Proper Tree Healthcare & Maintenance

[syncom2]

I live in Southwest Ohio (Dayton area). Being I have a few fairly young (20 - 25 year old) oaks growing in my lawn (White, Bur, Scarlet, White Swamp, Shingle, Pin), I am becoming increasingly alarmed about how widespread the Oak Wilt disease problem is. In attempt of providing my oaks (and my other trees as well) the best care I can afford, what steps and/or procedures of care do I need administer to aid in their long term survival? What is the educated general consensus on a fertilization program? Is fall and/or winter fertilization something that I need to apply or avoid altogether? If so on the "do do" side, what is the best product that a home can owner purchase? What I have gleaned from this site, I understand that pruning oaks during the winter months is something I should adhere to. Not only that, but some type of sterilization to the pruning tools need to take place. One aspect of healthy pruning of oak trees that I do not understand is… is if I need to prune some branches off during the winter months, do I need to apply some type of a sealer or barrier over this fresh incision? If so, again, what is the best treatment (type and/or particular brand) for this procedure?
In advance, thanks for all the shared information!!
mb

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

Fertilization using the standard high N stuff reduces trees tolerance/resistance to diseases. Most of the science applied has been based on studies in annual rotaion crops like corn and soy.
Since turf grass rarely gets decaying matter added, natural products like seaweed or fish emultions are good give minor and trace elements with the NPK that the big companies sell in bulk. Manure and compost top dressing is good too.

Probably the number one best thing to do is to mulch out as far as you (and you family) can stand it aestheicly.

http://search.dogpile.com/texis/search?q=proper+mulching&geo=no&fs=web

Have an arborist inspect the basal area to enusre there are no encircling roots that may become stem girdlers.

http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/naturalresources/DD7501.html

Many lots are scraped of all topsoil, then a minimal amount is added to put the turf in. Radial trenching, and backfill with a high organic soil like a sandy loam will allow the tree to put out more roots at deeper levels. I've done 2x1.5 trenches with an air tool.

Pruning, look at ther trees and imagine hwo you want them to look 20-30 years from now. Are the lowe limbs in that pictuer? If not they need to be thought of as temporary limbs and pruned to stunt them so they feed the tree, but are not allowed to get any significant caliper to them. Removal is gradual so there is no clustering of wounds in any segment of the trunk.

Wound clusters can cause bark diebak and a coalesance of wounds and decay.

Large wounds that are a significant % of the aspect ratio of the trunk/stem are more likely to close slow and form pockets of decay.

http://search.dogpile.com/texis/search?q=decay+trees&geo=no&fs=web

Read as much ad you can about tree science so you can be an informed conusumer of tree care. Spend $90 on the book "Arboriculture..." (3rd.ed.) by Harris et al.

 

[lhampton]

What kind of condition are your trees in? What kind of attention have they received in the past? Are there obvious problems, or does all appear well?

I would look down before up. What is the soil like? Does the tree flare at the base, or go straight into the ground like a pole? Instead of looking at pruning or fertilization first, try to determine what stresses if any the trees are under, what can we do about it?

I'm not familiar with your area. Find someone who is, and has a good plant health care program. Don't accept a prescription for treatment without first receiving an examination and complete diagnoses of the problem. In my opinion ( for Nickrosis) good intentions without thourough understanding will do more damage than most plant pest/diseases combined.

Louie Hampton

 

[Tom Dunlap]

I'm surprised that JPS missed speaking on sterilization of tools

Don't worry about the issue unless you're pruning on a diseased tree and then immediately pruning on a healthy tree. Study up on proper pruning too. Ed Gilman's "Pruning Illustrated" second edition is a good book in addition to what my colleague recommended.

Your trees will live to be grand old trees with your attention to their well-being at such a young age.

This past summer I worked with Dr. Jenny Juzwick on a couple of oak wilt research projects. She works for the USFS and the U of MN. She'll have the resulst of the tests from last summer in the late winter/early spring. Therapuetic injections for oak wilt might be a consideration.

