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- Coniferous or hardwood lining – which is better?
Decorating a dacha, a residential building or a bathhouse is a serious and responsible process. Particular attention should be paid to the choice of materials. Today, many decide to pay tribute to traditional methods and opt for finishing with wood. Lining can be considered a favorite among materials made from wood raw materials. It is easy to use, looks aesthetically pleasing, and lasts a long time. In addition, there is always a choice of profile types and wood species from which the moldings are made.
It is at this last point that we will stop today to study it in detail. And in particular, we will find out: which lining is better to use for finishing - from coniferous wood or hardwood.
Growing a tree
Oak is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful trees that is difficult to describe in words. And many who have the opportunity to place it on their site, taking into account the size of the tree, do so. There are several ways to grow a tree on your site:
- buy seedlings from the nursery
- root the cuttings and grow the seedling yourself
- grow a seedling from an acorn.
It is worth noting that digging up young shoots in the forest yourself is prohibited by law, as oak is listed in the Red Book.
Seedlings from the nursery
Nurseries, as a rule, offer two-year-old seedlings; they have good survival rate. If a seedling is grown in a container, then planting and caring for it, as well as transportation, is greatly simplified.
Cuttings
It is not considered the most common method. To do this, you need a layer, a young shoot that appears on the tree trunk and feeds from it for some time.
Acorn seedling
Harvesting future seeds (acorns) begins in the fall. The seeds are immediately placed in the soil and left until warm weather arrives. This operation can be carried out in the spring, when last year’s fruits begin to hatch; they are placed in prepared soil or wet sand.
When choosing a place to plant, you need to be aware that over time the tree will reach an impressive size and can shade neighboring plantings.
Also, do not plant oak near houses and outbuildings. Having a powerful root system, the roots can easily break even a concrete foundation.
The most optimal time for planting seedlings in open ground is spring. For the tree, prepare a hole about 0.8 m deep, at the bottom of which drainage is made. For better survival of the seedling, the roots are covered with a specially prepared soil mixture, which consists of:
- 20 kg compost
- 1 kg wood ash
- 1.5-2 kg superphosphate
All this should be mixed with soil, observing the above proportions. In addition, it will not be superfluous to apply potassium fertilizer.
When starting to plant a tree, it is necessary to calculate so that the root collar of the oak seedling remains a few centimeters above the ground. When filling the prepared mixture, it should be lightly compacted and poured with a small amount of water.
Birch
Material located in the middle of the conventional rock classification. However, like larch. It has a very calm and softly expressed structure, which allows it to be tinted in any shade, without any adjustments to its own color or texture. In terms of strength, birch is, of course, stronger than pine, but softer than beech and oak. The disadvantages include its hygroscopicity - the ability to absorb and release moisture. This becomes especially relevant if you do not maintain constant conditions at home (in summer there is high humidity, and in winter, during the heating period, on the contrary, the air is dry), then this can lead to creaks and cracking of the wood.
Seedling care
An oak seedling requires careful care for several years. It definitely requires watering and regular cultivation of the soil. A year after planting the plant in open ground, complex feeding with special fertilizers is required.
In humid climates, the tree trunk soil should be mulched with sawdust; the same operation is carried out to increase the frost resistance of a young tree. When preparing an oak tree for wintering, it is treated with garden varnish and additionally covered with fabric canopies.
Diseases and pests
The most common diseases for young oak seedlings are bacterial and fungal diseases. They are capable of destroying a fragile seedling in a short time.
To see and prevent the disease from developing is the main task of the gardener. It is quite easy to notice such signs: a lot of dry branches begin to appear on the tree, the leaves lose their rich color.
Wild, mature trees often cope with this scourge on their own, but for young seedlings, powdery mildew can be destructive. In such cases, treatment and prevention with fungicidal drugs helps well.
Pests that can parasitize a young tree can be very diverse, both for the foliage and for the tree trunk itself. Oak leaves are subject to invasion by silkworm caterpillars, acorns are attacked by codling moths, and tree trunks and branches are subject to a separate category of pests.
There are many effective drugs of various types of action to combat parasites. Insecticidal preparations have proven to be the most effective.
Ash
This species is often compared to oak. And it’s not surprising, because the structure and shade of ash wood are very similar to oak. The density is almost the same as that of oak. And in processing, ash is not much different from oak. In some cases, if you put two boards side by side, it is not even possible to distinguish the two species from each other. But for some reason it so happened that oak is more famous and advertised. This led to some imbalance in the market, which, in turn, led to a decrease in prices for ash by about 10% compared to oak. The disadvantages, however, would be the sometimes excessively variegated color (although this is not for everyone) and, due to its not very great popularity, a rather meager assortment of standard blanks, which significantly complicates the production of stairs from ash.
The use of oak in landscaping
This type of tree is the basis of park areas in places where there are favorable conditions for its growth. Rarely planted trees grow not tall, with a beautiful spreading crown; in crowded conditions, on the contrary, a fairly tall and slender tree.
Oak grown for decorative purposes is usually a single planting and goes well with coniferous trees, making the surrounding landscape unique.
Having a sufficiently large plot of land, you can grow an entire oak grove. For some time, the young seedlings will not provide the desired shade, but in the future, walks in such a grove will please everyone.
Oak is a slow tree, and it will take quite a long time before it grows to the size of spreading crowns. Your children will walk under the dense shadow of its crown, and your grandchildren will pick the fruits, but they will also remember the good deed throughout the life of this long-lived forest.
Deciduous and coniferous timber
A species is a type of woody plant from which timber is subsequently made.
All species are divided into two large groups: coniferous and deciduous. The species most often used in timber harvesting and growing in Russia include ash, pine, cedar, spruce, fir, larch (coniferous species), as well as aspen, oak, beech, birch, linden, alder (deciduous species).
Wood species affects the mechanical, aesthetic and physical characteristics of timber products. All this, in turn, affects the quality of the products obtained during processing and processing. The species is the second most important characteristic by which round timber is classified in the All-Russian Product Classifier (the first characteristic is the purpose of the timber, that is, the assortment).
It should be noted that the classification of wood by species used in wood science differs from that traditionally used in botany. This is due to the purposes of classification and the criteria by which it is made.
In botany, the type of tree is determined mainly by the characteristics of the needles or leaves, as well as fruits and flowers. Such characteristics are not applicable to round timber - for example, vessels, pith rays, resin ducts. In addition, the division by species accepted in botany also cannot be used to classify timber. The division of trees into subspecies, for example, “downy birch” or “silver birch”, has no significance for timber, and therefore is not used. However, if trees belonging to the same species grew in different conditions (different climate, soil, plant density), then as a result they may have such different sizes and overall quality that the timber produced from them will be considered a different type of product . Therefore, the region in which a particular tree grows is often an additional feature when classifying timber (for example, “Pudozh spruce”, “Angarsk pine”, etc.)
When it comes to round timber , the species is determined by the shape and color of the bark, the color of the wood itself at the ends of the log, the width of the sapwood, the presence of a core, as well as the number and condition of the annual layers. There is currently no document regulating the classification of round timber. Operators determine the breed. Based on their own experience during production, quality control and sorting, they can understand what species a particular timber belongs to. Or analysis is carried out based on samples, if available.
