What To Do With Pine Trees? 21 Pine Wood Uses

Pine trees are one of the most absolutely beautiful wonders of nature on the planet. Even better, they grow quite well in many environments and are readily available for many uses. The wood has properties allowing it to be resistant to elements often found within nature.!

Pine trees are fantastic growing trees in the spruce family. They have plenty of uses from decoration to construction. Some common uses include sap production, resin production, building furniture, and in-garden use. Pine trees can be used for firewood and even as ornamental trees as well.

Read on to learn more about what some advantages to growing/using pine wood are, and some great things that you can do with pine!

What Are the Advantages Of Pine Wood?

Pine trees are hardy trees. Typically, they are grown in the Southern Hemisphere and are grown agriculturally for timber. The trees are loved for their fast growth. 

Some of the properties of pine wood are:

• Stiffness
• Workability
• Resilience
• Resistance to rotting

Because of how readily available this wood is, it is also relatively inexpensive when compared to harder woods like oak. Pine is considered softwood; therefore it provides less wear and tears on carpentry tools.

The stiffness of the wood is important for the integrity of buildings. If the wood was flimsy. The building is more likely to rot away into nothing. 

Due to its lighter weight, it is easier for somebody to move the wood around than it would be if it was heavier wood. This makes it much easier to work with.

You can even save money on wood by harvesting trees from your property. You turn it into the wood for building by either finding a mobile lumber mill or buying one yourself! One great example of a home mill is the Carmyra Portable Chainsaw Mill.

What Should I Do With My Pine Wood Chips?

During the processes of turning pinewood into paper and wood planks, or even cutting a tree down, byproducts are created like wood chips. Wood chips are good for a ton of uses:

Use Pine Wood Chips For Mulch

Mulch is important for many reasons. Mulch helps retain moisture in the soil, prevents weeds, and fertilizes your plants. Pine wood chips in their own right are able to absorb moisture quite well.

So, if you’ve recently been logging pine wood or have even had some cut down in your yard, you can use the scraps from the wood (the wood chips) as a mulching agent!

You can even mulch using the spent bedding as a way to provide extra nutrients to your plants!

Pine Wood Chips Make Excellent Compost

Composting with wood chips is a fantastic way to help reduce waste, create wonderful compost, and save money.

Use your wood chips as the brown part of your compost mix, and then save food scraps, leaves, grass clippings, and animal waste as your green material. You can use a composter such as this Miracle-Gro Small Composter. 

You can also build your compost bin using pine wood to build three compartments. This allows each compartment to always be in different stages and thus allowing you to have a constant supply of compost. 

Make sure to use a finer chip for your compost as this will speed up the decomposition process. Larger chunks will not harm your compost but will take longer to break down.

Hugelkulture Pine Wood Chips

According to Oklahoma State University Extension, Hugelkulture is a sustainable and economical way to garden! Hugelkulture means, mound culture, or hill culture. The premise of this style is creating mounds of organic matter. A good hugelkulture design with self-watering and self-fertilizing. 

Wood chips are a perfect resource to build mounds. They will decompose, creating lush compost in your beds! 

Pine Wood Chips Make Great Animal Bedding

According to UMass Extension, commercial pine bedding has a variety of uses, Including animal bedding! The chips help by absorbing moisture and odor and eventually break down. 

Because of its pricing, pinewood chips make wonderful animal bedding. Unlike cedar chips, pine chips do not agitate animals’ noses. More pungent woods like cedar can irritate the sinus cavities of your animals, so using pine is a wonderful way to keep your animal’s housing clean as pine absorbs urine well.

Many people use a deep litter method when raising livestock like chickens. Instead of continuously scooping their coop, they pile more bedding on top, occasionally turning it over to help aerate the underlying layers. This creates an environment similar to a compost pile. 

After a few months of deep littering, pine chips should break down into rich compost for your garden!

Use Pine Wood Chips To Cover Pathways

Pathways within a garden can often become overgrown with grass and weeds. Many choose to lay landscape fabric; however, this is not environmentally sustainable. 

Using pine chips is an economical way to cover your garden walkways to prevent overgrowth. Make sure to replenish the layer as the chips begin to break down.

Cover Play Areas With Pine Wood Chips

If you have ever been to a park, you know that the playground is often filled with mulch. An economical way to fill your kids’ play area is with pine chips. 

