Heavy heavy lawn thread 2019

[#NoPoles]

1 hour ago, dendrite said:

Pic with a quarter for reference. Thank you Di!

The smaller ones are mostly dark now and the larger mostly green. 

when i first gathered them they were all green

[#NoPoles]

The really sad thing ive noticed down here is there are still chestnuts trying to grow. Most of them gave up the ghost long ago in New England. They seem to get in 2-4 years of growth down here before the blithe takes over. So sad, such gorgeous trees that got wiped out

[dendrite]

6 hours ago, #NoPoles said:

The really sad thing ive noticed down here is there are still chestnuts trying to grow. Most of them gave up the ghost long ago in New England. They seem to get in 2-4 years of growth down here before the blithe takes over. So sad, such gorgeous trees that got wiped out

I’m pretty sure the transgenic ones are going to get FDA approved in the next 2 years. All they changed was 1 gene. It doesn’t even kill the blight...it just allows the tree to be able to handle the acid it produces. Studies so far show that it doesn’t change anything with beneficial forest fungus, bee pollination, leaf litter decomposition, etc. Frog tadpoles have a higher survival rate in water with the chestnut leaf litter versus those from leaves from other trees too. Makes you wonder how much of the frog decline is due to that too. Anyway, they’re coming. Just gotta save the elm, ash, and hemlock now.

[tamarack]

20 hours ago, dendrite said:

Anyone an expert on hickory nuts? Diane braved the heat and humidity to Nashville to collect me some and I have some in different sizes. I know shellbark are the largest followed by shagbark and then either mockernut or pignuts, but I’m not sure how large each nut hull is supposed to be...I just know the relative sizes.

I’ll post some later, but maybe @tamarack will know?

i feel like I either have ovata with some ovalis, or laciniosa with some ovata.

Sorry, can't be much help on this one - Maine isn't hickory-friendly.  We had 3-4 kinds of hickory in NNJ though shagbark was easily the most abundant.  Maine has very few native hickories, probably all shagbark, and the closest is along Route 1 in Woolwich, on the midcoast.  There's 3 planted ones - 2 shagbark and one of the smooth-barked species (mockernut?) at the north end of Mile Hill in New Sharon, plus some smaller trees that were likely from the original 3, whether planted or naturalized.  I've never stopped to look for nuts, or husks, as squirrels probably know to the minute when the nuts are table-ready.

Edit:  Just found out, from Forestry's "Forest Trees of Maine", that bitternut hickory (C. cordiformis) is found, though rarely, in extreme southern Maine, so maybe that's the smooth-barked specimen noted above.  None of the other 4 in your pic show ranges north of Mass.

Edit #2:  There are records stating that, prior to the blight, one of every 4 hardwood trees east of the Mississippi was an American chestnut.  Whether or not that's factual, the elimination of the species as a factor in the Eastern forest is probably the region's highest ecological impact on forests in thousands of years.  Due to chestnut's rot resistance, dead snags stood for decades after the disease swept through.  My wife lived most of her teen years, (mid 60s into early 70s) in a log cabin built from standing dead chestnut trees about 1930, perhaps 15 years after the trees had died.

[dryslot]

I remember Chestnuts were still around back in the 60's up here

[IrishRob17]

On 6/3/2019 at 1:29 PM, dendrite said:

heh

Did you use it on an electric or gas? Mine's electric and all of those attachments advise against electric powered ones, but I may give it a whirl anyway.

Did you try this yet?  I'm curious how it worked out if you did.

[dendrite]

19 minutes ago, IrishRob17 said:

Did you try this yet?  I'm curious how it worked out if you did.

Not yet...been wiping them out with the pruners and loppers.

[tamarack]

1 hour ago, dryslot said:

I remember Chestnuts were still around back in the 60's up here

A staff forester found several chestnuts, some 60 feet tall, on a state lot about 25 miles NNW from BGR.  He had the harvesters cut small patches immediately south of the better specimens, to encourage reproduction.  The tactic worked, but unfortunately the biggest of the "adult" trees has died from blight.  I've read that oaks can harbor the pathogen without being harmed, so the stuff remains in the environment long after all chestnuts in an area are gone.  There are still a few on the state lot in Topsham, but the biggest are either dead or dying.

[dryslot]

3 minutes ago, tamarack said:

A staff forester found several chestnuts, some 60 feet tall, on a state lot about 25 miles NNW from BGR.  He had the harvesters cut small patches immediately south of the better specimens, to encourage reproduction.  The tactic worked, but unfortunately the biggest of the "adult" trees has died from blight.  I've read that oaks can harbor the pathogen without being harmed, so the stuff remains in the environment long after all chestnuts in an area are gone.  There are still a few on the state lot in Topsham, but the biggest are either dead or dying.

Cracking open the outer spiny shell to actually get at the chestnut was quite a challenge..............

