Hemlock in diseased area- cut or not ?

[NCWoodsGuy]

I'm in western NC, one of the hard hit areas for Hemlock insect devastation. Most of the hemlock on my property is dead, probably several hundred trees but I still have some exceptional live ones left. I'm undecided on what to do, cut these trees and mill some nice lumber (my own mill so almost no cost), or leave them to reproduce. I do like Hemlock lumber, it's just barely behind WP on my favorites list.

I haven't seen any good news related to long term hope for Hemlock but who knows what will come. Maybe another insect will come along to stop the Wooly Adelgid. Spraying isn't going to be an option for me. Neither is cut and burn. My property terrain is just too rugged.

[JD Guy]

Howdy to my neighbor just to the North

[moodnacreek]

All our hemlock is gone. Started in 1980 with 3 years of gypsy moth and then the woolys. Some stuff held on but eventually died. You can wait as long as you can see a little green but plan on cutting all of it. At least it will not turn blue/ black like pine.

[NewYankeeSawmill]

Hey there, got a Hemlock that's about to become sawmill fodder on my property as well!
Curious why you wouldn't cut them up into boards, if the wood was still useable? Will it spread the disease or something?

- K

[esteadle]

Reforestation is cheapest if it's done by the prior generation's offspring... seeds spread and grow on their own. And seeds produced by the mature trees already in your area are the most adapted to the local climate. So those would be best and I'd wait to cut the last of them until you can start to find healthy seedlings and good stump sprouts from prior years harvest well on their way.

If you have to reforest using seedlings, expect there to be cost involved, both time and money. Sometimes the forestry folks have some budget or resources or volunteers to help you reforest, but expect a lot of the cost to fall on you.

If you haven't cleared the dead and dying trees, you can get paid back for some of that work with the resulting lumber. In the process you can possibly do some work to improve the soil and moisture conditions to help seedlings start. But before replanting anything, it's best to let the entire plot "rest" and recover and let the little destructive critters die out and move on before giving them a new source of food to destroy.

Even so, you're up against the increasing ravages of climate change, and whatever plans you make are going to be thwarted by mother nature and her anger in being treated poorly and with disrespect for so many decades. You might want to look south and see what grows well in more southern zones, since that's likely to be your future as the planet heats.

I would recommend you give a call to your state forestry's extension office and get some advice from them about your area and what they recommend. I'm in PA so my advice will be different than what might work best in your area.

Best of luck to you,

Eric

[NCWoodsGuy]

Hey there, got a Hemlock that's about to become sawmill fodder on my property as well!
Curious why you wouldn't cut them up into boards, if the wood was still useable? Will it spread the disease or something?

- K

I'm not worried about spreading the problem. It's so widespread here nothing I can do would change that.

It's really that Id like the trees to keep reproducing in the hope some could mature. I have thousands of live small hemlocks but local knowledge says they will die off when the insects find them.

[chep]

I'd mill up the freshest dead and leave the live ones for seed. Pick them off as they go.

[moodnacreek]

If they are in trouble they will reseed like crazy. In the places where the hemlock stands died there where soon many saplings but over time the woolies got them.

[SwampDonkey]

Not much for hemlock in my area. Only one on the place is one I planted 40 years ago in the back yard. Was none on the woodlot.  Toward town there is a stand of timber that has not been clearcut, a rare site around here, that has quite a few old hemlock among maple and yellow birch. Any others handy here I come across are single trees or maybe small groups. I was thinning some ground last summer that had a tight group of them, maybe 12, and under them was just fir and spruce trees 6 feet high. Never saw any hemlock seedlings. On crown lands and mill ground they leave them behind in clearcuts to fall down, most do just that.