Tom

 

[Kneejerk Bombas]

I will slightly disagree with Tom on sanitizing tools. I agree a homeowner who only cuts on his own trees, likely won't be bringing in diseases. A commercial tree trimmer, who is often hired to remove diseased trees, is very likely to bring them in.
Our company uses simply rubbing alcohol, applied with a paint brush, liberally to all cutting surfaces of topping saws, hand saws, pole saws, and hand pruners, before and after each job site.
Very few tree services are cleaning their tools, and in my opinion, are effective vectors for many tree diseases.

The challenge question:
What besides bleach, alcohol, or other disinfectant, does it take, and how long, to kill an Oak Wilt fungal spore?

Time?
Humidity?
Temperature?
None of the above?

 

[Tom Dunlap]

Mike,

JPS will be aboard with his answer soon. Until then, do you have the answers to your questions or do you need the answers?

Before I pester Jenny for the information, I'd like to bat this one around here.

Thanks,

Tom

 

[Kneejerk Bombas]

I would like to know the answers.

A quote from a North Carolina Integrated Pest Management fllier:

"Many fungal spores are able to survive long periods of unfavorable conditions and will germinate once conditions become favorable. Wind, splashed water, tools, machinery, and insects are ways in which fungal pathogens can come into contact with host plants."

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

The 100ppm bleach for 2 min is the food industry best practices, for sanitizing food handling tools, that my Dad used to instruct as a sanitarian for 40 years.

He has been retired for around 15 now so cannot say if these were FDA guidlines or not.

So I figure that if it is good for human consumption, it will sanitize for pruning.

We had a discission about this and he said that with chainsaws it is probabbly a waisted effort, because we do not tear them down and clean them prior to sanitizing them. Much like the problems with the meat prossesing industry where they had haphazard cleaning prorams and small amounts of rotten meat in the grinders infected millions of pounds of product.

So we go out and remove a red aok with active wilt, there are bits of infected wood in the bar, chain and sprocket. spraying woth bleach or alchohol would be in effective in sanitizing this peice of equipment.

That all said, any effort is better then none at all. Mikes efforts reduce the risk of being a vetor.

Maybe we need a Barbisol type bar oil.

The only way to have a near absolute certainty is to have separate saws that are only used on removals and disease pruning.

 

[Kneejerk Bombas]

John:
"The only way to have a near absolute certainty is to have separate saws that are only used on removals and disease pruning."
And:
"there are bits of infected wood in the bar, chain and sprocket. spraying woth bleach or alchohol would be in effective in sanitizing this peice of equipment."

We don't need "<I>absolute certainty</I>", just reasonable certainty.

As a chain saw spins, it throws particles outward. Oil pumped from under the chain moves through and out. When applying your solution use a paint brush doused in the disinfectant. Turn you saw upside down and douse the sprocket and saw dust around the sprocket.
As you apply the solution to the chain, it runs through the chain, and down into the grove in the bar.
I don't like bleach for fear it might get on my ropes, or damage the tools bearings or cutting surfaces. I use alcohol, which I get by the gallon at the local farm supply store for a couple bucks. My local university plant pathologist said that the fungi we are working with are wimpy, and alcohol is very effective.
Be cautious, alcohol is flamable.

 

[Reed]

Epidemics are a sad reality.

Here we work with the results of all recommended controls, witness over time the more effective practices and some of the more non-conventional ones but can judge the results of each and every individual method.

What it boils down to and the scale of the die-backs dictate pretty much that one set of tools (ropes included) is to be used for disease work and another for non-disease work. Period.

 

[Kneejerk Bombas]

I'm not sure how effective a different set of tools would be. You may cut into an infected tree that is not yet symptomatic, thereby contaminating your "clean" tools, without knowing it. Hence, the routine sanitizing.

 

[Reed]

Mike,
I should maybe state that down here it's evident that symptom development is a clear indication of infection, the work itself becomes obvious if you're there to remove dead-by-disease trees or work on healthy trees. Proximity is also a good positive on infection, as our root systems engraft as a vegetative habit in live oak.