[tamarack]

54 minutes ago, dryslot said:

Cracking open the outer spiny shell to actually get at the chestnut was quite a challenge..............

Just getting them off the tree without piercing one's hands is a challenge, and once those spines soften the least bit, squirrels are all over them.  I learned this about 25 years ago when trying to collect nuts from a 1962 planting on our Hebron lot.  (Alas, all are blighted and gone.)   First day I tried, I had no hand protection and chose not to bleed.  2 days later I was better prepared but the squirrels had beaten me to it - nothing but husks remaining, all on the ground.  The next year I managed to gather about 20 burrs (wrecked one nut opening a burr and rather than pitch it, had a taste - quite sweet, even w/o roasting.)  Planted about 30 nuts on the Topsham lot, but between deer and blight, only one still survives.

[dryslot]

9 minutes ago, tamarack said:

Just getting them off the tree without piercing one's hands is a challenge, and once those spines soften the least bit, squirrels are all over them.  I learned this about 25 years ago when trying to collect nuts from a 1962 planting on our Hebron lot.  (Alas, all are blighted and gone.)   First day I tried, I had no hand protection and chose not to bleed.  2 days later I was better prepared but the squirrels had beaten me to it - nothing but husks remaining, all on the ground.  The next year I managed to gather about 20 burrs (wrecked one nut opening a burr and rather than pitch it, had a taste - quite sweet, even w/o roasting.)  Planted about 30 nuts on the Topsham lot, but between deer and blight, only one still survives.

We roasted them around the holidays, Its too bad we lost that species, In other news, I had a buddy of mine who is an arborist come give my pin oaks a good trimming last week, That should keep the branches off the vehicles for a few years...............

 

[tamarack]

2 hours ago, dryslot said:

We roasted them around the holidays, Its too bad we lost that species, In other news, I had a buddy of mine who is an arborist come give my pin oaks a good trimming last week, That should keep the branches off the vehicles for a few years...............

 

Looks good.  Those horizontal branches tend toward a downward angle as time goes on, I think more for gaining sunlight than due to weight.

[dendrite]

They're coming.

 

[dendrite]

And yeah...more hope against EAB?

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-23216-6

[mreaves]

10 minutes ago, dendrite said:

And yeah...more hope against EAB?

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-23216-6

Did Tip write that first sentence?

[dryslot]

4 hours ago, tamarack said:

Looks good.  Those horizontal branches tend toward a downward angle as time goes on, I think more for gaining sunlight than due to weight.

Thanks, Both trees were planted at the same time 30+ yrs ago, The one on the left got hit by lightning and for 10 yrs or so, Only half the tree had leaves and the other half didn't, The bark was split wide open the full length of the tree facing the street, But it has finally healed back over and has just started to thrive so it was set back a few years compared to the one near the driveway, I know one thing, Over the last 5+yrs or so, Its been quite the PITA trying to keep those lower branches trimmed so they were not hitting the tops of vehicles pulling into the driveway.

I was about as far as i could go with trimming them with a pole saw standing in the back of my PU, The main problem was the further up into the canopy i was getting i could only cut off half the branch so there was a lot of dead branches still attached to the trunk that I'm sure was not contributing to the health of both trees, They came in and cut them off flush to the trunks plus removed the next two rows that were hanging back down into the driveway, Should be good for another 5yrs or so now hopefully.

[#NoPoles]

6 hours ago, dendrite said:

They're coming.

 

I need to follow this account. Was it tamarack who said 1 in every 4 trees used to be a chestnut? That statistic is correct. Our forests used to be drastically different. Southern New England used to be oak chestnut dominant...i wish i had a time machine to go back and see how the forests originally looked

[tamarack]

9 hours ago, #NoPoles said:

I need to follow this account. Was it tamarack who said 1 in every 4 trees used to be a chestnut? That statistic is correct. Our forests used to be drastically different. Southern New England used to be oak chestnut dominant...i wish i had a time machine to go back and see how the forests originally looked

That's what I've read, and even if that was only true in the central/southern Apps region, it's still quite possible that chestnut was once the most abundant single species east of the Big Muddy.  Despite the immense forest trauma, nature abhors a vacuum and other species, mainly oaks but also hickories, maples, etc., quickly filled in.

That same outcrossing was done on the state's Topsham lot for 3 years beginning early in this millenium, though probably with less hybridized male pollen.  Unfortunatley, that female tree has died, and though there's no proof, I think that opening up the area around it to gain natural regeneration (an action I fully support, as we've done it for chestnut elsewhere) may have facilitated the inoculant's reaching a 60-year-old specimen that had shown no prior signs of disease.

[tamarack]

16 hours ago, dendrite said:

And yeah...more hope against EAB?

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-23216-6

Maybe.  If this methodology becomes feasible for broad-scale forest application, that would come only after extensive testing of its effect on non-target organisms and development of application methods - probably at least 10 years down the road.  One problem with treating ash in the forest is that it usually is a minor component and almost never forms pure/nearly pure stands on areas larger than a fraction of an acre.  Still, this approach warrants further study.  My first hope for control is in establishing some sort of biological control, some predator/parasite/disease specific to EAB that can be established in that beetle's range.

