Safe Useful Life Extension

[Guy Meilleur]

From another thread: "I do my analysis on "crowding trees" on owners age, my reason being *why remove a 80 yr olds tree when a lite prune will see his days out* with the tree, in a crowding situation."

This makes a lot of sense to me. If our role is to facilitate the coexistence of people and trees, why not keep even a terminally ill tree around, when it will likely outlast the owner? Thinning a stand anticipates the process of nature, but no need to rush it too much. The pace is determined by client, biology, budget, etc.

After all, every tree we see will someday be compost. As long as it is useful and safe, why not keep it around, even the ones that are not in a "crowding situation"? (Lopa, why not retain trees in a non-thinning situation? What's different there?)

 

[a_lopa]

im all for retaining,if you can say keep a few 30'+ oak, ash,etc in good shape with light prune for someone in their later part of life instead of thining i think its a good thing,they havnt got the 20yrs to see them grow again.if its half dead birch/ conifer i may have a varied opinion,but if they owner wants it ,it stays.

 

[Mike Barcaskey]

same end, different means

I've talked alot of older folks out of TD's or even prunings, not with the tree in mind, but their pocketbook.

no sense them paying $$$$ when they will be gone in a few years.
Actually had one give me $50 in appreciation for convincing them to not cut the tree and save them about $800

 

[treeman82]

It's funny you guys should bring up this topic. There is a guy, or was a guy (he might be dead by now) who lives maybe 45 min from my house. The guy is old and in rough shape, however he is a billionaire. For a number of years he had about 200 guys running around his property every day doing various forms of work to the grounds. It was rumored that he spent $1,000,000 a day on that work, but supposedly that was just the interest he made off his bank accounts. I am not sure if he ever lived long enough to enjoy the finished product.

 

[Crispin Hoar]

With that thinking do you plant trees for older folks or only the young ones? I agree about saving trees. I like to replace natural mortality with a harvest. If you remove a tree, that is the only time you will touch that tree. Prune and you will be back when the tree is almost dead anyway. Your kids and grand kids could climb this tree.