The best example of infection spread by tools comes from right-of-way work where disease and health is no parameter to the work needs. From the sky it's clearly evident that wilt travels the corridors of powerlines. This is perhaps the best area to practice the use of "dual tools". To see so many guidelines followed (unwillingly but enforced) as per wound sealing on ROW's, it's preposterous to assume painting the wounds of healthy trees that just got innoculated with pathogen infected tools will defer or prevent further spread.

There are several other diseases that consider dual tools use as well, expecially the viral or bacterial infections - again, work to destroy and remove then the next day pruning of healthy but susceptable hosts. I know it's costly but so are the intervention programs once disease establishes. It could be an excellent promotional idea: we follow disease vectoring restrictions.

 

[Kneejerk Bombas]

Wilt,
So I understand, you don't sanitze your pruning tools?

 

[Reed]

Yes, I do nonetheless.

I watched a half-wit demonstration by an office of a state agency that had a 5-gallon bucket of Cholrox'ed' water and this yo yo just dipped his John Deere demo saw into the water and ran it until it choked off. What a ****, I thought. We all had bleach splashed all over the place. This was "adaquate" he told everybody.

I asked him about the clutch cover and air cleaner..."doesn't saw dust clump there too?" He didn't understand what I was asking. I showed him. He said he would go back and ask someone with authority (i.e., a PhD). These guys have no thinking process, I believe their supposed to say as they've been told.

I just come home and tear the saws down. In the field, depending on the next job if I have one, WD40 in our lab had an in-vitro termination on all my cultures for both mycelia and neutralized gathered spores. If i don't have access to compressed air, I screw-driver the small recesses of the covers and spray whatever build-up's in there, gasoline the air screens and keep the dirty rope isolated from the next job. Brush and logs are brought back here, where my remaining oaks have treated resistance and can't be infected because they already are but are managing the disease.

 

[syncom2]

I really don't care to broadcast and/or expose my general ignorance of tree diseases here, primarily referring to the oak wilt for this discussion, but what better company can I be in the midst of when drawing open my protective shades?
Please allow me to ask all of you (in the know…) this;
If I prune some limbs off one of my oak trees… Annnnnd and let's say I drag those limbs back towards the rear of the property, to allow them to air dry (season) in a brush pile - so I can later burn 'em either for kindling, for a camp fire, or whatever, what's the chances that the decaying wood on the ground level can create a favorable site for the oak wilt diseases to develop in? Along with that thought, what's the odds of me purchasing a cord or two of firewood that could have come from a woodlot that harbored this disease? If I have a natural open (or saw cut) wound on one of my trees, am I guilty of creating a serous potential problem for myself 'cos of this environmental integrating? I guess what I'm trying to get at is that don't wanna be guilty of being foolish about its wrath, nor do I wish to be over-blowing this for myself. Presently speakin', I believe I'm at the "prevention" side of the problem, and that's where I wish to remain!
In advance, thanks for schooling your novice student here!
mb

 

[Reed]

First of all, if the limbs are from a disease-free tree, there is no vectoring problem. Secondly the fungus is a vascular parasite - it dies when the sap flow is impaired. If (and this is a big 'if') there is disease that got to the reproductive stage (in other words 'active' mycelia forming a reproductive 'mat' or sporulating structure) there is slight possibility that spores can dislodge or adhere to feeding insects who then may travel to fresh wounds on live hosts - this is where the recommendations of clear (not black) plastic comes in (no sightly light holes for insects to exit) to cover wood piles. If your pile of brush just remains there (dying), there is no possible way infection may occur to it - we've tried to innoculate moist but cut logs, it doesn't happen.

Purchased firewood comes from the most economic source and in our case down here it's diseased and dying trees - in other words "free", soon to be sold. Many of the logs are had by deals to remove trees on the cheap so firewood can be processed. There's unlimited supply. If a declining actively infected tree is cut down and immediately transported, sold, and stored - yes, there is great potential for infection spread. That's where storage under clear plastic comes in. Every state has guidelines similar to ours in that respect - how to store the wood. If the wood is obviously dead and void of moisture (seasoned) there is no way C. fagacearum can survive within it.

