Tree Care Notes
Here are some of the highlights of our recent log salvage adventures. I call them “adventures” because it would be much easier to chunk the log up into firewood and throw it in the back of the truck, but who likes to take the easy road? Although salvaging the trees we cut down can sometimes be an onerous task, it is a huge honor to turn the trees folks are “throwing away” into beautiful pieces of heirloom-quality furniture to be enjoyed for generations. We are proud to undertake this work.
Let ‘s go on a mental journey together… Imagine your yard as a literal island, waves lapping at the edges, detached and floating as its own independent ecosystem. The plants in your yard can’t call a lawn care service to get a fertilizer application, or an order of shredded bark mulch. Can this isolated group of plants possibly survive?
Heartwood loves to plant trees, so getting top quality nursery stock is always important. In a typical year we order shade trees, evergreens, shrubs, and fruit trees from a variety of locations. We prefer to order from nurseries within Wisconsin, its keep the shipping costs down and the product is usually straight from the field. Below are the three that we are using this year to make up the spring plant sale offering.
Pruning and removing trees naturally results in a lot of wood scrap. Since 2012, Heartwood has strived to save every usable piece of wood possible. Our efforts started with saving dead branches from oaks to burn in the wood stove, and we are now salvaging logs on most medium to large trees we remove. This winter we took the next step and bought logs salvaged from oak savanna restoration projects in the UW-Arboretum.
When you a buy a tree to have planted in your yard what are the motivations for making that purchase? Are you looking for a “statement tree” right out of the box? Are you looking for a tree that future generations can hang a tree swing in? Are you trying to create shade on the south side of your house or patio?
Being a vocal anti-lawn person, I’m completely biased on the topics of leaf raking, leaf composting, and yard waste management. I feel our yards need fewer synthetic inputs and a lot more native inputs, in the form of leaf litter.
Every fall I am shocked, aghast and pinching myself to see all the people piling free fertilizer (that’s what I call it) at the curb. I take my neighbor’s leaves and pile them in my yard!
As its name implies, the swamp white oak is a lowland tree, often found in areas subject to periodic flooding, and on the edges of swamps and poorly drained meadows. Unlike white oaks (Q. alba) and burr oaks (Q. macrocarpa), which occur in large stands in the forests and oak savannahs of the Midwest, swamp white oaks are usually found growing singly amongst forests dominated by other species.
Carpinus caroliniana goes by many names: musclewood, American hornbeam, water beech, blue beech, and ironwood (not to be confused with a different ironwood that we also offer). When you’re strolling through Wisconsin woodlands and you come upon this tree, the name most likely to come to mind is “musclewood” because the smooth, ridged trunk resembles the musculature of a sinewy action movie hero.
In summer 2019, Madison's Urban Forestry Task Force recommended doubling our city canopy as a primary method of fighting climate change and maintaining quality of life. The New York Times reported a new study suggests planting trees and restoring forests worldwide could help reverse global warming. Clearly, our communities and our planet could benefit from more trees. We want to provide you with options to support the effort.
i-Tree is a website designed to help property owners decide which tree species they want to plant and where they should plant them in their home or commercial property landscape. I-Tree was developed by some of the big players in U.S. tree care as an educational and practical tool, and is FREE to use. Combining data points and technology, this website can tell you actual benefits of planting a tree in a specific spot in your yard.
We have posted before about using dynamic cabling to support smaller splits and/or limbs or branches that can use additional support. In the last year, we have been deploying a steel ring as a hub in static (metal/no stretch) cabling systems. This case study shows what we saw in a recent sugar maple and how we decided to install a hub with four legs (cables) to hold this large and valuable tree together.
The defined practice of forest bathing is relatively young, but the intuitive act of healing in nature is nothing new. We evolved in forests, and forest bathing has been shown to decrease levels of stress hormones, improve the immune system and mood, and increase creative problem solving. I am certainly not the first to write about the benefits of spending time outdoors. In the words of John Muir, “Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home. Wilderness is a necessity.”
Colorado blue spruce (Picea pungens) is an evergreen tree widely planted in residential gardens in Wisconsin. Its structural, columnar form is commonly used to build windbreaks or privacy screens in backyards throughout the United States. The year round blue-green coloration provides winter interest in the Midwest garden.
Have you ever gone down to do the splits and not be able to get yourself back up without help? Well, trees with structural deficiencies can actually split in a similar manner. Two arms of a trunk may stretch wide during a wind event, but they can't pull themselves back together afterward. The typical split we see is like this one below, with the drill and drill bit through the trunk.
This is Big Bertha the fir tree. She lives south of Mt Horeb and was named by a tree loving 7-year-old. The mother of the boy called us and asked if we could stitch it back up after a summer storm. The possibility of cutting it down due to the split between the two halves was too much for the boy to manage and he pleaded with mom to call us.
Paper Birch and its white chalky bark is well recognized across the state. In the last 20 to 30 years, landscapers and nurseries have strayed from the paper birch to whitespire birch or grey birch because paper birch has a reputation for being susceptible to bronze birch borer, a native pest. In reality, when properly placed, a paper birch can thrive and not succumb to bronze birch borer.
Have you ever wondered about the big trees in Madison, Wisconsin? Towering oaks with gnarled branches and thick trunks are scattered throughout the city. If you think these trees are unusual, you are correct. Some of them are hundreds of years old and have witnessed many generations and historical events. These old oaks are also significant because they are the last remnants of the oak savannas that used to cover southern Wisconsin.
Oak Wilt is a tree disease caused by a non-native fungal pathogen which can afflict White and Red Oaks in the Eastern United States. The disease is more severe in Red Oak species, such as the Northern Red Oak and Northern Pin Oak. Red Oaks will die rather quickly from Oak Wilt, while White Oaks tend to contain the spread of the disease to infected branches.