You can get free wood chips by contacting your local arborist or signing up for ChipDrop, which is a service for finding free wood chips near you.

A warning, however, is that ChipDrop usually supplies you with a lot of wood chips, so if you do not need a lot, purchase your wood chips commercially. You can also purchase a chipper such as the Sun Joe Silent Wood Chipper for yourself on Amazon!

What Can You Make Out Of Pine Wood?

Pinewood is loved by all for many projects! Due to its versatility, affordability, and availability, it is the choice for many for their work. 

Here is a wonderful Beginner’s Guide to Woodworking! 

Make Pine Wood Furniture

Woodworkers love working with pine wood. It is an easy and inexpensive wood for beginners and makes fantastic furniture. It is not as hard on tools, absorbs stain and paint well, and holds up as furniture.

Some kinds of furniture built out of pine are:

• Tables
• Beds
• Chairs
• And many more

Pine provides a clean medium for most projects and a lovely solid piece of furniture. Dressers made from pine have been handed down as family heirlooms for generations. 

Furniture making is a skill many enjoy learning. Many furniture companies as well love using pine wood pieces because of how versatile the wood is. 

Use Pine Wood For House Trim

Housing trim is usually made of pine. This is due to its cost. It stains and paints well, providing a clean trim inside and outside the home. 

Time is typically used around the ceiling, door frames, and windows. It helps hide where the drywall meets. Floorboards are also usually made of pine as well. 

Treated pine trim outside can hold up for years. It is aesthetically pleasing for most homes as well!

Use Pine Wood Plywood

Commonly, plywood is made from pine. Other kinds of wood such as fence boards, two-by-fours, and most other commercially available wood are made of pine. This is because of its hardiness and availability.

Using treated plywood is a great way to make things like chicken coops and animal pens. It is a relatively inexpensive build and can be used by even the beginner Craftsman. Pine holds up well to the wear and tear that comes with raising livestock.

Make A Deck Out Of Pine Wood

Deck boards are commonly made of treated pine. A sealed and treated pine wood deck should last well over ten years. Pine makes a fantastic wood for this project because like all other projects, it is a common wood. 

Once the deck is put in, one should seal their wood with a sealant, like Thompsons Water Seal. It is important to do this because it helps maintain the integrity of the wood and prevents rotting. 

Keeping your deck boards sealed and cleaned will prevent any rotting.

Use Pine Wood Flooring In Your Home

Hardwood floors are a beautiful addition to any home! Caring for a hardwood floor can be tricky, but once you get the hang of it, it is worth it. Pine is a very neutral wood to use for this project! 

Pine flooring gives a nice look with its knotting and grain. Many favor it just for its look. It can be stained to give it a darker look as well. Of course, hire a professional to install the floor and get a proper stain to give your pine wood the best tint possible.

Use Pine Wood For Siding

Pinewood does fantastic as siding! Typically they are used as sheets for the siding and treated. Another way to use it as siding is through logs on a log cabin. Your entire house can be built from pine!

Usually, siding is nailed on piece by piece. However, you can buy panels. 

Pine Wood Can Be Used For Decorations

Some artists use pine wood as a medium. Whether they paint on it, cut slices and make charcuterie boards, or do wood burning.

Pinewood makes a great medium to make decorations for your home!

Some people use pine to make butcher blocks. This can be used as a cutting board or even as decorations. 

Wood burning is a fun craft for most people to do. It is relatively inexpensive to get into and the most common wood to use is pine. You can cut pinewood from your trees or purchase it from any craft store.

What Is Pine Wood Commonly Used For?

Pine wood is the main character when it comes to building materials; however, pine has many other uses other than building a home. It is a main crop in the forestry industry because of its demand in the industry. 

Often, people go to school to learn to grow pine wood in forestry services so they can make a living. According to information from Mississippi State University Extension, Pinewood is a major crop in the United States.

Pine Wood Is Used For Paper

Pine wood makes sturdy paper. Paper mills carry in thousands of pine trees a year to produce paper by the ton. The wood is turned into pulpwood, whose final product is paper products. 

Use Pine Wood For Outdoor Firewood

Do not burn pinewood indoors. This is due to it producing excessive smoke and alkaloid content; however, pine can make wonderful wood for bonfires.

The smoke will quickly dirty your chimney. Make sure before burning any wood inside your fireplace, you make sure your chimney is clean and free of soot. 

