The Gathering Process
When I begin the gathering phase I usually ask friends or neighbors if I can have any of their discarded branches if for instance they are trimming some branches off of their trees. I don’t take them from parks or other public areas because in most places that is illegal. On occasion I went to local plant nurseries to see if they have any material they are going to mulch or throw away. Most places I went to thought I was a little weird because what I was looking for isn’t very common in a commercial nursery and it is less common for someone to go around asking for tree trimmings.
The sticks shown in the image above are from a willow tree but I’m not sure what species. I got them from a neighbor who was cutting his tree and these were among the smaller scraps that he was going to throw away. As you can see here, three of them are curved which is an issue because a curved stick is less stable and has a higher chance of breaking later on. I cut the three that were curved into smaller pieces which is what you see in the image below. Unfortunately I forgot to measure the lengths of the branches before I cut them but the longest one was about 3′.
Once all of the sticks are cut and relatively straight I stash them away and leave them to dry for anywhere from three months to a year. The reason for this is because freshly cut tree branches need time to dry so that the moisture inside can evaporate. The moisture may cause the branch to rot or grow mold if it is not dried. During the drying process the wood will warp as it shrinks and most likely develop a slight curve along with splitting of the bark (depending on the kind of tree the branch came from). I lay them down somewhere out of the way on a flat surface (such as the floor of a garage or shed) and make sure they are uncovered. Wrapping them in plastic is not a good idea because the plastic traps in the moisture. This may be tempting to do especially during the colder or wetter months to protect them from external moisture but I found out that being sealed in without ventilation can do more harm because the escaping moisture has nowhere to go. Naturally the drying process is best done in the summer.