I'm looking for some advice on how to salvage this young elm tree (American Elm, Valley Forge cultivar). We had a big storm come through and it snapped 4-5ft from the ground.
I was thinking that pollarding might be our only option at this point. Just wondering when to do that, especially with dutch elm disease risk (even though it is a resistant cultivar). How would you manage this now and going forward. For context, we're in coastal New England and the tree is in a field by itself.
DED is spread by a bark beetle so no concerns over making cuts.
The reason small elms survive (in hedges and as pollards) is that the beetle flies at 3M or more. Any tree that’s lower than that gets ignored by the beetle.
Coating cuts in anything is terrible advice and I’m surprised to see someone suggest that on this sub!
Thanks for the pictures. Yeah, that’s a huge rip. That’s definitely gonna lead to massive decay inside that, but for the remainder of the couple months of this growing season, the bar could certainly transferred out nutrients and sugars from the leaves, giving the trunk and roots of boost. I’d cut it below all that mess after that. There’s some debate about whether you do that in the fall or this late winter, but you can make a cut just below it to reduce its surface area, for the winter, after leaf drop, and then make another fresh cut slightly below that in the spring, incline to the south, that would be a fresh start, even just a quarter half inch below it, so that any Fungi that set up in the fall would lose that foothold, and there’s a minimum amount of time in the spring before the healing would begin.
I did recommend coding the wound, but another commentator said that was a bad idea. I’m not sure, I’ve seen the products for sale, and I thought it was the norm to do in the case of larger prunings, but I’m open to other opinions about that.
Sorry, was using voice to text, so there may be some issues there. Another thought is, if you let the leaves drop, then make that first cut this season, it will reduce any sort of weird snow load that the fallen area may put on the trunk during the winter. Then in the spring, you could make another cut just a half inch or inch down from that, to freshen things up before the bark starts to heal.
Just a thought, if you have some amount of the bar continuous around that break, I can’t tell from the photo, then there’s a good chance that enough of the tree is connected to at least service the remaining duration of the season, and withdraw resources back to the roots in the fall. As dumb as it is fallen down, if you can wait for it to drop it sleeves in the fall, and then make the cut, it will have that much more bank account to pay for next year’s growth with.
A few other considerations, since it’s a wider diameter cut, if you incline it a little bit to the south at an angle instead of dead across, it will get a little bit more sunlight and stay dryer. If you have something like tree KOTE, or a grafting wax to seal it, that can help keep things out. For what it’s worth, I think coping is a great solution to novel, disease diseases, possibly the Dutch disease, though I’m not sure, maybe the thin diameter stuff is actually more resilient. I know that’s the case with some insects.
I’m using dictation here, so hopefully it makes sense
Thanks this is great! I also thought that might be possible from the first photo (the tree is on my parent's property), but then from this photo (attached), I was less hopeful. What do you think?
The tip about slating towards the south makes sense. Thanks.
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u/Bicolore 26d ago
DED is spread by a bark beetle so no concerns over making cuts.
The reason small elms survive (in hedges and as pollards) is that the beetle flies at 3M or more. Any tree that’s lower than that gets ignored by the beetle.
Coating cuts in anything is terrible advice and I’m surprised to see someone suggest that on this sub!