We just got our posteriors delivered to us by a storm that forced the issue. Last weekend a winter blast landed on my face, and it included 24 inches of wet snow, 60 mph wind gusts and a yard tree that is still fully leaved with a heavy lean towards the house. Being in the FHC, it feels hypocritical to not want to cut a cord+ of ash right at home! However this tree is the mature shade tree that is solely responsible for all the shade in our back yard and patio, but terrifies me as close as it is and with the split double trunk is a ticking time bomb ready to destroy part of the house. My wife was finally worried enough by this last storm that the tree would end up in the house that I got the ok to hire someone with the equipment to safely take it down and then I can cut it up. But now want to get a replacement tree going asap. We are over planted with ash, maple and cottonwood in my area and want something different so the next disease that comes through like DED that took so many yard trees skips by us hopefully. What do you suggest that is very cold hardy zone 4 almost zone 3, not root monster that will jack my patio or sewer system, moderately fast growing, and won't have birds pooping berries all over my patio/house?
Could you actually get one to be 7 feet tall in zone 4 (almost 3 ) ? Trees | Plant Perfect | Bismarck, ND looks like honeylocust Northern Acclaim might be just what you are looking for. Unless that is too tall.
Not hardly a locust around, but I thought they were sucker monsters coming up all over? How is their shade with the small leaves they have?
What about just taking out the trunk coming towards the house for now? You could plant something else in case the remaining half cane unstable in the next few years, but at least it wouldn’t plonk on your house.
I considered that but am leery that taking out 1/2 of the tree would upset root balance and with prevailing winds from storms pushing towards the house, I don't know that I want to take that gamble. Anyone who has tree removal experience with something like this and the luck removing 1/2 without future issues please chime in!
Well, come on now, the only perfect tree is none. LOL Aspens are supposed to be awful too and I think the tree I have right now has three. I hack 'em off once or twice a year for a year or three and it gives up. Another one pops up over there somewhere a few years later. You play a little whack-a-mole but it's not that bad.
Weak and blow over too easy. Even in the woods they blow over with their small root system and weak wood structure. These are the 2nd and third linden / basswood that have fallen over in my woods in the last 3 years.
I see why you want it down. Linden would work nicely. I'm a big fan of evergreen trees. How about some type of cedar or blue spruce or hemlock?
We have about every spruce in a 3 block radius looking like firewood because of needle cast. How much would I need to worry about being that neighbor if I plant a cedar/juniper and the neighbors having apples be affected by cedar apple rust???
Not sure why a nice Maple wouldn’t work well there. The kind that doesn’t have the “Whirlybird” seeds in the spring. The “whirlybirds make a mess on the roof and fill up the gutters.
The two supposedly need to be a mile apart for the odds of infection to be near zero. . Of course there are resistant varieties and you can hope that's what you've got. Apples and crabapples, including non-fruiting flowering ornamental crabapples which can be a favorite landscaping variety. There's also a number of rusts infecting a wide number of trees so the best thing to do is not plant the two right near each other because that can almost guarantee that the two hosts will continually infect each other.
