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Doing some Oak Wilt injections today

Started by TreeStandHunter, September 13, 2017, 09:23:20 AM

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TreeStandHunter

I'm an Arborist for Oakland County Parks here in Michigan. The last few years we have had several Oak Wilt sites throughout our 13 parks...this latest one is adjecent too one of our oldest and largest Dry Mesic Southern Forest. A homeowner that borders our park had several of their Red Oaks trimmed in the summer of 2015, they currently have 5 dead standing and we have 2 on our property near theirs...here is a few pics of the site.


 


 
Usually the trees that die dont produce pressure pads until the following spring, that was not te case with 2 of the homeowners trees...


 


 
So because we cannot access the site with a trencher and doing the regular Forest Management model that the DNR follows is not an option because we do not want to open the canopy and invite invasives into this quality habitat I am injecting 22 Red Oaks in hopes of stopping Oak Wilt from spreading anymore than it has.

Here are some aerial photos from 1940 showing the Dry Mesic Southern Forest...luckily not everything was logged back in the day...I am the blue arrowhead, the red is our park perimeter.


 
 

 

So here is the first one on the list, got the root flare all cleaned up and ready.


 
Getting it all hoked up...


 
The air is bled out of the lines and we are on our way...


 
Maintaining optimum pressure!!!


 

All in all this is extremely boring but important work. Once you are setup you wait...and wait some more until the tree has taken all of the solution. Seems smaller trees take the longest, the tree in this photo took almost an hour and a half. I'm trying to get our parks Admins to allow me to sell the logs to local loggers, i guess somewhere in our legal writeup it says we cannot profit from timber harvest so there are some hoops to jump through for it...so our current way of handling the deadwood is to pay to take it to a tub grinder...not my choice but its not my rules either.
In the process of building my own mill.

Banjo picker

Are the trees you are injecting still alive and you are trying to save them, or are you just trying to kill the wilt with some by the chemical you are putting into the tree.  What would you do with a trencher?  Banjo
Never explain, your friends don't need it, and your enemies won't believe you any way.

TreeStandHunter

Quote from: Banjo picker on September 13, 2017, 10:44:45 AM
Are the trees you are injecting still alive and you are trying to save them, or are you just trying to kill the wilt with some by the chemical you are putting into the tree.  What would you do with a trencher?  Banjo
These trees being injected are healthy, in the Red Oak family once a tree shows symptoms treating is not an option the tree will die no matter what. On the other hand trees in the White Oak family can be saved with treatment. A trencher would be used for breaking root grafts as that is how it spreads after it first starts at a site. There is 1 very large White Oak in this area that does not need to be treated because Whites and Reds do not graft together.
In the process of building my own mill.

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