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  • From: Hamptongar@aol.com
  • To: gwl-g@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [gwl-g] Organic at what cost?
  • Date: Fri, 14 May 2004 15:25:17 EDT

Many if not most of the eastern red cedars on Long Island are showing some degree of tip dieback..so it's not unique to your property.  I was out in Southampton yesterday and on one six acre ocean front lot virtually every cedar (Juniper) had similar damage.  Let's just call it a generic tip die back though if you want a specific reason I'm sure our pathologist can come up with one.  As to the trunk cracking...we had a 90 foot tall white pine get hit by lightening three years ago and it virtually split the trunk mid way down to the ground.  Our arborist said take the tree down right away...I said thanks, but I'll wait a bit.  Two weeks alter the carpenter ants showed up.  I had the trunk bolted and a couple of large limbs cabled..the ants continued to mine for weeks....but as I noted...we're now three years later and the tree is still standing and has lots of volunteer shoots all along the trunk.  On the other hand we had a 60 foot white pine get hit by lightening last summer...the lightening passed down the trunk and through the roots where a hole was blown out of the ground.  Based on the earlier experience I thought I had little to loose by bolting the trunk and adding two cables...and a prayer to the white pine god.  Three weeks later we had a storm with a sudden down draft...the pine came down and tool two smaller pines and an oak with it.
 
Easter white cedars are a bit more expendable though...but you may want to have an arborist look and see if bolting the trunk would work.
 

Andrew Messinger
The Hampton Gardener

The Hampton Gardener is a Registered Trade Mark
(Published every Thursday in the Southampton Press)




 




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