Decaying wood will invite other fungi and bacteria, none of which in my experience have yet to become pathogenic to live trees, but decaying activity will favor a weak and defenseless tree. Don't pile brush against the trunk of any live tree. I have a pet store of cultures of these little life forms, all native and yet to find modified monsters from my collection but have seen some altered characteristics in some of the basic samples. I'll let you know the minute one escapes and becomes a serial killer. Did you know Anthax is cultured from soil? So is pseudomonas aerogenosa - an antibiotic-resistant killer that's blamed for 20% of all hospital-borne human mortalities. It's a wonderful agent for fungal control though, very effective against wilt in-vivo.

Overall, check county statistics for wilt, look at the sight maps if they've published them yet, and discount 78% of anything the county agent tells you except for wood storage information. I think you'll be fine for now with what you want to do.

 

[mquinn]

thanks for the continuing education reed.

i tried to put some elm bark beetle infested wood in a clear bag - seemed pretty heavy - but i don't know the actual thickness - and they ate their way through it. what's the mil requirements on that clear plastic?

 

[Reed]

Well gee.

Hmmm.

I guess boring beetles bore thru stuff. We had a round about here a few years ago concerning the advice on plastic. We used to tell homeowners to use black, thinking like you discovered, that they bore thru but black in sunlight raised temps undercover past the known level that the pathogens were killed, screw the beetles. The idea of clear plastic comes from the notion that beetles can't tell where the holes and rips are, they die while looking for escape routes.

I'd prefer black personally, I like the temp extremes but Dr. Numbnuts at A&M is such a qualified expert on wilt, it''s a toss-up. He used to think (along with his esteemed colleagues) that wilt was no threat to Texas. He he.

To be honest, I've made friends with wilt. It doesn't concern me anymore as I know what to do about it, thinking the State's now on it's own and they really don't care anyway because if they did they would trash all current advocated control programs as they know full well they DO NOT WORK. Personally I like to see customers again, happy customers. It has to be difficult to only see them again in a court of law on a civil matter as plaintiffs.

Have you ever thought about a release of mutated males? Go to the genome sequence and isolate the structure that dictates a beak - give them flexible mandibles? That might help.

 

[mquinn]

i think you know my attitude toward dealing with these things...and it doesn't fit the acceptable range of attitudes.

however, that's pretty interesting about the black plastic permitting the insects to see rips and holes, while clear would confound their efforts. aside from my experience with seeing them chew their own nice little holes in the plastic, i have a hard time believing that they use light/sight as their only way of escaping. i've bagged many an insect, and in my experience, if there's so much as a crack opening in a clear plastic bag, they will go right to it without the least bit of trouble. - well, some of them do - others seem to be more prone to try to travel in an upward direction, no matter where the crack is - at least for a time you can fool them that way, but they eventually find their way out. doesn't dr. numbnuts think they have chemical receptors that can detect the difference between the molecular makeup of the air in the bag and the air outside? (or whatever methods they use. somebody's always trying to tell me that the birds hear the worms in the ground - i think they just KNOW where they are - birdie ESP.)

 

[Reed]

Well, Doctor Numbnuts has shown as much qualification to lead the oak wilt war as Tommy Thompson is qualified to lead Health and Human Services. They don't mire themselves up in technicalities relating to pheromones, protiens, or protionics. They get big bucks to place a name on a chemical promotional study, period.

Jee. Expert advice. I'd like to have heard the part of the explanation by the doctor to the Russian Swat Team that the gas he told them to use was safely tested.

I'm starting to promote firewood for heat here in spite of the disease. In every square kilometer inside the 78 county epidemic area we have at least one infection foci. This in spite of controls and 38 million spent on them. If I were interested in resuming an active treatment program, why should I care who gets innoculated and who doesn't? In fact, the great American way would free license me to move spores about, infecting new centers like Johnny planted his appleseeds. Enron did no different nor has the election process followed the rules, ethics aside, if our land grant college can favor industry over truth, why can't I?

You know me better than that, but I admit a fantasy here.