There could have been American chestnut trees with resistance to the blight that could have repopulated their range but people were told to cut all of the chestnut trees on their property to "get the money out" before the blight hit their location. The Emerald Ash Borer situation always makes me think about that.
I agree, and I have a ash sapling that I dug out of Hedgerow to plant Intuit an urban lot here that has about 20 yards of ash borer woodchips from when they were removing dead ashes in our city, just as an experiment to see how long it takes the bugs to get to the Young tree. As long as the saplings make it to a certain size we can have plenty of roof framing members for all the long houses will be building in the coming decades to revive the old ways of wisdom and right relationship with our lands
we in Europe have a similiar problem with boxwood and asian box wood moths. The moths can kill a boxwood, and at first nobody was eating the moths. Solutiuon: get rid of all the boxwood hedges etc. or spray pesticides... Turns out, the birds just needed a few years to learn that those moths are edible, too. Why is the first impuls with everything "kill it!"?
I know quite a bit about the emerald ash borer (EAB)! When I was in middle school we did a special collaboration with local scientists to research the EAB in our area. We literally shaved the bark off of ash trees to assess how extensive the infestation was. They definitely prefer older trees, but we absolutely found the borer in younger and thinner trees. I understand if you don't want to cut them down now, but the sooner you do the better. The biggest piece of advice I can give is to save the seeds off of any trees that are still alive. This way, when all the ash trees die out, we will have a diversity of seeds that can be replanted. You can actually donate them to seed banks as well for the same reason!
Food for thought, if you cut them into coppice now, before they lose the fight to the borer then they could live on as long as managed as a coppice, always staying under the attractive size of the insects, (hard to know for sure, but under 2" seems unaffected here) If you leave them to fight and die however you cannot do this, as they expend all their stored energy trying to fight the borer, and if cut after that will be already dead. I truly wish we had known this a few years ago and cut all our larger ash off at the ground in winter, as I prefer ash to anything for firewood and it makes great coppice poles/handles as well. We still plan to work with the younger ones though they will not perform as well being small.
Dear Sean, as a humble prairie dweller with no trees of my own, I respectfully wish for you to commit some time and energy Into coppicing and pollarding a few species to see if that does indeed fix your problem (Seems to me it would) If you choose to do so I'd love to see a video;)
The borer will eventually attack ash trees of all sizes, so I don't think coppicing will save the tree. I am open to being proven wrong if somebody wants to test that theory!
So much more information than just ash thoughts. The title is underselling it. I came for the emerald borer and stayed for the sagacious permaculture tips and tricks. Love it!
On a positive note, this has provided a large amount of food for woodpeckers on our property. I have seen and heard more of then in the past few years than ever before. As the ash finally passed, we have been milling and them and using the lumber. We have been planting some maples, walnut, pawpaw and a few others (some of which we picked up from you!). As the ash is cleared there is a variety of new life springing up in it's place
Sean, your videos are a meditation for me. Your choice of words and soft soothing voice is a comfort, honestly you could probably read the phone book and i'd be ok with it. :) Bonus; your world view is so beautiful and thoughtful. Thank you.
Wait, we could do proactive ecological planning and action to assist the next succession rather than just liquidate what’s left or go to war with chemicals? Stop the presses! Nice work as always Sean.
I had several older ash trees on this property that were already doomed when I got here. I let them be snags for a few years and then brought them down as needed. Firewood and wood for garden projects mostly. Sad, but like you said, it is an opportunity for something new. So we move forward with that. Thanks for your wisdom...it is lovely to hear in a time where we are wisdom deficient:)
Thank you for the thought through comments. Being custodian of land while it goes through a huge shift due to changing pressures can be exhausting. I'm glad you've found a way to take yields from the change while increasing the diversity and resilience of the ecosystem there :)
I’m always blown away at your memory of what every little twig is and when it was planted. I have to keep a map with labels or I’ll have to wait for leaves before I can identify most things
I think it all just takes time.. I've been working with these types of systems for 16 years so after a while the 'sense' of the plants starts to bake in and they are easier to remember, if that makes sense. I don't really have other hobbies or think about or do a whole lot other than this works so as it's my world I'm pretty familiar with it. No special trick, just immersion I think.
Good video- I was just going to look up what is happening to our trees- I didn't even know what type of tree they were. Definitely Ash with Borer. Thanks again.
Every year for about the past ten, I have collected ash seeds, vacuum sealed and dated, from several seeding trees on my property. When the borer moves on I can scatter them throughout the property to reestablish them. I do not disturb my forests. There is an ebb and flow to insects across the continent and this too shall pass or at least balance over time(even with introduced species). In the mean time my hope is that the existing wildlife will benefit from the changes to the forest. I hope, given the chance, that one of the last acts I can do on this earth is release my seeds throughout my property. Now that is a legacy!
This makes me think of a concept in psychology/psychiatry called “cognitive flexibility “, which simply put means having enough skills/knowledge that if when problem solving if “option A” doesn’t work, one can try option B-Z... in other words, it’s not a calamity/crisis when one option does not work- just move on to the next. You have successional flexibility!
I don't know how this would work if they like live ash wood or dead ash wood? But if you hang a few pieces of ash wood with string and then burn the piece of wood? Think it just might draw more in but who knows?
I have about an acre of wooded area with significant ash borer impact. The plan is to start food foresting the area, since there is so much more light in the area now than even 2 years ago. This was extremely enlightening. The woodpeckers and firewood are some of the few benefits from this invasive beetle!
Hi Sean and Sasha, Have you been collecting Ash seeds? Saving them, banking them? I wonder if pollarding or coppicing an Ash tree is the best way to protect them. Reducing the trunk space of the trees will make less habitat for the little buggers. And I can't imagine the emerald ash borer going into the new growth, it looks to small. Cheers, Bill
Good ideas. We haven't been explicitly saving Ash seed, but the coppicing and pollarding in this video can help preserve them in different formats. To be honest, I love the Ash but I'm also open to things moving in all sorts of different directions in the future. I don't have a need for things to remain the same.