Ashes from the wood can be used for things as well. Insects hate it as well as it provides natural fertilizers for plants. Wood ash also helps raise the pH of the soil.

Pine Wood Is Used As Building Material

As detailed above, pinewood is the superior building material. This is the main use of pine trees in the United States. It is just one of many uses for this versatile tree. 

This wood is used as the main framing of a house. Pine wood planks are used to build the bones of the home and plywood is often used for subflooring.

This creates a strong shell for a house that should last decades! 

Use Pine Wood For Gardening!

In gardening, pine is used in many ways. Wood chips, garden boxes, and pine straw are important to every gardener.

Pine makes great garden boxes and pine straw is a great mulch for plants, the only downside to pine straw is how long it takes to break down if you are attempting to compost it!

Some people even take pine wood and use it inside their garden beds to fill their raised beds before adding soil on top of that. This is an economical way to have raised beds. Over time, the wood will rot and create compost to feed the plants. 

Another use in the garden is using logs to build fencing and raised beds. There is no need to cut the logs into planks as many enjoy the rustic look. The logs will break down so it is not a permanent solution.

Using Pine Wood In Farming

In the agriculture industry, pine is used for various tasks such as making fencing. Logs are cut to make posts and fence boards. Pine chips, sawdust, and shavings are used for animal bedding. Plus, farmers grow the trees as a crop. 

Christmas tree farms are a lucrative business. Many farmers create a tree farm and turn it into agritourism. This creates a double profit as many families enjoy going and cutting a tree. 

Farming Christmas trees is a passive income since you only sell the trees once a year. However, it can be a wonderful way to make extra money for Christmas time. 

Tree farms take years to produce. During this time, pine straw is harvested from underneath the trees. The straw is harvested and baled like you would hay, and sold to nurseries everywhere. 

This makes pine trees a cash crop. Not only is it a cash crop, but it is a more versatile cash crop than growing trees such as oak, because with oak trees you can only use the wood.

That allows people to use their pine trees as a means of making money by selling them for decoration purposes, while waiting for the trees to mature enough to harvest the wood. 

What Are Some Other Common Pine Tree Uses?

Pinewood is a very valuable material in carpentry. It can be used to make high-value wood items such as wood frames, windows, doors, etc. On top of this, pine trees can also be used to many many other things such as sap and resins. 

Many think of pine trees as wood and straw. There are, however, many other products made from pine trees and their wood. 

Pine Nuts Can Be Used For Food

Pine nuts are the seeds produced by the tree. This is made in recipes such as pesto! People also eat the inner bark, needles, and pollen of the tree. It is often seen as survival food since trees are prevalent. 

The trees can also be fed to various animals such as goats. Rabbits also enjoy the pine cones that fall off the tree. Christmas trees that aren’t treated are often donated to zoos to feed their animals after the holiday season.

Pine Trees As Ornamental

When you think of pine trees, chances are you think of the ones that create pine straw and lumber. However, pine trees and Christmas trees are in the same category. Christmas trees are farmed for decoration in homes every holiday season. 

The branches are also harvested and used to make wreaths and other decorations. Pine cones are also turned into decor for year-round enjoyment!

Use Pine Trees For Landscaping

Planting pine trees can make a wonderful addition to your landscaping. They grow well and provide an interesting plant for your yard. With the right kind, you can even decorate it for Christmas every year!

That’s A Wrap!

Pine trees are versatile and fast-growing trees. The tree itself makes many products, including paper and wood. Renowned for its agricultural uses and its uses in gardens including making garden beds and pine straw. 

Pinewood makes a fantastic mulch. Mulch is important and keeping a garden. Weed-free and well-watered.

If you have a pine tree and it isn’t growing, make sure to check out our guide on why your pine tree isn’t growing and how to fix it.

References

“Eastern White Pine Fact Sheet – Signs of the Seasons: A New England Phenology Program – University of Maine Cooperative Extension.” Signs of the Seasons: A New England Phenology Program, The University of Maine, 2014, extension.umaine.edu/signs-of-the-seasons/indicator-species/pine-fact-sheet/.

White Pine, Eastern, et al. Pinus Strobus Figure 1. Middle-Aged Eastern White Pine. 1994.

Chalker-Scott, L. (2017). Hugelkultur: what is it, and should it be used in home gardens?