I'm one heck of a fine arborist!

[pdqdl]

I looked out the back window this morning, and discovered that one of my trees is dead as a hammer. (austrian pine)

I never saw it coming. Last fall it looked pretty good, with only a few touches of diplodia tip blight in the lower parts. (I don't treat that stuff)

Damn the luck. It's not a big deal, since I wasn't that fond of it anyway, but my pride is hurt a little to discover that I am clueless as to why or when it croaked. Now I have to figure out what got it.

I told my wife and the kids that "It's probably the new dog peeing on it all the time". They believed me until I started laughing at them.

 

[TreeTopKid]

I looked out the back window this morning, and discovered that one of my trees is dead as a hammer. (austrian pine)

I never saw it coming. Last fall it looked pretty good, with only a few touches of diplodia tip blight in the lower parts. (I don't treat that stuff)

Damn the luck. It's not a big deal, since I wasn't that fond of it anyway, but my pride is hurt a little to discover that I am clueless as to why or when it croaked. Now I have to figure out what got it.

I told my wife and the kids that "It's probably the new dog peeing on it all the time". They believed me until I started laughing at them.

Hey! The last thing you feel like doing is looking at your own trees when you finish work. Builders homes fall to pieces! LOL

 

[brushbandit]

It may have looked decent last fall but was probably actually dead last fall. Look at a christmas tree out in the trash in Jan. that is still green and appearing to be in decent health even though it has a terminal problem, no root system since sometime in mid Nov. I never looked at it that way till Shigo pointed it out at a seminar of his I attended, he put on a great seminar.
Sorry you lost your Austrian pine but they do get ugly when the Diplodia sets in. You were smart in not trying to control the Diplodia, alot of work with usually marginal results.

 

[pdqdl]

Diplodia didn't kill it. It had almost no damage from that, hard to spot, actually. This area has lots of trees with that problem, and they invariably go a branch at a time.

This booger died all at once, because all the needles are the same color. The needles are present on all the branches, too.

I suspect that it was weakened by recent harsh summers & winters we have had, and just got tired of fighting. The last two years have been filled with hard late spring freezes, DRY winters, and winters filled with alternating spring-like weather and severe cold snaps.

Last week we had temperatures at 8° F, and it's been over 70° for the last 3 days. Kansas City weather! Even worse than usual. Bitter cold with 6" of snow on Feb 28, my crocus and tulips are coming up. The crocus even have flowers already.

No lawn chemicals, no changes in it's surroundings, wrong time of year for nematodes and insect invasions, I think it just got weak.

I'll go check for previously undetected signs of stress.

 

[brushbandit]

Diplodia didn't kill it. It had almost no damage from that, hard to spot, actually. This area has lots of trees with that problem, and they invariably go a branch at a time.

This booger died all at once, because all the needles are the same color. The needles are present on all the branches, too.

I suspect that it was weakened by recent harsh summers & winters we have had, and just got tired of fighting. The last two years have been filled with hard late spring freezes, DRY winters, and winters filled with alternating spring-like weather and severe cold snaps.

Last week we had temperatures at 8° F, and it's been over 70° for the last 3 days. Kansas City weather! Even worse than usual. Bitter cold with 6" of snow on Feb 28, my crocus and tulips are coming up. The crocus even have flowers already.

No lawn chemicals, no changes in it's surroundings, wrong time of year for nematodes and insect invasions, I think it just got weak.

I'll go check for previously undetected signs of stress.

I didn't suggest that Diplodia killed it, I made the observation that Diplodia hurts their appearence and is hard to control.

 

[pdqdl]

No problem, bandit. I wasn't reading into your comments. In fact, I was pleased to hear from another tree professional that it was mostly a waste of time.

I did feel like I was less than clear about the extent of the affliction, since I did mention the disease.

 

[outofmytree]

Well if we are confessing in home arboreal sins....

I let my wife plant some trees down the "dead" side of our house. Thats the side where there is only 1.2 metres between the house and the wall. The problem is I let her plant e.maculata. Those babies make 20 metres in 10 years around here. Needless to say they an "accident".

 

[Raymond]

Is that the pines around here that are dieing everywhere we look? If you have others I hope it doesn't get them.

 

[pdqdl]

No, this is the only pine in the area, although it is right next to a blue spruce.

That lovely landscape design came with the house; I would not have planned it that way. My wife bought this house as a man-trap to catch me. Apparently, it worked. They had the foresight to plant these two trees between a pin oak and Sycamore, both of which are towering over the two evergreens.

 

[M.D. Vaden]

Sometimes the reasons are sneaky.

I planted a weeping atlas cedar for someone once in Autumn, and removed all the twine and burlap. It died by the next June. Which was odd.

When I dug it out and soil parted from the lower trunk and roots, there was a ring around the trunk, about 3" below the top of the original root ball. What happened, was the nursery had re-balled it a few years prior and left embeded twine that girdled the stem - concealing it with extra soil. The twine was completely encased in the bark.

The commercial wholesale nurseries here don't have guarantees, but they exchanged that tree because it was a defective product when they sold it. I'm just glad I noticed the ring mark during the removal, otherwise I'd be inclined to pay for the tree myself.