[Baroclinic Zone]

Lawn doing much better than last given how relatively wet it's been as compared to last.  I think I've cut the grass 1/2 dozen times now which I don't think I had done till September last year.  Bit more weeds this year as well as I was unable to get a Fall cleanup.  Hopefully I can keep up with the weed control better this year as we move into Fall.  I have a bunch of Fall germinating weeds that are a pain to deal with.  With this upcoming warmer stretch, I may be able to go 2-3 weeks without a mow.  One other thing I haven't been able to do is edge my beds and clean them up, so I am left with a 1/2 manicured yard.  Kinda blows, but it'll have to do.

[dendrite]

39 minutes ago, tamarack said:

Maybe.  If this methodology becomes feasible for broad-scale forest application, that would come only after extensive testing of its effect on non-target organisms and development of application methods - probably at least 10 years down the road.  One problem with treating ash in the forest is that it usually is a minor component and almost never forms pure/nearly pure stands on areas larger than a fraction of an acre.  Still, this approach warrants further study.  My first hope for control is in establishing some sort of biological control, some predator/parasite/disease specific to EAB that can be established in that beetle's range.

I'd just be wary about introducing something not native that could damage more down the line than just EABs.

[tamarack]

2 hours ago, dendrite said:

I'd just be wary about introducing something not native that could damage more down the line than just EABs.

Absolutely true, so research must establish that non-target organisms will not be harmed.  Another exotic, winter moth, has been defoliating hardwoods from Mass to Maine, but there is increasing success in control using a parasitoid fly from the invasive insect's home area that has been found to be totally specific to winter moth.  Releases have been done in Mass and Maine, populations of the fly have been established and appear to be increasing on their own, and defoliation is way down.  My hope is that some critter/fungus native to EAB's natural range and that affects nothing else can do what that fly is doing to winter moth. 

[BrianW]

My dying ash tree was taken down Monday. I had them leave the wood for my wood stove.  Love burning in the winter.

Had to break up the main trunk with a sledge and maul as they were to massive to move. Those that burn know how back braking using a maul is especially in this heat.

 

[dendrite]

21 hours ago, #NoPoles said:

I need to follow this account. Was it tamarack who said 1 in every 4 trees used to be a chestnut? That statistic is correct. Our forests used to be drastically different. Southern New England used to be oak chestnut dominant...i wish i had a time machine to go back and see how the forests originally looked

Long, but good, read on the transgenic chestnuts.

https://psmag.com/ideas/most-controversial-tree-in-the-world-gmo-genetic-engineering

[#NoPoles]

1 hour ago, dendrite said:

Long, but good, read on the transgenic chestnuts.

https://psmag.com/ideas/most-controversial-tree-in-the-world-gmo-genetic-engineering

If you Insta, follow the american chestnut project

[dendrite]

4 minutes ago, #NoPoles said:

If you Insta, follow the american chestnut project

I’m on the waiting list with them for the darling 58 if/when it gets FDA approval. I’m growing natural mother trees here now.

[BrianW]

I am trying to save my other ash and I started treating it with a insecticide soil drench a few years ago. Cost about $10 a year to treat with a professional grade insecticide available online. They trimmed some dead branches off it but the crown is really healthy still. 

The other picture is the tree that was taken down.  Notice the entire crown is dead and when that happens there is no saving it.

Just about every ash around me is dead so this may be one of the few still alive and doing well in the area. 

 

[tamarack]

16 hours ago, BrianW said:

My dying ash tree was taken down Monday. I had them leave the wood for my wood stove.  Love burning in the winter.

Had to break up the main trunk with a sledge and maul as they were to massive to move. Those that burn know how back braking using a maul is especially in this heat.

 

Hot as it is, either split those big sections now before the ends dry out, or stack them (tough when so heavy.)   Ash, like red oak, tends to split easily, but allowing the ends to dry greatly increases the degree of difficulty.  For the most difficult, try splitting along the rings rather than across, sort of flaking pieces off the sides.  (And if you ever encounter large elm, try nitroglycerin.)

[OceanStWx]

Speaking of diseased trees, I was always bummed once I found out what the Ostrander Elms gravestone was all about in the middle of Cornell's campus.

This is the view I was familiar with, but Dutch elm claimed Ostrander's about 100 years from their 1877 planting.

These two pictures are roughly taken from that same intersection, looking in the same direction.

[OceanStWx]

I'm also struggling with one of my red maples at home. I'm not sure what happened to it. 

We planted two a little over a year and a half ago, trunks about 2 inches at their thickest. One is thriving, but the other lost the top of its crown. Full foliage around the middle and bottom though. I've weeded and watered, but still not seeing any signs of life on top.