Need some help with a pecan

[Brimmstone]

I have a moderate size pecan tree in my front yard. It is on the southern side of house and considering what Ike is going to be like I wanted to know what someone who has dealt with pecan more than I have would think it's chances are.

It is about maybe 35 feet tall, 18 to 24 inches wide at the base and almost all of it's limbs are about 20 feet up and higher. It seems healthy and the smaller limbs that were low hanging and hitting my roof and lines to my house have been trimmed off.

I mainly concerned with root depth and breaking strength. As of right now we are probably inline for 100 MPH plus winds. I have a somewhat sandy-clay for soil. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Ed Roland]

During a wind event all bets are off! Trees fail.
Good luck and HangON!

 

[treeseer]

Standard treatment for pecans is to reduce the heavy ends every few years. Unless you have a reeeal long pole pruner, I dunno what to say.

Pictures would help a lot.

 

[Brimmstone]

Unfortunately I don't have a camera anymore. I'll take my phone out and do some quick pics to show what it looks like. Take pity on me though I never had to do any pruning before. All my trees up in Ohio were virgin to any sort of pruning and had been around for decades. All the tree work I did was removals.

 

[Brimmstone]

here are some of the pics

 

[Brimmstone]

And the rest

 

[Dadatwins]

The time to worry about the tree was probably way before the hurricane was knocking at your door. If it survives get an arborist out there to reduce the sprawl and prune it. Pecan need reduction every few years or they will fail. Good luck with the storm.

 

[Brimmstone]

If there is any chance it will fail I'm going to drop it tomorrow morning. I've dropped way worse in tighter areas. I have my spikes and my saws with me and can have it on the ground and bucked up in about three hours. I wish I had had a chance to have someone prune it sooner but I only moved down here last December. I have 18 years of neglect to deal with around the property right now. The tree was the last of my worries as I tried to get issues with the house settled first. I was going to drop it before Gustav but was told they were a stout tree with deep roots. I don't have any experience with pecan trees. If it was oak, pine, popular, maple, and other northern trees I would have made a call already. I was told today that pecan was not a strong tree and am kinda apprehensive about it.

 

[Brimmstone]

Well the pecan is gone now. I dropped it a few hours ago. I climbed up it and set a couple ropes near the top and then tied them off to two trucks. I notched the tree and had the guys working with me put some tension on the ropes with the trucks. As soon as it started to move I had the one truck pull while the other truck was mainly used to guide. Dropped right between the house and the lines missing everything. I'm glad I did it now as the center showed some rot. The top of the tree was snapped off already and was showing lots of rot in the very top.

 

[masiman]

New pics?

 

[Brimmstone]

No new pics. We had to work fast to get it down and cut up to get it out of the way. Right when we stacked the last of the wood it really started to blow.

 

[Ed Roland]

Good Luck Brim, I live on a barrier island southeast of Wilmington, NC. I know what these storms are like now that I have lived through a couple.

 

[Rookie1]

My stepfathers dad lived in Ada,Oklahoma. Big ranch lots of pecan trees. He had a guy that would harvest the nuts. He would come out trim trees and what not then come in with shaker to harvest nuts. I thought it was a cool deal. Hes passed now not sure whats going on there now.

 

[Brimmstone]

We're feeling the edge of Ike right now. I'm waiting for it to hit full bore around midnight. If we still have power and internet tomorrow I'll let you know how it's going. It's supposed to hit Galveston and Houston dead on. This is going to be an interesting weekend.