Many people think that apple trees have only one purpose, which is of course to produce apples to enjoy food, but apple trees have other uses. One of those uses is as firewood. If you have a wood stove or fireplace, you know that certain types of wood are better for burning. The types of wood that are best for generating heat are dense woods that have a high BTU rating. Firewood is classified by its heat content per MBTU or millions of British thermal units and pounds of weight per dry cord of wood. One of the densest forests there is is Osage Orange; its MBTU rate for 1 cable is ~ 30 MBTU. White Oak, another popular hardwood used for firewood, is rated around 28 MBTU and pine, a lightweight softwood, is rated around 15 or 20 MBTU. The wood of apple trees falls around the range of 25 MBTU per 1 cord of dry wood.
So from these numbers, you can see that applewood is a dense word that contains a lot of energy that can be released when properly burned on a wood stove. Another characteristic of apple wood is that it is very fragrant when burned. This makes it a pleasant wood to burn because the smoke is not as unpleasant or pungent as it can be with other woods. Since it is so fragrant, apple wood is also commonly used to make natural incense and to smoke meats. If you have a smoker at home, apple wood would be a great source of smoke. Burnt wood also produces a dense hardwood charcoal that can also be used for outdoor smoking or barbecues. Now that you are sold you are growing apple trees for both fruit and wood, I bet you are wondering what kind of apple trees you should grow.
Well, you may have to grow a few different types of apple trees to meet all your needs. If you prefer a particular apple variety to eat, then by all means grow that variety. You probably won’t or won’t be able to harvest a lot of wood from your edible apple trees. Of course, you will want to prune them and you can always pick up sticks and branches that you drop. These would be great for smoking or scenting when dried, but to actually use an apple tree for firewood, you will have to grow one tree to maturity and harvest the entire tree. The most practical way to do this is to find a type of apple tree that grows very fast. Red Delicious, one of the most common edible apples out there, is known to be a fairly fast growing tree. When choosing a type of tree for firewood, it is important to select the standard or semi-dwarf apple variety. You don’t want to select the dwarf variety as they will produce very little wood for you. It will take years for the tree to mature to a harvestable size, but if you plant a crop every year after the first planting, once the first crop is ready to be harvested, you can harvest another crop each year after that. In this way, you will have an unlimited source of apple wood heat for your home.