Green ash are dying here in southern Minnesota due to infestion of EAB. I have three big, old green ash trees I'd like to keep alive. I've heard that injection with chemical that kills the borers/larvae is best treatment for large trees, and needs to be done every 2 years or so. Wondering if anyone out there has hired an arborist to treat green ash trees? Any tips/suggestions? Thx.
Emerald Ash Borer (EAB) - Treating green ash to keep them alive.
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Best case scenario is plant something nearby to replace them. You can maybe hang on to them for awhile while you get a few feet on the new trees but they will eventually die and need to be removed.
We've been treating ours here in Ankeny. So far so good. Lots of dead ones nearby, but ours still seems to be thriving.
Its planted on the west side of our yard and provides the most shade in afternoon to the backyard.
Its planted on the west side of our yard and provides the most shade in afternoon to the backyard.
I've treated 4 trees twice now. Started 3.5 years ago before I noticed any damage up high on them. Most ashes have died in our town during the last 2 years. 3 of mine (autumn purple ash) are doing fine. One true white ash appears like it's on its way out. I did a 5th tree, a green ash, the 1st time around. I could see they had started on it but decided to give it a try. Didn't work.
That seems to be about the story.
If you can get treatment before they're in it, you can have some success.
Once they're started, its hard to save them.
Problem is, if you're already seeing a bunch of dead trees in your neighborhood, even if the tree looks fine now chances are your tree is already infected but not yet showing signs.
All of our many ash (100's) are dead or dying, SW MO. Luckily we still have many mature and dense red and white oak, hickories, cherry, walnut, some elm variant (not the American Elm), dogwood, redbud, hackberry, sweetberry in our 20 acs of woods. But losing the Ash was painful and quite a sting. It made up about 20% of our hardwoods, I would say.
We had so many ash, that now we still have many living ash trees, as long as they are only 5-7 years old maybe, or less. Once they get bigger, they are goners too. I'm hoping with time, maybe the ash will develop some resistance to the eab. It won't be in my lifetime, unfortunately.
Nothing we could do. We decided to do nothing when we noticed them dying, as we have so many other trees, but still.
We had so many ash, that now we still have many living ash trees, as long as they are only 5-7 years old maybe, or less. Once they get bigger, they are goners too. I'm hoping with time, maybe the ash will develop some resistance to the eab. It won't be in my lifetime, unfortunately.
Nothing we could do. We decided to do nothing when we noticed them dying, as we have so many other trees, but still.
I had to have both my ash trees removed. One had three limbs that had lost all the leaves, the other had two. He told me once that starts treatment only delays the inevitable.
The golf course I golf at treated select ash trees that were important because of the shade on tee boxes, benches or other various reasons. We were all caught up and were treating 10 ash trees. The others died over the last 2-3 years. They trimmed up the living ash trees, then treated and planted replacements nearby. A tornado went through and took out 6 of the 10 ash trees left this spring. Across my road to the south there were two mature ash trees that only shaded my driveway in the winter because of the angle of the sun. My driveway was always froze over for a longer period because of those trees, from December to February. Those trees are now gone, last winter my driveway melted off all winter.
Treatments work but they can be spendy. Also keep in mind there is no end game..... you will need to keep treating them as long as you want them to live.
We have one ash tree that is the primary shade tree on the SW corner of our house. when they first showed up about 8-10 years ago we had it treated by a professional arborist. It was between $275-$300. After the first treatment we decided that we did not want to do that forever. It took some damage during the derecho but is still a good tree.
Interestingly enough it is the only ash tree left in the neighborhood. We have 18 houses in our subdivision and there were at least 10-12 ash trees when we moved in. The two across the street dies 5 years ago. I'm almost thinking that there is some multi-year residual effect to the treatment and it may work only if you do it every 2-3 years. especially after the first big wave of ash borers goes through your neighborhood.
Once most of the ash trees in a given area die I'd think the ash borer population will decline (although probably never totally leave.
We have one ash tree that is the primary shade tree on the SW corner of our house. when they first showed up about 8-10 years ago we had it treated by a professional arborist. It was between $275-$300. After the first treatment we decided that we did not want to do that forever. It took some damage during the derecho but is still a good tree.
Interestingly enough it is the only ash tree left in the neighborhood. We have 18 houses in our subdivision and there were at least 10-12 ash trees when we moved in. The two across the street dies 5 years ago. I'm almost thinking that there is some multi-year residual effect to the treatment and it may work only if you do it every 2-3 years. especially after the first big wave of ash borers goes through your neighborhood.
Once most of the ash trees in a given area die I'd think the ash borer population will decline (although probably never totally leave.
We've treated our white ash for 10 years now and it's still thriving. An arborist has said it's still very healthy. All in all, probably 100 trees in our subdivision had to be taken down. I guess we got lucky
We've been treating 7 trees for around 4 years now. 3 one year, 4 the next. 1' to 2' in diameter. It's probably $300-400 a year. Sucks, but the trees are doing well. In-laws have a giant ash in their back yard and didn't want to spend the money to treat. Now they are going to have to pay someone to cut it down and haul it out.
Just took the master forestry class through ISU, I really enjoyed it you might want to look at mizzou extension and see if they offer something similar.
You can save some money if you're willing to learn how to do the injections yourself. As others have said, usually by the time you start seeing damage it's too late because they've already disrupted the nutrient flow.
I have one in my backyard that is our primary source of shade. I noticed a couple of branches dieing about 3 years ago and now it's progressed to about 70% alive and 30% dead. Do you guys remove them that early?
I still figure I have 2 or 3 years left of some shade before its completely dead.
I still figure I have 2 or 3 years left of some shade before its completely dead.
Yep I would take it out now. In 2 years max it will be done. It sucks man, we had to take out our big ash in front of our house.
I'll be cutting my black ash tree down by end of this year. I had been doing self treatment on it by buying the kind you can mix in a 5 gallon bucket and pour around the base of the tree every year but started to see signs of dead limbs and then the birds started pecking at parts of the bark (they will eat the larvae if they can get to it) which revealed the damage I was afraid of. It's very obvious now this spring as not nearly as full of leaves as it usually is.
It sucks because it's was such a nice looking tree. Seeing a few black ash trees in our neighborhood showing some of the same signs mine did so only a matter of time before they die too I bet. My next problem will be trying to find a tree to replace it that will grow into a similar size and structure.
It sucks because it's was such a nice looking tree. Seeing a few black ash trees in our neighborhood showing some of the same signs mine did so only a matter of time before they die too I bet. My next problem will be trying to find a tree to replace it that will grow into a similar size and structure.
I'd say unless you are itching to cut it down and get started on a replacement leave it until you don't like how it looks anymore. My black ash started to show signs of death last year but still was about 80% full. This year probably closer to 60% of it looks alive so pretty sure this will be the last year before it looks really rough.
If you take it now, you get to decide where it lands when it falls.
The residual is correct. I was certified to inject around 10 years ago and at the time the research showed that if you wanted the highest rate of survival to treat every other year. In actuality, you could wait 2-4 years and still have some residual in the tree, depending on the size of the tree. I think the 3 year treatments still covered about 80% of trees.
I always thought the end game was the EAB was moving east coast to west coast and that once they have decimated an area and moved well past it, trees left unharmed would end up saved and eventually treatments could be stopped. The EAB will eventually run out of new trees and face mass extinction