@@edibleacres I wonder how many years it will take for the ash borer to move out (or die out... of natural causes)? Can they remain dormant for years or must the come out every spring? Will we tell stories of Seany Ashle Seed (Johnny Apple Seed) to our grand children and how he reintroduced the mighty Ash to New York? Cheers, Bill
The wooly adelgid coming is just mind-boggling to me. Here in Vermont there are tons upon tons of hemlock trees. It’s crazy to think of them going, it would look like clear cutting. Personally, hemlocks are holding up a steep hill immediately above my house and property on both sides. I’m planting shrubs but the hill is too steep to plant into with other processes out of my control. I love on the hemlock trees every day.
I guess that logic can make sense except it gets extended out to the logical conclusion that 'if EAB might be coming here we should cut all the Ash as a firewall and so we can get the 'value' from the trees before they are 'ruined"... which is what I hear and basically will kill all the Ash before a creature does. Seems like slippery logic to me.
Yeppers. Well said. Can't wait for that cicadas bloom! Love the trellis system BTW Those secession canopies seem about ready to break as well. Might be time to thin down and plant out the future overstory.... I've found out about taming sumac suckers with utilizing some wind felled poplar wood today, (Tinder Conk, and puffball saprotrophic soil barrier building with the permanent goal to prevent black knot on stone fruit croppings) might be worth a look into if full coppice cutting brings in detrimental(pre equilibrium) suckering in the short term while the change over is happening. Might speed it up a bit. No cut and paste procedures here. Lol. Love it! Wonderful video!
Hazel trees like to grow as bushes, and they give more nuts if you thin/prune them every 5-7 year. I got a half dead ash tree and new ash trees all over my lot, but deer like to eat them, so no outside the fence.
The more I see the paw paws on your property, the more I want to try to plant some under my large maple in the back yard. For what should be a native tree in my area, I hadn't heard anything about them before coming to your channel. The more I learn about them, the more I wish I had known when I first moved in to this house. Paw paw bread seems like it would be on par with banana bread - which I really love.
Pawpaw bread rocks. When you get to that point, remember that the ones that fall off the tree are ripe. But the ones still on the tree aren't ripe yet. :) Good luck!
but seriously - maybe there are not enough birds eating those borer beings, YET. Just like "our" blue tits took a few years to learn to eat the asian boxwood moths...
I wounded if putting up some suet feeders in that area would encourage woodpecker to come in and eat some of the larva in the ash. You can get some suet feeders that are upside down so only woodpeckers can eat from it.
We have something going on with our post oak trees so thanks for the thoughts. I still want to figure out what the problem is, but maybe drastic measures aren’t necessary.
I am using coppicing and pollarding of Ash to address ash borer and provide firewood at the same time. Coppicing maintains a younger tree that is more resistant to the borer. Coppicing provides that majority of the wood used for heating our home. For a few years after coppicing the canopy is opened which allows other trees to mature. The goalmis that by the time the canopy has regrown it is time to come back in and coppice again.
I read about a hazlenut grove where they put 5 gallon buckets of sawdust all over. The squirrels buried the nuts in the buckets and did most of the harvesting for them
I haven't noticed it prior but at the beginning of this January the Ash out front of my parent's house started getting decimated by pileated woodpeckers, another two trees just started getting peeled back this month as well. The woodpeckers seem to be doing fantastic from it hahaa, the trees are right next to a power line so guessing the road crews are going to be taking them out this Spring. Love the idea of the trellis there at the end, good idea on the metal ties; the thing looks great too! Can't wait to see those black cicadas, gonna be a wild Summer haha
Have you noticed the ash borers in any other tree species? I had NYSENCON in to inspect my property and even sent photos and they still deny that is what is killing mature pine trees :(
As far as I know, emerald ash borers *have not* been observed in any other trees other than ash. A telltale sign of emerald ash borer are their unique D-shaped exit holes. Native borers don't make D-shaped exit holes. If you don't see any of those, I would very much doubt that it is ash borer.
Do I need to maintain mulberry trees. We have about 5 in a small wooded area around s catch pool. They are huge and we’re surrounded by Japanese honeysuckle. I have cut this back to allow light to get to the ground so other things can grow. I was going to copice the honeysuckle for mulch but have recently read that it is allelopathic and should be removed, is this right. The mulberry trees have a lot of dead limbs, what is the best way to look after them.
All mulberries needis Sun. Dense forests are not their place, here in the city they are everywhere in every Alleyway on every neglected fence line and any unnoticed corner
I agree, this is tricky! In ecology there is an immigration credit and extinction debt to expect. In some cases the native species will adapt in others not. When it comes to Ash I once red that EAB was being invasive in areas around Moscow killing off most fraxinus excelsior in that region. After some time, though, some native predators to that area learned how to prey on them and now control them better. You can also expect pockets of Ash to survive a pandemic. So be hopeful and do not give up on any native specie! In Europe, there has been some signs on resistance evolving in Elms which was also killed off in most areas as mature stands. With Elm it is different though, as they can regenerate before they are being attacked and killed by the Dutch Elm Disease when growing to a certain maturity.
We have a few elm that survived and a majestic sycamore on our farm one of several along the creek valley here nature takes its course no matter what we do . The ash in your area has had a noticeable dead cycle accelerated. And the Handle mill has benefited from it for sure . We let trees here claimed by bugs to take its course the birds are worth the price of the firewood . When it falls I take some usable firewood then take the unuseable wood to compost around the nearest dominant tree roots . Or pile the brush and limbs for rabbit and mouse habitat . Steward a few trees for canopy light occasionally and occasionally a few lumber trees for ourselves .
