About 18 acres, half of which is swamp and almost impossible to access. I pull maples that have blown over from the edges. The land is glacial till/gravel so pretty rocky with maybe 6-10 inches of soil built up from the last 15,000 years. About 3 or 4 acres the gravel was sold from the land so there's about a paper thin layer of soil. I don't have to worry about the tractor sinking into mud there and there is mostly pines there. I sprayed BT on some hemlocks that are pruned as a tall hedge and there were a bunch of dead ones a week later. I only have my small orchard backpack sprayer. It can only reach so far up. I tried soaking the egg masses I could reach on some trees in the yard with horticultural/dormant oil I use on the fruit trees but they all hatched out anyway. They hatch out all at once and just sit there next to the egg mass for a day or two. I guess until they get big/strong enough to climb. I sprayed several hundred with hornet spray which does them in before they start crawling up. The egg masses are on the bottoms of branches all the way to the top. I put duct tape on some trees last year and smeared tanglefoot on it which stops the ones that fall/rappel out of the tree on a gust of wind from climbing back up. There's a virus that kills them but they are immune to it/it doesn't spread if it is dry weather. I had two white oaks last year that the virus killed almost all of them soon enough that they only half ate the leaves so didn't have to sprout new leaves in July. Two others sprouted new leaves in July and a couple weeks later in the middle of August they all turned brown but didn't drop off. I think those two are dead. I saw a red oak do that three years ago and we just burned that wood.
A few understory 6 and 8 inch pines that didn't make it thru the drought. May as well get them before the bugs do. Just had to cut something, had wanted to get out there all day. Once I get all the dead ones I probably should thin out what's left.
I remember working down in Plymouth near the power plant early spring. We went back to that job about a month or so later and it seemed every oak tree in the area was bare, I mean not a leaf on the tree. Pretty depressing to see. Then seeing all the moths flying around knowing they are going to mate and the females are going to lay egg masses. I hope the weather helps kill off some of them at least. How many years in a row can a tree stand being defoliated.
Right column of the third page has your answer. Bottom line, it depends on the original health of the tree and the extent of the defoliation. https://www.fs.fed.us/nrs/pubs/jrnl/1999/ne_1999_davidson_001.pdf
Thanks for sharing that. Interesting as last summer we had a really bad drought with little if any rain over the summer which put the trees under stress, as if being defoliated wasn't bad enough.
You're welcome. We are still in a drought up here. Severe according to the government website. Hopefully we will start to recover from that.
Rained all day but slowed to a light sprinkle around 4:30 so quick stacked what I cut the other day. Usually I wouldn't stack rounds in the woods, especially here as I've gotten termites in the stack, plus a duplication of work , but I wanted to know roughly how much was there. Two stacks 4x4x1,3 each. So a little under 1/3 cord. Not too bad I guess. iphone pictures sure are grainy with the flash
