Many people think that apple trees only serve one purpose, which is of course to produce apples to enjoy eating, 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 million British thermal units and pounds of weight per dry cord of wood. One of the densest forests in existence is Osage Orange; your 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. Wood from 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 in 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 acrid 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, applewood would make a great source of smoke. Burnt wood also produces a dense hardwood charcoal that can also be used for smoking or outdoor barbecues. Now that you’re convinced that you’re growing apple trees for both fruit and timber, I bet you’re wondering what kind of apple trees you should be growing.

Well, you may have to grow a few different types of apple trees to meet all your needs. If you prefer a particular variety of apple to eat, then by all means grow that variety. You probably won’t be able or want to harvest much wood from your apple trees to eat. Of course, you will want to prune them and you can always collect sticks and branches that will fall. These would be great for smoking or for fragrance when dried, but to actually use an apple tree for firewood, you’ll need to grow a 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 quickly. Red Delicious, one of the most common eating apples, 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 semidwarf apple variety. You do not 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, then once the first crop is ready to be harvested, you can harvest another crop every year after that. This way you will have an unlimited source of apple wood heat for your home.