We have plenty of windbreaks around our farmstead. If the gusty northwest winds are blowing in a blizzard in the winter, we hardly feel a light breeze around our house and barns. Those windbreaks planted by my grandfather, my dad and me over the years between the 1950s and 1990s are doing their jobs.

That said, if you walk through our windbreaks, mostly comprised of eastern red cedar and jack or ponderosa pine, you will notice plenty of invaders. These would include broadleaf volunteer trees such as mulberry, silver maple and Siberian elm. In some of the older windbreaks, these volunteers have completely overwhelmed the original evergreen plantings, and unless they are cut back, they will continue to expand their area into adjacent pastures and crop ground.

What’s next?

So, what do we do when these invaders encroach into the original plantings? Is it necessarily a bad thing?

“Where most or all of the conifers are still alive and in good shape, I’d say it’s best to remove the volunteer broadleaf trees to reduce competition for your main windbreak trees,” says Christopher Wood, a Nebraska Forest Service conservation forester based in Norfolk, Neb.

That means jumping on the volunteer trees early and cutting them back as soon as you see them encroaching. On our place, we missed this window on many of our shelterbelts. We made attempts to keep the invaders in check, but even a lapse of a year or two allows those fast-growing invasives such as mulberry and maple to begin to establish.

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The primary step to protecting the integrity of a newer windbreak, then, is to stay on top of invading species from the start, and not allowing them to get a foothold into the tree rows or along the perimeter, which is more common.

Keep or cull?

“For some of the older windbreaks, where the pines (or other conifers such as red cedar) have died out from pine wilt or other issues, these volunteer trees are the only thing left that are providing any functionality for the windbreak,” Wood says. “In those cases, where the volunteer trees have been there long enough that the bottoms of the confers are gone and, if you clear them out, you will have gaps in the windbreak, it might be best to leave them.”

In wetter climates, renovating shelterbelts is more difficult or easier, depending on your point of view. There are more weed-encroachment issues, and volunteer trees can get established easier. However, if you can cut volunteer trees out, or if you have volunteers and some of your conifers need replacing, it is easier to cut those older trees out selectively and establish new conifers in those spots because soil moisture is not an issue.

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In older windbreaks in more arid Western climates, getting trees established is a real chore because of the lack of soil moisture and an abundance of windy days. In those regions, it may be best to live with some volunteer trees if they have already overwhelmed the conifers because, as Wood says, they are established and offer some density to slow wind and snow. They may not look picture perfect, but volunteer trees can be survivors and beneficial to the overall goals of the landowner if they are kept in check without encroaching nearby pastures and crop ground.

Learn more about renovating windbreaks on the Nebraska Forest Service website.