Nice video! If you have no animals of you own, could us use deep poop around your perennial plants? If so, could you do it in winter so it had time to "cool off" ? THANKS
Here at a local park there is a section of forest that is a thicket with prob 80% ash and 20% buckthorn and they have a very sad cycle where they grow up to about 15-20ft about 3-4in diameter then they die back resprout and regrow from the roots and that cycle just continues until the tree dies, so they never become any thing and the progression for the forest in that area is just halted and never become more than a thicket, until well the ash all die completely or some how, eventually succeed at building resistant to EAB
OR someone or a group of people enter in to add more complexity to the understory to help give some other pathways things could take. In a way, what you are describing is an insanely productive nutrient pumping and carbon building of the soil in that space, but stuck in a limited loop. Buckthorn is incredible at opening up tight clay/wet soils and leaving it in a more rich state, but is a powerhouse at occupying the tall shrub layer. Seems like a crew of chop-n-drop and guerrilla planters need to come in!
@@edibleacres this past summer I did plant some ostrich ferns their knowing how wet that area usually stays but we had such a dry summer I don’t think they made it. As for planting trees I do have several oak seeding that have come up in my beds that I will probably plant there to give them a life and to help out the forest progression
I'm going to put in another vote to coppicing. The emerald ash borer is being defined as a extinction event. The stumps re-grow and any branches below 4 inch diameter is immune to the ash borer. They can definitely survive for many many decades like that being re-trimmed. I would recommend doing that with at least a few. It makes for great building material, too, ash small pole wood is valued for basket and backpack building material historically. That could at least allow the species of ash that you have to survive this event in a few specimens even though they'll be short and small, you can have seed and have a soon-to-be rare hyper local ash variety. I'm so sorry that's happening to your ash trees.
@@edibleacres Look up Sepp Holzer's Bone Sauce to apply to saplings to deter deer. I have not tried it but Permies.com (Paul Wheaton's site) message board has experienes. Here is a recipe: www.permaculturenews.org/2014/06/05/bone-sauce-a-tool-for-deterring-browsing/
Let's say a prayer that you don't have to make a similar video about Oak Wilt a few years from now. I'm an arborist in Troy New York and for the last few years we have only worked on Oaks IE cutting live tissue during the dormant season between November and March. The rest of the time people just have to be patient unless it's an emergency then we actually seal the wound. If you see any tree people cutting Oaks in your area while they are leafed out please let them know that this is not best practice due to this new disease that we do not know much about
I am in the situation where my land is dominated by eastern red cedar and white ash. The ash are falling off a few each year and the cedars are super aggressive trees that try as hard as they can to not allow anything else to grow. I guess in the permaculture sense I dont have a eastern red cedar invasive problem I have a sharpened chainsaw deficiency. lol
Seems like a nice connection to make with other folks in the area to trade the red cedar as useful products for other valuable plants, resources, etc. and start shifting the context... . Good luck!
@@md6397 transform that value! And no, I'm a city dweller so I only have access to City size plots of land .enjoy the solitude of your nice quiet Forest :-)
Japanese pine beetles are a problem in my area. There are biological methods of controlling them, using bacteria, nematodes, and parasites. There may be biological methods for controlling the emerald ash borers, as well. You may find that more acceptable than applying chemical poisons.
@@edibleacres, that's cool. I agree with your not wanting to use poisonous chemicals. I enjoy the idea of using biological methods of control, it's like engaging in biological warfare, only it's against insects.
hornets feast on our weak ashe trees as they enjoy the sap and soft wood to munch on. the ashes spread like crazy everywhere and create many long and narrow woodsticks that i can harvest now and then.
Curious about those Scots pine--do you see much reproduction? Would expect some if they were happily situated. May be too wet/not sandy enough? Plenty of huge "grandpa" ash on my site. Constantly checking them for blonding; it will be a sad day indeed when I find it, even with an opportunistic understory waiting in the wings. Tree love
Emerald Ash borer, Dutch Elm, etc... loss of local connections that need to be rebuilt. All side effects of global greed and exploitation of human populations and nature. The answer? Return to self sufficiency and all things local and rebuild what we can. The damage to nature won’t be fully known until we do, but as you say other species will replace them and hopefully the old species will return. Still very sad.
Yes... the issue isn't the little bug doing the thing it does, it's massive ecological damage all around. Whatever we can do right where we live is the actual long term solution I think.
It's my understanding that Ash is the evolutionary 'grandfather' of many subsequent deciduous trees. No doubt there have been many species of plants that have perished over the grand span of time due to being out-competed or otherwise becoming obsolete due to inadequate adaptation. Maybe it's just time for Ash trees to go in this area. If it were me I'd take down the ones that are done for and make the best of it: firewood/ new planting space/ etc.
Sad when a tree species dies out. My grandchildren will never know the joy of standing under an Elm. They were a part of the English landscape and truly beautiful large trees, but thanks to Dutch Elm disease were wiped out.
Search on Google for 'UK Elms map' and you'll see there's still lots of trees left for your grandchildren to sit under. I posted the link to it but my comment got deleted.
so sad...I just checked my worm bin and all are death...90 percent of my plants dead....oh boy even when they were protected but i never expect to have temperatures so cold in Houston. I was one of the lucky ones that the pipes did not burst...but all around sad horrible stories about the cold spell we had... A friend of mine had the garden going with vegies and purchased new trees and all are gone...but wait now we have to wait for the heating bill....stores do not have food all gone...I am lucky to have some in reserve...no even dog food can be found...meat, vegies...nothing... good lesson to learn. People think that they can mess up mother nature and do not have any accountability for the damage ....and wait because summer is going to be dry and little water all over the place...so prepare...
I gave this a heart not because I love the news, but sending warmth your way. So sorry that all is happening. Climate is shifting rapidly in all the directions, and all we can do is keep jogging/sprinting in the direction of growing more diverse foods and medicines where we live in the hopes that we can build some resiliency. This winter we lost massive numbers of plants to desperate rabbits, we had fruit and medicine shrubs that we thought were completely deer proof have been eaten right down. There is desperation in the wilds and humans are feeling it more and more. So much work to be done. I hope things heal for you and you can deepen resilience for you and your community moving forward.
