survive. My dad thinks some of the saplings might recover too.

 

[mcconk]

We have three types of olive tree saplings and they cost between 2 and 3 euros each. We expect to get fruit off them three years from planting (last autumn) and a decent harvest after 5 years.

We had to plough up an existing vineyard before we planted them (very old and poor vines) and they need to be mulched and possibly watered over the summer. As I can't get over there to water, I'm expect that to cost as much again. If you have to grub up the old trees, that's likely to cost a fair bit, especially if you don't have access for a BIG tractor!

It may be worth talking to your local council or olive oil co-op to see if you can get a grant towards the cost of replanting. I have heard about some small fires locally that were rumoured to have started on purpose - it turns out that the fires managed to clear scrub or old vines from land which was then ploughed and replanted with EC help. Sounds like a good result for someone!

Good luck and don't be too depressed by the charred landscape because it does recover.

 

[Spacemonkey]

Yeah, I was gonna checkout EU grants for replanting. The Olive trees that were there were all plumbed in to the water tanks. The tanks and plumbing has all gone up too.. I get 'mains' water installed later in the year, and will re plumb everything in. If you water the trees for 4 hours a day 3 times a week, the olives will be about 40% heavier when time comes to harvest, as well as producing more. It really is worth it if you are there full time. They also need pruning 2 weeks after harvest. The ones on my window sil in my London flat have fruited again this year, but very small. There is a florist down the road who has 4 2 meter high olive trees outside that fruit every year! In London! I have a small tractor, but will pay a local to plough all my land until I am there full time, as no doubt they're gonna need the money now. I guess the price of olive tree sapling is going to skyrocket locally too. I was going to collect seaweed to clean and use as fertilizer, so that would make ideal mulch I suppose.

 

[mcconk]

If you can't get new olive trees locally - or they are extortionate I can get you details of the nursery that ours came from. We are only an hour up the A9 from the Spanish border, so it may make sense to import them!