Took a walk through my tiny 1.5 acres of woods, at least half of which is dead standing ash. At least it used to be standing! The EAB came through 3 years ago and killed everything, now some of the ash trees are starting to fall. These 3 were all in the 15"-20" range and fell this summer, I was hoping I'd have several more years before they started doing this. I'm also hoping we get a good windstorm that takes this widowmaker to the ground!
Yep. They are destructive little boogers. Be careful cutting those. They are obviously weak and the saw vibrations can rain down branches. Also if there is even one branch (from another tree) in the felling path, the tops can hit the branch, and snap backwards. I had a dead maple do that to me. It was a pants filling moment scrambling uphill on my escape path. And stay the heck outta there on windy days too.
That's the exact reason I'm renting a lift this Friday to drop the last dead ash that's close enough to hit my house. The base is 30" with a nasty "S" bend at the base and it splits into three 10" limbs at about 25'. There's no way I'm tackling that from the ground with that bend at the bottom.
That hanger widowmaker looks familiar to me. I have, or hopefully had a big beech like that. The trees is stuck in are more mature though, so I have doubts that it actually did fall. I have not been that far in my woods to know if it fell or not. The good news is that you'll have a bunch of wood, but yeah, not at that expense.
I'm not planning on replanting, this is a mature woods and the cleared out canopy will give the smaller tress that are already there a better chance. If anything I'll cut down some of the red maple saplings to give the beech, oaks, and hickories a better chance.
It still hasn't hit here yet as far as I can tell, but it's in the next county and it's killing all the ash around Buffalo. I heard on the news they estimate 1 in 5 trees in WNY is ash. On my street, I'd put it even higher - probably 1 in 3. It tends to leaf out later and shed it's leaves earlier than other trees around me, so every spring and fall I get a sneak preview of what it might look like, and it's horrifying. I have a couple pure stands of it, and a lot of my seedling bank is ash too, so I think I may have to try replanting at least in those sections.
I don’t know what the official estimate is for S/E Ohio, but my woods is a solid 40-50% ash and a lot of the other woods I’ve been in around here is between 20-30% ash. All dead now.
That is really surprising that the trees are that weak after only 3 years of the EAB. It took over 10 years before we had any weak enough to break off or fall over.
As soon as you see the damage cut them down. I've learned that if left standing too long they start getting punky from the top down. When I started to loose tops in the wind I found them all just as soft and punky as can be. I've got 6 acres of dead ash I'm cutting the biggest and letting the small stuff fall where it may. I think I'm about 8 to 9 years ahead.
EAB has hit here in Colorado, there is a ban on transporting ash out of county, so I can not collect any of it from down the hill.
I remember you saying that before. Most of my dead ash trees still are pretty solid, but a handful have had the trunk snap like that. There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to why.