@@edibleacres Thank you so much for your warm message. I noticed that the plants that kind of survive were the ones I place mulch on top and then the covers...plants that were more "water in steam" all die, but still the sorrow i have the most is for the poor worms they did not have a chance and I feel guilty for not bring them inside...i guess they are in worm heaven now. Excellent lesson all of us had to learn. It is time to change the me me me i am superior attitude towards nature...she is fighting back and I can understand that...so much damage, so much money driven destruction of trees, ecosystems, cruelty toward animals, dumping chemicals all over the place..and as arrogant many humans are...we are ripening what we are sowing...and it is going to be worst for summer...very dry and little water...so prepare ahead of time and also prepare water and food for the wild critters...is the least we can do for them.. Love and peace and many blessings to all
There is no defeating nature. Nature always finds a way. Interesting, many of the "bad" and "invasives" are trees and plants whose "native" habitat shifts north and south and east and west due to various climatic activities. Yes, the globalization of travel has spread things to areas they might not have made it to otherwise, perhaps they would have anyways given enough time. It's hard for us to see and think outside our miniscule amount of time. Many tree's now "invading" southern states, black locust and numerous others, appear to have been much further south and west looking at geological evidence [so I've been told anyways, not a geologist]. I wonder what else is being poisoned with these injections into ash tree's.
You really want to cut them down, so the bore population does not have a chance to breed further. You'll get bieutiful material for your next hugle mound
Good point to bring evolution into the mix. Keep digging, hint, look at the generation time fore the bore vs the ash, which is most likely to have a variation to be able to infect other trees, which is the list likely to have a variation that could resist the bore - given the absence of predation on the bore?
Nature is bountiful of opportunity and ruthless of error. When the next ice age hits within the lifetime of some of you reading (worse case scenario, of course) all this will be moot and a whole new set of opportunities will make demands on the survivors. But chances are, where I live, and upstate New York will be under a thousand years of constant snowfall whose beginning I won't see. Not to change the subject, but to put it in perspective. Plan for the worst, do the most, expect nothing. Life goes on.
Is that meant to say injecting 'chemicals' into the trees would be safe and reasonable since we're the same thing, or you are just correcting me so that instead of using that word I would say "a novel assemblage of chemicals engineered for profit for a small number of people that are insulated from the potentially negative effects of what could happen if deployed into the environment"... Felt easier to say chemicals..
Destructive insect species only prey on already diseased and compromised trees! We have to ask the question what is already killing the tree's prior to the insects arrival?!
There are much bigger pictures to look at with all this. Too complex for me to take in mentally but I agree fully that it isn't specifically the borer who is the issue, just like if someone has an iillness, it isn't just the illness, it's the environment they're in, the quality of food, the stressors, etc....
“Beings”? OK Sean... you’re getting a little too far ‘out there’ now. And “climate change” has been with us since God created our planet. Those “changes” are otherwise known as: spring, summer, fall/autumn and winter. LOL
What is the point of this comment? Are you trying to moderate his behavior to be more in line with what you believe . . . . because if that is your goal, you are putting a pathetically minimal amount of effort into elaborating how your beliefs would be helpful to him maintaining his property.
@@md6397 Sort of, considering geological data plays a significant part of the evidence base for the current climatic driver being anthropogenic and not in line with past climate shifts.
Since your god created the planet, there has been 5 mass-extinction events and there's good evidence that we're now in the sixth. If you want to be taken seriously with counter-claims on anthropogenic climate change, you will need to provide some data that is strong enough to dismiss the scientific consensus - or to put it another way; 97% of climate scientists think you're wrong, so what is the evidence you've got that makes you think you're right?
There could have been American chestnut trees with resistance to the blight that could have repopulated their range but people were told to cut all of the chestnut trees on their property to "get the money out" before the blight hit their location. The Emerald Ash Borer situation always makes me think about that.
I agree, and I have a ash sapling that I dug out of Hedgerow to plant Intuit an urban lot here that has about 20 yards of ash borer woodchips from when they were removing dead ashes in our city, just as an experiment to see how long it takes the bugs to get to the Young tree. As long as the saplings make it to a certain size we can have plenty of roof framing members for all the long houses will be building in the coming decades to revive the old ways of wisdom and right relationship with our lands
the book "Overstory" has an interesting few chapters on this
Feels like a strong parallel... "That might die" .... "Better kill it then"
:(
we in Europe have a similiar problem with boxwood and asian box wood moths. The moths can kill a boxwood, and at first nobody was eating the moths. Solutiuon: get rid of all the boxwood hedges etc. or spray pesticides... Turns out, the birds just needed a few years to learn that those moths are edible, too. Why is the first impuls with everything "kill it!"?
I know quite a bit about the emerald ash borer (EAB)! When I was in middle school we did a special collaboration with local scientists to research the EAB in our area. We literally shaved the bark off of ash trees to assess how extensive the infestation was. They definitely prefer older trees, but we absolutely found the borer in younger and thinner trees. I understand if you don't want to cut them down now, but the sooner you do the better. The biggest piece of advice I can give is to save the seeds off of any trees that are still alive. This way, when all the ash trees die out, we will have a diversity of seeds that can be replanted. You can actually donate them to seed banks as well for the same reason!
Thanks for these notes!
Food for thought, if you cut them into coppice now, before they lose the fight to the borer then they could live on as long as managed as a coppice, always staying under the attractive size of the insects, (hard to know for sure, but under 2" seems unaffected here) If you leave them to fight and die however you cannot do this, as they expend all their stored energy trying to fight the borer, and if cut after that will be already dead.
I truly wish we had known this a few years ago and cut all our larger ash off at the ground in winter, as I prefer ash to anything for firewood and it makes great coppice poles/handles as well. We still plan to work with the younger ones though they will not perform as well being small.
Hey Mr. C! I've got a few candidates that I'll have to keep an eye on, anywhere from a 8" to 16" trunk a few feet tall. I'll keep you posted.