[Old Greenhorn]

I live in Hemlock country, in fact an entire industry moved in here in and cut them all down (almost) for the work in the mid 1800's. They grow like weeds here in the right soil, 50 will pop up and grow as tight as bamboo, then most die and one or two mature. Yes, we have the little white bugs that I can find on just about any tree if I look, but I really haven't noticed them dying yet. It's the kind of tree that I ignore. We don't cut them until they are mature or a storm takes them over, then we make lumber or burn it in the OWB. They can get big and the majority are laser straight. Pretty (and heavy) wood.
 If these trees start dying here, we will be in big trouble as we still deal with every single Ash tree being killed in the last 20 years.
 There is a wasp that feeds on the Algedid, which the DEC is releasing in test plots, but no major releases, and I am not sure how the results are coming along. Maybe like the EAB, this bug will leave the young ones alone until they are big enough to be worthwhile. Every once in a while I find a 3-5" diameter Ash in the woods that is untouched and healthy, so far. But I never see good sized ones. The bugs seem to move in when it gets to 6" or so.

[Ianab]

The trees that are still surviving may be ones that have some genetic resistance to the insect attack?  A new pest or disease seldom wipes out 100% of a population, even if 99% looks like a complete kill, if 1 in 100 survive due to some genetic difference in that tree, then it can produce offspring that also have some resistance. This seems to the case with Ash and Elm trees that have been almost wiped out, but not completely. 

For that reason I'd concentrate on the freshly dead ones that you can still salvage. before they spoil. If more die next year, recover them then. Maybe you will loose them all eventually, but it would be a shame if you cut down the tree that did somehow have some natural resistance. 

[moodnacreek]

The trees that are still surviving may be ones that have some genetic resistance to the insect attack?  A new pest or disease seldom wipes out 100% of a population, even if 99% looks like a complete kill, if 1 in 100 survive due to some genetic difference in that tree, then it can produce offspring that also have some resistance. This seems to the case with Ash and Elm trees that have been almost wiped out, but not completely.

For that reason I'd concentrate on the freshly dead ones that you can still salvage. before they spoil. If more die next year, recover them then. Maybe you will loose them all eventually, but it would be a shame if you cut down the tree that did somehow have some natural resistance.

The way i have seen it with our hemlock they all die but saplings pop up nearby. With the gypsy moth defoliate they hang on a few years but the entire stand dies. I have [had] a few trees here with the wooly adelgid for many years and surprisingly they all died after a wet year. Another thing is that the trees that our outside the infected stands seem to last for years longer but they are not resistant from my experience.  If I had an infected stand I would cut them all. Satellite trees maybe leave.

[NCWoodsGuy]

.... but it would be a shame if you cut down the tree that did somehow have some natural resistance.

That's what I was thinking. One of the survivors is exceptionally healthy looking and the base too big for my mill anyway. I'll leave it alone to reproduce and cut the smaller and less healthy trees as I find them.

[WhitePineJunky]

They're trying a beetle here in NS, I'm not sure how I feel about introducing it I think man has introduced enough but they are going to do it so I hope it ends up helping the hemlock 
https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7020944

My area is being hit hard now, I plan on waiting for nature to run its course, and maybe down the road try to re seed some hemlock sporadically 

[WhitePineJunky]

The trees that are still surviving may be ones that have some genetic resistance to the insect attack?  A new pest or disease seldom wipes out 100% of a population, even if 99% looks like a complete kill, if 1 in 100 survive due to some genetic difference in that tree, then it can produce offspring that also have some resistance. This seems to the case with Ash and Elm trees that have been almost wiped out, but not completely.

For that reason I'd concentrate on the freshly dead ones that you can still salvage. before they spoil. If more die next year, recover them then. Maybe you will loose them all eventually, but it would be a shame if you cut down the tree that did somehow have some natural resistance.

The way i have seen it with our hemlock they all die but saplings pop up nearby. With the gypsy moth defoliate they hang on a few years but the entire stand dies. I have [had] a few trees here with the wooly adelgid for many years and surprisingly they all died after a wet year. Another thing is that the trees that our outside the infected stands seem to last for years longer but they are not resistant from my experience.  If I had an infected stand I would cut them all. Satellite trees maybe leave.

