I am cutting dead and dying Ash too. The EAB has been here for a few years, but I have noticed the trees dying in large numbers only this year. I bet next year most of them will be dead in my area.
Wood Duck, where are you. All those baseball bats..... I wonder if any company is making millions of bats and storing them for when there is no ash left....
I heard they used to make them out of Chestnut - they had to start using Ash after the Chestnut Blight wiped them out.
Not necessarily true. We found a tree infected and cut it immediately, hoping to stop the spread. So far we've but over 100 trees, all infected. Lots more to go yet. All dead.
For those curious, we started cutting infected trees in 2002 and have cut lots. We hoped to stop them or at least slow them. It did not happen. We cut some for lumber and the rest for firewood. We've also had 4 others come in and cut for their own use, we've sold a little and gave quite a bit away. About 4 years ago I thought we'd be done within 2-3 year at most. Now, unless we let someone come in to cut, we'll probably still have 3-4 more years of cutting but as you can see, my guesses sometimes come out wrong.
From my experience I would tend to agree with you Dennis. But many "official" publications I've read are saying cut them at the first sign of the bug. I think they my be to the point of just grasping any straw.
That's one way they've been battling ALB here in Ma. declared eradicated in Boston but the Worcester infestation area has grown. Tight controls on firewood movement , tree removals and beetle sighting awareness.
That is exactly what we found. I remember when we had them come into our area, actually a year before we got them, in several cities and towns near us they were cutting every ash tree they could find and the way I heard it they could do this against the property owner's will. In the end, all it did was cost the counties and cities a lot of dollars for nothing. We had someone at the township level going to meetings to find our all we could. After about 4 meetings he reported that they were all the same and all a big joke. He asked to so-called top dogs if they really thought there was a way to stop them and was told flat out, NO. It was about this time they stopped cutting and put bans on moving of firewood and logs across county lines. Even that did not help. Later they came out with some sprays but it is simply too costly. Maybe someone who had a tree or maybe two might be okay with the spray but what about thousands of trees?
FarmHand78 I live up here in Black Hawk county. As part of my job as a landscaper I have to have an Iowa certified applicators license. EAB just showed up in my county last spring. That meant that I needed to go to hours of seminars put on by the egg heads from Ames at the university to treat the little rascal bug. Plus every year I have to go to continuing education classes to keep my applicators license. In Iowa the treatment for the bug can be done 2 ways. Trees over 36 inch DBH it is suggested that they be injected which can be done any time of the year but is very costly since the equipment and the chemical are VERY expensive. Smaller diameter trees can be treated with a drench and must be done early in the spring. Here in Iowa it is recommended it be done mid April to mid May when the trees are starting to bud. It is a much cheaper alternative to injections and if done right it can be done on larger trees. As with using any type of pesticide or herbicide I cant stress enough that you READ the label as to rates and application data. There seems to be 1 real big misconception among many on the interweb about killing the nasty little bug. Any type of treatment that you choose to go with is basically a systemic type chemical. The actual larva it self that is burrowing under the bark of the Ash trees really has no chemical, cold or heat enemies. Unless you want to kiln dry the wood at a certain temp for a prolonged time period. The larva will do it's thing under the bark until it matures and bores those almost perfect D shaped holes on it's exit of the tree when it has became a moth like creature. The moth will then eat the leaves of the treated tree since that is their favorite food an since the chemical applied is a systemic the moth then dies. In an un healthy tree the larva may stay up to 2 years chewing on the cambium of the tree. In a healthy tree it may only stay 1 year. The bug itself can only travel about 3 miles per year of it's life span which isn't long but gets carried more by human intervention be it far wood or crates or pallets. This is probably more information than you wanted to read but the bug is here and there really is nothing to do about it I fear. The city of Waterloo and Cedar Falls took the cut and run method of control this year. They just started cutting and dumping in a large county lot and then they let everyone come in and cut wood to take home with only the promise that the wood not leave the county. I personally know of several guys who hauled EAB infested wood over 100 miles. City goobermint at its finest. My BIL and myself confronted the head of the city forestry department about them letting the wood travel and they just fluffed us off since I think they are WWWAAYYYY over their heads on this so called proactive response to the problem.
If you apply Roundup to enough weeds, you will eventually locate some weeds that are less susceptible, and they will be the ones producing the next crop of weed seed. Same holds true for most of the livestock dewormers - we eventually found worms resistant, and they were the ones that survived to reproduce. There is the hope that something similar will save the Ash trees (hope that eventually we will find the few trees that are tolerant to the EAB, and those trees can be bred and used for replacement stock). So the advice from a national perspective is to only harvest trees with saw logs that are fully ready to be harvested, and wait and see with the rest of the trees. As someone who wants to see the Ash still here 30 years from now, it makes some sense to advocate this approach. But when you look at the number of trees lost in the affected states, and no sign yet of genetically resistant trees, it is hard to take this one for the team. Also, weeds and parasites have much, much shorter generation intervals, so resistance can evolve over multiple generations rather than needing to be fully present in one generation. My money is not on a genetic solution.
Note there is a difference in mobility of the two bugs - EAB moves on its own for greater distances than ALB, so the approach of "stamping out" the ALB stands a greater chance than it would with the EAB.
Butcher... thanks for the info... before I re joined the family business I was a custom applicator for the local coop, all crop ground. Still keep my license up dated, not really sure why though. The tree I'd like to save is over 36 inches, so if it is expensive I may just be adding more Ash to the wood pile. Hate to loose all that shade though! ~Nathan
I have 1000s in wi! the loss of bark is from woodpeckers eating the ash borer grubs.I've beeen cutting these trees down for years and not knowing why the bark was falling off. its a shame.
there is 27 acres of woods behind my house ( town conservation land ) and in sight there are at least 15 standing dead ash, its a shame , but they dont go to waste when they fall