Dear Sean, as a humble prairie dweller with no trees of my own, I respectfully wish for you to commit some time and energy Into coppicing and pollarding a few species to see if that does indeed fix your problem
(Seems to me it would)
If you choose to do so I'd love to see a video;)
Oh, I see now at the end of the video that you are doing so hahaha
The borer will eventually attack ash trees of all sizes, so I don't think coppicing will save the tree. I am open to being proven wrong if somebody wants to test that theory!
my two most favourite youtubers are talking to each other! I love this community :)
So much more information than just ash thoughts. The title is underselling it. I came for the emerald borer and stayed for the sagacious permaculture tips and tricks. Love it!
On a positive note, this has provided a large amount of food for woodpeckers on our property. I have seen and heard more of then in the past few years than ever before. As the ash finally passed, we have been milling and them and using the lumber. We have been planting some maples, walnut, pawpaw and a few others (some of which we picked up from you!).
As the ash is cleared there is a variety of new life springing up in it's place
I have the same situation going on here as well, a large family of woodpeckers are all over my ash trees right now!
I got my better half to sit down and watch this with me and he now has a better idea of what I've been wanting for our property. Thank you for that 🥰
Sean, your videos are a meditation for me. Your choice of words and soft soothing voice is a comfort, honestly you could probably read the phone book and i'd be ok with it. :) Bonus; your world view is so beautiful and thoughtful. Thank you.
Really kind words here, thank you!
Wait, we could do proactive ecological planning and action to assist the next succession rather than just liquidate what’s left or go to war with chemicals? Stop the presses! Nice work as always Sean.
Nice to see you here Ben :)
Yeah, who would have figured... there are options to actually work WITH the natural world!
I had several older ash trees on this property that were already doomed when I got here. I let them be snags for a few years and then brought them down as needed. Firewood and wood for garden projects mostly. Sad, but like you said, it is an opportunity for something new. So we move forward with that. Thanks for your wisdom...it is lovely to hear in a time where we are wisdom deficient:)
I like your approach.
Thank you for the thought through comments. Being custodian of land while it goes through a huge shift due to changing pressures can be exhausting. I'm glad you've found a way to take yields from the change while increasing the diversity and resilience of the ecosystem there :)
Friend, I grew up in Wisconsin. I recognized that crunchy snow sound before you even mentioned it :p
Nice thick ice crust on there!
I’m always blown away at your memory of what every little twig is and when it was planted. I have to keep a map with labels or I’ll have to wait for leaves before I can identify most things
I think it all just takes time.. I've been working with these types of systems for 16 years so after a while the 'sense' of the plants starts to bake in and they are easier to remember, if that makes sense. I don't really have other hobbies or think about or do a whole lot other than this works so as it's my world I'm pretty familiar with it. No special trick, just immersion I think.
Good video- I was just going to look up what is happening to our trees- I didn't even know what type of tree they were. Definitely Ash with Borer. Thanks again.
I love the fact that you let the dead tree standig as it is. Dead wood is an incredible habitat
Every year for about the past ten, I have collected ash seeds, vacuum sealed and dated, from several seeding trees on my property. When the borer moves on I can scatter them throughout the property to reestablish them. I do not disturb my forests. There is an ebb and flow to insects across the continent and this too shall pass or at least balance over time(even with introduced species). In the mean time my hope is that the existing wildlife will benefit from the changes to the forest. I hope, given the chance, that one of the last acts I can do on this earth is release my seeds throughout my property. Now that is a legacy!
Very sweet concept. I hope they can last for a long time. May be valuable to scatter some each year to hedge your bets...
@@edibleacres Thant's the plan. Might even do it every other year here and there to get a nice succession.
This makes me think of a concept in psychology/psychiatry called “cognitive flexibility “, which simply put means having enough skills/knowledge that if when problem solving if “option A” doesn’t work, one can try option B-Z... in other words, it’s not a calamity/crisis when one option does not work- just move on to the next. You have successional flexibility!
What about adding tons of Suet feeders to draw in woodpeckers and nutthatchers. Birds that eat the pesky Ash borer?
Woodpecker suet feeders. I agree with this solution.
Nice idea. I don't know that I would invest that kind of energy as the main solution but could be a nice additional layer.
I don't know how this would work if they like live ash wood or dead ash wood? But if you hang a few pieces of ash wood with string and then burn the piece of wood? Think it just might draw more in but who knows?
I have about an acre of wooded area with significant ash borer impact. The plan is to start food foresting the area, since there is so much more light in the area now than even 2 years ago. This was extremely enlightening. The woodpeckers and firewood are some of the few benefits from this invasive beetle!
Hoping some wonderful new and resilient successional pathways happen there!
Hi Sean and Sasha,
Have you been collecting Ash seeds? Saving them, banking them? I wonder if pollarding or coppicing an Ash tree is the best way to protect them. Reducing the trunk space of the trees will make less habitat for the little buggers. And I can't imagine the emerald ash borer going into the new growth, it looks to small. Cheers,
Bill
Good ideas. We haven't been explicitly saving Ash seed, but the coppicing and pollarding in this video can help preserve them in different formats. To be honest, I love the Ash but I'm also open to things moving in all sorts of different directions in the future. I don't have a need for things to remain the same.
@@edibleacres I wonder how many years it will take for the ash borer to move out (or die out... of natural causes)? Can they remain dormant for years or must the come out every spring? Will we tell stories of Seany Ashle Seed (Johnny Apple Seed) to our grand children and how he reintroduced the mighty Ash to New York? Cheers,
Bill
The wooly adelgid coming is just mind-boggling to me. Here in Vermont there are tons upon tons of hemlock trees. It’s crazy to think of them going, it would look like clear cutting. Personally, hemlocks are holding up a steep hill immediately above my house and property on both sides. I’m planting shrubs but the hill is too steep to plant into with other processes out of my control. I love on the hemlock trees every day.
WIshing health and long life for your Hemlock friends. They are such lovely trees!
The advantage of cutting them now is you are helping reduce the spread of EAB to other trees in the area.
I guess that logic can make sense except it gets extended out to the logical conclusion that 'if EAB might be coming here we should cut all the Ash as a firewall and so we can get the 'value' from the trees before they are 'ruined"... which is what I hear and basically will kill all the Ash before a creature does. Seems like slippery logic to me.