What is "satellite tree"? 

[moodnacreek]

The trees that are still surviving may be ones that have some genetic resistance to the insect attack?  A new pest or disease seldom wipes out 100% of a population, even if 99% looks like a complete kill, if 1 in 100 survive due to some genetic difference in that tree, then it can produce offspring that also have some resistance. This seems to the case with Ash and Elm trees that have been almost wiped out, but not completely.

For that reason I'd concentrate on the freshly dead ones that you can still salvage. before they spoil. If more die next year, recover them then. Maybe you will loose them all eventually, but it would be a shame if you cut down the tree that did somehow have some natural resistance.

The way i have seen it with our hemlock they all die but saplings pop up nearby. With the gypsy moth defoliate they hang on a few years but the entire stand dies. I have [had] a few trees here with the wooly adelgid for many years and surprisingly they all died after a wet year. Another thing is that the trees that our outside the infected stands seem to last for years longer but they are not resistant from my experience.  If I had an infected stand I would cut them all. Satellite trees maybe leave.

What is "satellite tree"? 

A tree growing somewhere outside the stand that may not get infected with the others.

[WhitePineJunky]

Understood. Thanks @moodnacreek

[thecfarm]

If I had an infected stand I would cut them all. Satellite trees maybe leave.

Just trying to help out you guys with the quotes.
I like to use the backspace key to get rid of what I am not asking about.
But I am an old guy and still have a desktop, No idea if this works on a phone.
I also highlite and hit the space bar too, quicker.
This does take a minute, but I like the way it looks. Kinda like hitting the space bar a couple time between pictures.
I have hemlock that die here and there. Last fall the stands I have was fine. 

[Jeff]

Thanks Ray, it is kinda ridiculous to try and follow a conversation when there is 99% quote and one sentence of new content.

[Hilltop366]

If you highlight the text you want to quote a "quote selected text"  button appears in-between the "quote" and "more" button. No backspacing or deleting required.

Cheers

[pamtnman]

We find that of we don't cut the hemlock, it will die from the wooly adelgid. Sad state of affairs. Better to make use of what you can than to let it all go to flying squirrel and owl habitat. 

[SwampDonkey]

I was walking the boundary of a cut block, measuring perimeter and tying ribbon, and came across a hemlock that was being pecked to death by sapsuckers. The sunny side of the tree was literally pecked so bad they had the outer bark stripped off and the sap was oozing down. That's the worst peck job I ever saw. But sap suckers will peck any hemlock in sight up here.

[cutterboy]

I have a stand of about a dozen hemlocks, all big and tall and growing all together. One of them died a few years ago but the others are healthy. I would love to take a couple down and saw them up for lumber but there are so many rocks around them the tractor couldn't get to them.
Ray would feel right at home there.

[penfrydd]

Cut 'em!  I'm just about to start on mine.  There's just a few really dead hemlock at this point, but it's getting so that there's very few needles except up at the top on most all of them.  I've heard some about the wasp that might eat the adelgid, but by the time it's ready to be released on a large scale, my trees will be gone.  I'm taking everything down to 8", so there's plenty left to hold the soil.  
It's a real shame.  I've been debating with my self for the last 10 years whether or not to get a small sawmill, but I'm 74 and green hemlock is about the heaviest thing out there.
Best of luck.
penfrydd

[thecfarm]

cutterboy, have you been on my land? 

[cutterboy]

No, but I have seen pictures of your rocks. They are famous! 

[B.C.C. Lapp]

I thought Ray was selling his rocks to Barge.   After all these years, AFFLUENCE!!

[oldgraysawyer]

Cut 'em, cut 'em now. I didn't realize how bad the emerald boring ash beetle had gotten and lost every ash on my farm. We had already went through the tsetse fly larva attacking the white oak (at least that's what the forestry service blamed) and even though I'm not for the mass pesticide spraying that the government did I lost 80% of them and my 8 bee hives.