There are many different factors that contribute to a good timber crop at the end of any forestry cycle. One of the first actors is obviously going to be the land that the trees are planted in. The better quality that the land is, the more nutrients that are going to be available to the tree throughout its life. Also, the availability of plenty of water and sunshine is important. In Irish forestry, we have plenty of water but sometimes the sunshine is lacking a bit. In order to compensate for this lack of sunshine, and in some instances the lack of quality in the land, we can fertilize the land, and attempt to push the forest through different energetic processes in an attempt to help it along.
One of these processes involves Forest access. As the trees grow larger, the amount of light that each tree is going to get diminishes. Every tree is going to try and extend itself upwards in order to compete with the trees next to it. Unfortunately, this battle for sunshine is going to produce a leggy stem of timber. While the tree is growing up into the air, it is not growing in girth. The whole reason why we grow any trees is to produce timber and if there is no girth in the tree, there will be no timber.
Forestry inspection paths need to be placed into the forest at between the ages of 13 and 20 years. This is to ascertain whether the trees need to be thinned or not. The forestry inspection paths are normally placed at intervals of 100 meters. They will be placed parallel to each other across the face of the forest, and further forestry inspection lines are then put across the forest at 90° to the initial paths. Forestry inspection lines are created with the use of a chainsaw, taking the branches of the trees up to head height.