Yeppers. Well said.
Can't wait for that cicadas bloom!
Love the trellis system BTW
Those secession canopies seem about ready to break as well. Might be time to thin down and plant out the future overstory.... I've found out about taming sumac suckers with utilizing some wind felled poplar wood today, (Tinder Conk, and puffball saprotrophic soil barrier building with the permanent goal to prevent black knot on stone fruit croppings) might be worth a look into if full coppice cutting brings in detrimental(pre equilibrium) suckering in the short term while the change over is happening. Might speed it up a bit. No cut and paste procedures here. Lol. Love it!
Wonderful video!
Hazel trees like to grow as bushes, and they give more nuts if you thin/prune them every 5-7 year. I got a half dead ash tree and new ash trees all over my lot, but deer like to eat them, so no outside the fence.
The more I see the paw paws on your property, the more I want to try to plant some under my large maple in the back yard. For what should be a native tree in my area, I hadn't heard anything about them before coming to your channel. The more I learn about them, the more I wish I had known when I first moved in to this house. Paw paw bread seems like it would be on par with banana bread - which I really love.
Pawpaw bread rocks. When you get to that point, remember that the ones that fall off the tree are ripe. But the ones still on the tree aren't ripe yet. :) Good luck!
@@jameskniskern2261 Thanks, hopefully I remember that in a few years when the ones I plant this spring finally start bearing fruit XD
@@Dontreallycare5 Just one bite of an unripe pawpaw will remind you quickly. haha
Plant a good number of them so you can get good pollination and resilience... . And NEVER dehydrate them, it will make you quite sick.
“ you don’t have an emerald ash bore problem, you have a chocolate covered emerald ash bore deficiencies “
Enjoy, let me know how how that goes :)
but seriously - maybe there are not enough birds eating those borer beings, YET. Just like "our" blue tits took a few years to learn to eat the asian boxwood moths...
I wounded if putting up some suet feeders in that area would encourage woodpecker to come in and eat some of the larva in the ash.
You can get some suet feeders that are upside down so only woodpeckers can eat from it.
Interesting idea.
We have something going on with our post oak trees so thanks for the thoughts. I still want to figure out what the problem is, but maybe drastic measures aren’t necessary.
I hope you find some good pathways forward!
If it does well in your area, Beech could be a good tree also, as it does well in the understory until the opportunity presents itself.
Thats good to know.
I am using coppicing and pollarding of Ash to address ash borer and provide firewood at the same time. Coppicing maintains a younger tree that is more resistant to the borer. Coppicing provides that majority of the wood used for heating our home. For a few years after coppicing the canopy is opened which allows other trees to mature. The goalmis that by the time the canopy has regrown it is time to come back in and coppice again.
Neat! I hope that flow works beautifully for you.
I read about a hazlenut grove where they put 5 gallon buckets of sawdust all over. The squirrels buried the nuts in the buckets and did most of the harvesting for them
I've heard of this as well... I need to try this idea!
Hi 👋
Great chatt
I haven't noticed it prior but at the beginning of this January the Ash out front of my parent's house started getting decimated by pileated woodpeckers, another two trees just started getting peeled back this month as well. The woodpeckers seem to be doing fantastic from it hahaa, the trees are right next to a power line so guessing the road crews are going to be taking them out this Spring. Love the idea of the trellis there at the end, good idea on the metal ties; the thing looks great too! Can't wait to see those black cicadas, gonna be a wild Summer haha
Every year just gets more and more wild it feels like!
Have you noticed the ash borers in any other tree species? I had NYSENCON in to inspect my property and even sent photos and they still deny that is what is killing mature pine trees :(
I can't speak to that... I just don't know.
As far as I know, emerald ash borers *have not* been observed in any other trees other than ash. A telltale sign of emerald ash borer are their unique D-shaped exit holes. Native borers don't make D-shaped exit holes. If you don't see any of those, I would very much doubt that it is ash borer.
Man those 15 minutes went by quick. Nice clip
Do I need to maintain mulberry trees. We have about 5 in a small wooded area around s catch pool. They are huge and we’re surrounded by Japanese honeysuckle. I have cut this back to allow light to get to the ground so other things can grow. I was going to copice the honeysuckle for mulch but have recently read that it is allelopathic and should be removed, is this right. The mulberry trees have a lot of dead limbs, what is the best way to look after them.
All mulberries needis Sun. Dense forests are not their place, here in the city they are everywhere in every Alleyway on every neglected fence line and any unnoticed corner
I have about 50 ash that have succumbed to the EAB. Some are completely dead. Others have thrown new growth and will be coppiced.
I agree, this is tricky! In ecology there is an immigration credit and extinction debt to expect. In some cases the native species will adapt in others not. When it comes to Ash I once red that EAB was being invasive in areas around Moscow killing off most fraxinus excelsior in that region. After some time, though, some native predators to that area learned how to prey on them and now control them better. You can also expect pockets of Ash to survive a pandemic. So be hopeful and do not give up on any native specie! In Europe, there has been some signs on resistance evolving in Elms which was also killed off in most areas as mature stands. With Elm it is different though, as they can regenerate before they are being attacked and killed by the Dutch Elm Disease when growing to a certain maturity.
Thanks for sharing all this!
We have a few elm that survived and a majestic sycamore on our farm one of several along the creek valley here nature takes its course no matter what we do .
The ash in your area has had a noticeable dead cycle accelerated. And the Handle mill has benefited from it for sure .
We let trees here claimed by bugs to take its course the birds are worth the price of the firewood . When it falls I take some usable firewood then take the unuseable wood to compost around the nearest dominant tree roots . Or pile the brush and limbs for rabbit and mouse habitat . Steward a few trees for canopy light occasionally and occasionally a few lumber trees for ourselves .
Nice video! If you have no animals of you own, could us use deep poop around your perennial plants? If so, could you do it in winter so it had time to "cool off" ? THANKS
You could consider unfinished manures as a deep 'mulch' around plants and let it mellow over time, that seems reasonable.
