Well, the video release in July I promised wasn’t exactly what I thought it was going to be lol. It was about worms being used in soil improvement zones beneath trees. Pretty cool and casual vid.

I made another one, but after uploading it to YouTube and picking at it, I’ve decided to delay it. Too many holes in it. I’m going to redo it, despite having a finished product.

But, I’m recording it today! Took a break from re-writing the script because I forgot to write the newsletter ahead of time.

What’s new this month? Not much really, still sort of in the doldrums. Still getting new clients offering us to care for their awesome trees. Same ol’ same ol’. Today I was told by a new client that I actually sound like my website. A unique compliment.

For the first time ever this month, I recommended the full removal of a very large branch on a silver maple. Where I did not think a reduction was enough. A testament to how infrequent huge branch removal actually needs to be.

I’ll tell ya about it.

Above is a silver maple on my street. Crown is made up of two primary stems, but you can only see one in the above photo. It is sort of skewed because I used the wide-angle lens on my phone.

All of the living foliage you see belongs to the other primary stem, not the primary you can see. The only remaining leaf-area on that entire primary stem is that really long stem growing leftwards.

The top of this primary stem broke off in a recent wind storm, leaving only that spindly stem. That primary has a bunch of connected hollows and excessively large pruning wounds on it too.

Here’s another angle of that same tree:

Here you can see the other primary stem. Full of leaves, not excessively crown lifted. Epicormic stems a plenty. Since the tree grew on the property line, the differing management strategies are quite evident. On the right, full of large removal cuts. On the left, the tree is mostly intact and unpruned. Love it.

With this angle, though, you can see just how far that lone isolated stem is on the upper right of the photo. It is about 15” in diameter at its attachment to its primary stem.

I think either a large heading cut or outright removal of this entire stem is what I recommend in this scenario. There are not viable cabling angles in this scenario that I like.

Ordinarily, removing this would qualify as an excessively large pruning wound. Large wounds on silver maples in my region tend to decay faster than they can compartmentalize. This can result in hollows and the introduction/activation of pathogenic decaying organisms in a tree’s heartwood.

Evidence of this is plenty along the tree’s northern primary stem (on the right in the above photo). It was also reported by both the clients and their neighbor that the large stem that failed contained a high degree of heart rot.

There is a bit of irony here in that it is likely that excessive pruning got the tree into this position in the first place. And yet, it is exactly that now that will reduce its residual risk.

Once that stem is removed, all that will remain of that northern primary stem is just its stem. If it suckers out, awesome. That’s best case scenario, then we can help the tree rebuild that side of itself. Otherwise, it will remain an awesome snag while the other half of the tree thrives.

Either way, removal of that entire primary stem is not recommended. That will create a massive wound on the healthy side of the tree, which spells a whole different set of problems the tree doesn’t currently have.

If you want a copy of that preliminary report, happy to send it to ya. I found it quite amusing just how different the management strategies of this tree were. A great example of what to do, and what not to do with silver maples in my area.

Alright, I hope you see me soon on YouTube if my new version is good.

Later,

Jeremiah & TF