Firewood and Emerald Ash Borer....

[makey98]

I finally got a place with some land and some cool trees. Also has outdoor firepit and a wood stove in the house and I was excited about scrounging up various sources of wood and bucking/splitting whatever i can find and getting a nice supply. However, I have a HUGE green ash (~7 foot diameter) and 4 other ash trees (believe blue ash, but need to confirm) that are decent size, haven't measured yet, but at least 16"+ diameter. The previous homeowner was paying big money (~1300) to have the insecticide injections to keep everything safe. Then I was reading about how firewood contributes to spread of EAB and now they have USDA compliance firewood and various no-bark firewood that is for sale and only allowed in state parks,etc. Now I am worried if I find some down trees to buck or some logs to take home for my wood supply, I could risk introducing EAB into my trees. How do you guys deal with this issue? Concerned with it? Thoughts and opinions welcome, as my knowledge base is very low.

 

[blades]

The bugs fly, just look at the prevailing winds and see the progression. They tried all that with the Dutch Elm disease - didn't do squat as far as stopping it or it's progression. The injections are your best bet but there really are not any guarantees there either. When the symptoms show up it's already 3-4 years into the cycle. I took a couple of nice sized ash down on my property some 4 years before anyone admitted it was in our area- the trees had all the classic signs at that point already. City has a park behind that property as of last July( when I sold it) they hadn't addressed anything in there.

 

[Mustang71]

It's already here didn't notice it last year this year about half the leaves gone. I have 5 acres of wooded land with a house on it. I have a bunch of cotton wood and maple trees some cherry some pine and the other half is ash. Some look of others are clearly dieing. Burning wood for heat every year, this will probably work out for me. I've noticed many new small trees growing even ash trees. Going to have a lot of tricky trees that need to come down around my house.

Since I've lived here 5 years I've never bought fire wood the ash borer came on it's own.

 

[Streblerm]

If EAB Is already in your area your ash trees are probably already dead. Bringing home some ash isn't going to make any difference. My opinion, for what it's worth.

If you don't have it in your area(usually county) then don't bring firewood of any kind in from an area that does have the bug. That's how it works in Ohio. Unless the wood is kiln dried... as you mentioned.

 

[Brushwacker]

I think it would be more affordable and convenient, for you to cut the big ash now, try to spare and care for fewer smaller ash and focus on a diversified variety of replacement trees, some fast and some slow growing species with the intent of doing thinning when they are older and start crowding.

 

[johnnyballs]

i agree with brushwacker...hopefully the injections work, but as the trees go more and more into a state of decline it will be more difficult to take down...we've been taking down more and more ash trees with the little metal tags on them, so the injections don't always work...as for transporting firewood, check your local laws...they tried that around here (i'm about 25 miles east of buffalo)..and it didn't work very well...like blades said, the bugs fly...good luck

 

[Mustang71]

It was something like you can't transport wood more than 50 miles. I got wood from the town I work in. Some guy cut down a bunch of ash trees and it was all free. That's about 20 miles from my house just over the county line. I'm about 40 miles north east of buffalo right on the lake. I followed the rules but it didn't matter the signs were already here before the free wood I got this spring.

I've never seen a truck full of wood pulled over either so Idk how they enforce the law.

 

[makey98]

I don't think I could bring myself to take this thing down without a really really really good reason.

 

[makey98]

I finally got around to measuring this tree. Right around 17ft circumference, so little under 6 feet diameter. One of the tree age calculator things indicates this tree is stinking 260 years old!! Crazy. I wish I could go back in time and see what this area looked like back then.

 

[Mustang71]

That's one of those trees you cut down and find old chains and nails stuck inside them. Pretty cool. It's made it this long and the stupid ash borer will kill that tree in 2 years.