Here at a local park there is a section of forest that is a thicket with prob 80% ash and 20% buckthorn and they have a very sad cycle where they grow up to about 15-20ft about 3-4in diameter then they die back resprout and regrow from the roots and that cycle just continues until the tree dies, so they never become any thing and the progression for the forest in that area is just halted and never become more than a thicket, until well the ash all die completely or some how, eventually succeed at building resistant to EAB
OR someone or a group of people enter in to add more complexity to the understory to help give some other pathways things could take. In a way, what you are describing is an insanely productive nutrient pumping and carbon building of the soil in that space, but stuck in a limited loop. Buckthorn is incredible at opening up tight clay/wet soils and leaving it in a more rich state, but is a powerhouse at occupying the tall shrub layer. Seems like a crew of chop-n-drop and guerrilla planters need to come in!
@@edibleacres this past summer I did plant some ostrich ferns their knowing how wet that area usually stays but we had such a dry summer I don’t think they made it. As for planting trees I do have several oak seeding that have come up in my beds that I will probably plant there to give them a life and to help out the forest progression
Decimated the ash in Colorado a few years back. We don't have cold winters anymore and those boars thrived.
Good thing this year we got -30 maybe it will make a dent
“You don’t have a ash borer problem, you have an Asian cross breeding deficiency.” Or something like that.
I'm going to put in another vote to coppicing. The emerald ash borer is being defined as a extinction event.
The stumps re-grow and any branches below 4 inch diameter is immune to the ash borer. They can definitely survive for many many decades like that being re-trimmed. I would recommend doing that with at least a few. It makes for great building material, too, ash small pole wood is valued for basket and backpack building material historically. That could at least allow the species of ash that you have to survive this event in a few specimens even though they'll be short and small, you can have seed and have a soon-to-be rare hyper local ash variety. I'm so sorry that's happening to your ash trees.
Coppicing is tough because it would require fencing to keep the deer off, but maybe that is worth it for a few specimens...
@@edibleacres Look up Sepp Holzer's Bone Sauce to apply to saplings to deter deer. I have not tried it but Permies.com (Paul Wheaton's site) message board has experienes. Here is a recipe:
www.permaculturenews.org/2014/06/05/bone-sauce-a-tool-for-deterring-browsing/
Let's say a prayer that you don't have to make a similar video about Oak Wilt a few years from now. I'm an arborist in Troy New York and for the last few years we have only worked on Oaks IE cutting live tissue during the dormant season between November and March. The rest of the time people just have to be patient unless it's an emergency then we actually seal the wound. If you see any tree people cutting Oaks in your area while they are leafed out please let them know that this is not best practice due to this new disease that we do not know much about
I expect we'll have massive numbers of these types of situations in our lifetimes. The future will look incredibly different.
The ash borers are killing trees here in my area too. I am in Connecticut.
Its happening in many places.
I am in the situation where my land is dominated by eastern red cedar and white ash. The ash are falling off a few each year and the cedars are super aggressive trees that try as hard as they can to not allow anything else to grow. I guess in the permaculture sense I dont have a eastern red cedar invasive problem I have a sharpened chainsaw deficiency. lol
Or a rot resistant Timber usage deficiency
@@Regboy not at all...my stockpile of logs is huge and I have built as much as I want to for now. Have you ever had to manage ERC infested land?
Seems like a nice connection to make with other folks in the area to trade the red cedar as useful products for other valuable plants, resources, etc. and start shifting the context... . Good luck!
@@md6397 transform that value! And no, I'm a city dweller so I only have access to City size plots of land .enjoy the solitude of your nice quiet Forest :-)
Japanese pine beetles are a problem in my area. There are biological methods of controlling them, using bacteria, nematodes, and parasites. There may be biological methods for controlling the emerald ash borers, as well. You may find that more acceptable than applying chemical poisons.
I get that, and I know I could explore more control avenues, but it just isn't my flow.
@@edibleacres, that's cool. I agree with your not wanting to use poisonous chemicals. I enjoy the idea of using biological methods of control, it's like engaging in biological warfare, only it's against insects.
hornets feast on our weak ashe trees as they enjoy the sap and soft wood to munch on. the ashes spread like crazy everywhere and create many long and narrow woodsticks that i can harvest now and then.
Curious about those Scots pine--do you see much reproduction? Would expect some if they were happily situated. May be too wet/not sandy enough? Plenty of huge "grandpa" ash on my site. Constantly checking them for blonding; it will be a sad day indeed when I find it, even with an opportunistic understory waiting in the wings. Tree love
The scotts pine... .I haven't seen ANY seedlings! Someone planted them all out in the early 80s and they are here but not thriving at all.
Emerald Ash borer, Dutch Elm, etc... loss of local connections that need to be rebuilt. All side effects of global greed and exploitation of human populations and nature. The answer? Return to self sufficiency and all things local and rebuild what we can. The damage to nature won’t be fully known until we do, but as you say other species will replace them and hopefully the old species will return. Still very sad.
Yes... the issue isn't the little bug doing the thing it does, it's massive ecological damage all around. Whatever we can do right where we live is the actual long term solution I think.
It's my understanding that Ash is the evolutionary 'grandfather' of many subsequent deciduous trees. No doubt there have been many species of plants that have perished over the grand span of time due to being out-competed or otherwise becoming obsolete due to inadequate adaptation. Maybe it's just time for Ash trees to go in this area. If it were me I'd take down the ones that are done for and make the best of it: firewood/ new planting space/ etc.
The point with this video is I'm learning I don't have to cut them all down in order to plant those characters that can be next!
@@edibleacres Do you know why they're called Ash trees?
the ground will respond to the rush of the cinsects
God bless you for being out in this freezing weather to teach us!
I'm generally outside all day, it only feels cold when I take time to film and am not actively working!
sorry for what? :P thats some mighty fine snow crunching
You would really benefit from a consultation with a certified arborist!
Sad when a tree species dies out. My grandchildren will never know the joy of standing under an Elm. They were a part of the English landscape and truly beautiful large trees, but thanks to Dutch Elm disease were wiped out.
Search on Google for 'UK Elms map' and you'll see there's still lots of trees left for your grandchildren to sit under. I posted the link to it but my comment got deleted.
so sad...I just checked my worm bin and all are death...90 percent of my plants dead....oh boy even when they were protected but i never expect to have temperatures so cold in Houston. I was one of the lucky ones that the pipes did not burst...but all around sad horrible stories about the cold spell we had... A friend of mine had the garden going with vegies and purchased new trees and all are gone...but wait now we have to wait for the heating bill....stores do not have food all gone...I am lucky to have some in reserve...no even dog food can be found...meat, vegies...nothing... good lesson to learn. People think that they can mess up mother nature and do not have any accountability for the damage ....and wait because summer is going to be dry and little water all over the place...so prepare...
I gave this a heart not because I love the news, but sending warmth your way. So sorry that all is happening. Climate is shifting rapidly in all the directions, and all we can do is keep jogging/sprinting in the direction of growing more diverse foods and medicines where we live in the hopes that we can build some resiliency. This winter we lost massive numbers of plants to desperate rabbits, we had fruit and medicine shrubs that we thought were completely deer proof have been eaten right down. There is desperation in the wilds and humans are feeling it more and more. So much work to be done. I hope things heal for you and you can deepen resilience for you and your community moving forward.
@@edibleacres Thank you so much for your warm message. I noticed that the plants that kind of survive were the ones I place mulch on top and then the covers...plants that were more "water in steam" all die, but still the sorrow i have the most is for the poor worms they did not have a chance and I feel guilty for not bring them inside...i guess they are in worm heaven now. Excellent lesson all of us had to learn. It is time to change the me me me i am superior attitude towards nature...she is fighting back and I can understand that...so much damage, so much money driven destruction of trees, ecosystems, cruelty toward animals, dumping chemicals all over the place..and as arrogant many humans are...we are ripening what we are sowing...and it is going to be worst for summer...very dry and little water...so prepare ahead of time and also prepare water and food for the wild critters...is the least we can do for them.. Love and peace and many blessings to all
There is no defeating nature. Nature always finds a way. Interesting, many of the "bad" and "invasives" are trees and plants whose "native" habitat shifts north and south and east and west due to various climatic activities. Yes, the globalization of travel has spread things to areas they might not have made it to otherwise, perhaps they would have anyways given enough time.
It's hard for us to see and think outside our miniscule amount of time. Many tree's now "invading" southern states, black locust and numerous others, appear to have been much further south and west looking at geological evidence [so I've been told anyways, not a geologist].
I wonder what else is being poisoned with these injections into ash tree's.
So gross to think about injecting poison into the bloodstream of the Ash to stave off a creature.
a huge standing dead tree is dangerous
Eventually, yes. But that takes time.
You really want to cut them down, so the bore population does not have a chance to breed further. You'll get bieutiful material for your next hugle mound
Good point to bring evolution into the mix. Keep digging, hint, look at the generation time fore the bore vs the ash, which is most likely to have a variation to be able to infect other trees, which is the list likely to have a variation that could resist the bore - given the absence of predation on the bore?
when they do go, please take the trunks out. they become dangerous widowmakers. maybe you can get some nice big bowls, spoons and a kuksa or two...
Maybe ash is meant to be a pioneer species? Just keep planting new ones every year and let them die when they do?
Nature is bountiful of opportunity and ruthless of error. When the next ice age hits within the lifetime of some of you reading (worse case scenario, of course) all this will be moot and a whole new set of opportunities will make demands on the survivors. But chances are, where I live, and upstate New York will be under a thousand years of constant snowfall whose beginning I won't see. Not to change the subject, but to put it in perspective. Plan for the worst, do the most, expect nothing. Life goes on.
Nicely said! It's all meaningless at a certain time scale so you might as well try really hard just for funn and keep busy!
@@edibleacres The time scale I most enjoy is now. It gets more complicated after that. The etymon of time is to cut up, to divide. That's ironic. :)
You should do voice over meditation lol. This is enough though
everybody dies in the end tv
:)
Everything is made of chemicals. Trees are chemicals, fruit are chemicals, you are chemicals.
Is that meant to say injecting 'chemicals' into the trees would be safe and reasonable since we're the same thing, or you are just correcting me so that instead of using that word I would say "a novel assemblage of chemicals engineered for profit for a small number of people that are insulated from the potentially negative effects of what could happen if deployed into the environment"... Felt easier to say chemicals..
Destructive insect species only prey on already diseased and compromised trees! We have to ask the question what is already killing the tree's prior to the insects arrival?!
There are much bigger pictures to look at with all this. Too complex for me to take in mentally but I agree fully that it isn't specifically the borer who is the issue, just like if someone has an iillness, it isn't just the illness, it's the environment they're in, the quality of food, the stressors, etc....
“Beings”? OK Sean... you’re getting a little too far ‘out there’ now. And “climate change” has been with us since God created our planet. Those “changes” are otherwise known as: spring, summer, fall/autumn and winter. LOL
@@asbjorgvanderveer5050 Yet your alternative facts are chiseled on stone tablets for the ages?
What is the point of this comment? Are you trying to moderate his behavior to be more in line with what you believe . . . . because if that is your goal, you are putting a pathetically minimal amount of effort into elaborating how your beliefs would be helpful to him maintaining his property.
@@md6397 Sort of, considering geological data plays a significant part of the evidence base for the current climatic driver being anthropogenic and not in line with past climate shifts.
Since your god created the planet, there has been 5 mass-extinction events and there's good evidence that we're now in the sixth.
If you want to be taken seriously with counter-claims on anthropogenic climate change, you will need to provide some data that is strong enough to dismiss the scientific consensus - or to put it another way; 97% of climate scientists think you're wrong, so what is the evidence you've got that makes you think you're right?
@@banksarenotyourfriends Andy what are your credentials?