Arbor Doctor Spring 2025 client update
Welcome to spring!
Actually, can you believe April is actually the 2nd month of meteorological spring? Wild spring weather has definitely been in the news lately. Did you know that we have regular weather updates on the Arbor Doctor Weather Page? You can check it out at https://www.arbordoctor.com/weather-page/ .
The Arbor Doctor team is growing!
A new Team member has joined Arbor Doctor. Mandi Ganje is an ISA Certified Arborist from Portland, Oregon. She has a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science from the University of Oregon and has held jobs with the Nature Conservancy as well as a couple arboricultural consulting firms in Oregon and northern California.
Arbor Doctor Plant Health Care Technicians Noah Riggs and Matt Ballman now have their pesticide licenses in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana.
The ghosts of droughts past
After a relatively cold winter in March, we returned to the weather conditions similar to what we saw for much of 2024 with temperatures averaging well above normal. Plants had been rather slow to progress this late winter and early spring due to the chilly temperatures, but temperatures in the 70s and low 80s during the last week of March encouraged plants to speed ahead in their progressions.
Despite that, plants have been lagging behind this year. I have gotten a number of calls from people concerned that their trees and shrubs are not leafing out. When I have gone out to look, they were all OK. They were just still waking up from their long winter slumber.
This is not the case with some evergreens. The droughts and heat of the summer and fall of 2024, as well as droughts in 2022 and 2023, have taken their toll on a number of evergreens, in particular some of the western arborvitae and Norway spruces. I have gotten a number of calls about ailing arborvitae and spruces and in virtually every case the problem is what we are calling the “ghost of droughts past”, or drought damage that occurred over the past few years and is now showing up as dead areas, decline, or in some cases death of the entire tree.
In some cases where the brown is sporadic, I would expect the tree to recover, although we know that such trees are quite stressed and adjacent trees are likely also stressed even if they are not showing browning. This is why we always give instructions on mulching and watering.
If proper mulching and watering instructions are not followed, unfortunately this is what we tend to see. In some cases, we will see symptoms like this even if proper procedures are followed. Just as good medical care does not always result in a live and healthy patient, good horticultural care does not always result in a live and healthy tree or shrub, although with both we would expect overall outcomes to be much better.
Drought: How Dry Seasons Affect Woody Plants>>>
Watering instructions for most landscape plants (trees, shrubs, herbaceous perennials, even lawns): Water once per week, one inch per week, under the entire branch spread, in the absence of rain, May through November. Rainfall and/or your watering should equal one inch per week. Do not water if the soil is already moist. Put out a sprinkler and a straight sided soup can or rain gauge and measure one inch of water per week, from natural rainfall, natural rainfall supplemented by your sprinkler, or your sprinkler only in the absence or rainfall. Measure the rainfall which falls in your yard. Your trees don’t care what fell at the airport!
For new trees and shrubs, be sure to saturate the root ball once or twice a week. Check the soil before watering to be sure it has dried out some since over watering can cause problems. Container grown material is especially susceptible to drying out in the first couple years after planting.
If burlap is left on new trees, it will repel water and the tree or shrub may die. Be sure burlap and twine are removed from the top of all root balls per American National Standards Institute (ANSI) industry standard for installation of landscape plants.
The root flares of trees and shrubs should be at grade and partially exposed, not covered with soil or mulch.
Box Tree Moth Update
Many of you have been asking about the current status of the Box Tree Moth.
Box Tree Moth is an invasive insect from Asia which destroyed a large number of boxwoods in Europe and has now been found in several locations in North America, including Loveland OH a couple years ago. Since then, we have found the Box Tree Moth feeding on boxwoods in locations including Loveland, Indian hill, Montgomery, Symmes Township, and Milford. Box Tree Moth has also been confirmed in the Dayton OH area. Last year we found Box Tree Moth feeding on boxwoods on April 24. Thus far, we have not found Box Tree Moth west of Interstate 75, but it is only a matter of time since nothing is being done to slow its spread.
Our treatments include the suppression of Box Tree Moth. We are confident that our treatments will keep the insect under control.
There are many other things which have affected boxwoods over the past few years. We have gotten many calls expressing concern about Box Tree Moth. In cases where people thought it was active in their yard we went out and found out that it wasn't. Yes, Box Tree Moth can destroy boxwoods, and it can do it fairly quickly. The good news is that Box Tree Moth is a Caterpillar, no different than bagworms. We know how to control bagworms, and we know how to control Box Tree Moth.
For those of you who are regular plant health care customers the issue should be taken care of. If you have cut back on the number of treatments it may be an issue since Box Tree Moth produces 3 generations per year from spring until fall and if we only come out one or two times during the growing season we will likely miss some of the emergence.
Feel free to contact us if you have concerns about the Box Tree Moth but rest assured it is something that we know about and are addressing.
The Annual Return of the Grim Mulcher. How to mulch, and how not to.
The horticultural horrors commonly called “mulch volcanoes” and “tree moats” defy explanation. These abominable tree and shrub mulching practices can combine with other stress…
More about mulch...
Proper mulching is critical to tree and plant health. To the extent possible recycle fallen leaves back into the soil around the trees and maintain mulch around your trees to a radius of at least 3-5 feet. Keep mulch off trunks. Use a coarse textured mulch auch as single or double shredded hardwood mulch. Avoid triple shredded mulch. Aged arborist wood chips (https://getchipdrop.com/ ), mulched and composted leaves, pine bark, and pine straw are all good. Very finely ground mulches such as triple ground hardwood mulch are not beneficial and may inhibit moisture and oxygen exchange.
Scout Mulch Sale, and they will spread it for you!
My son Jason’s Scout Troop 107 does a mulch fundraiser every year. Not only is the mulch double shredded (good) but for an extra charge per bag they will spread it for you! It should be noted that they are on the west side of town so I am not certain how far they are willing to go. You can ask. The link for the mulch fundraiser is https://www.troop107.net/category/all-products .
If you are so inclined, you can enter that you would like the sale to be credited to Jason Rothhaas.
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Mulch summary: |
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Arborist wood chips Excellent |
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Pine straw Excellent |
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Single ground, coarsely shredded mulches Very good* |
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Double shredded mulches Good* |
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Triple shredded mulches*** Generally not recommended |
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Pine bark Good to very good |
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Cedar mulch Fair to good |
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Cypress mulch Varies** |
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Rubber mulch Never recommended |
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Stone mulch Not recommended**** |
*In general. Mulches with ground up pallets and treated lumber are not recommended.
**Stringy cypress mulch is good, others can become hydrophobic and are not good.
***Commonly become hydrophobic and hinder oxygen passage to the root system.
****may be OK for some plants such as junipers, yucca, mugo pine
A tour of the Arbor Doctor website
Did you know that the Arbor Doctor website is not your average company website? Yes, our website has all the information you would expect on a company website including links about all the services we provide on the home page but our website is so much more than that.
At the bottom of the home page you will find links to our blog page and our weather blog page. The About and Services menu item at the top page give you more information about our company and the services that we provide.
The weather page menu item takes you to a whole other section of our website with comprehensive weather information, past, current, and future, and hundreds of weather links including multiple webcams to view whether in many other areas, Including the South Pole station! Incidentally, did you know that the South Pole station only has 1 sunrise and 1 sunset per year?
The library link at the top of the home page takes you to two separate sections of links, Arbor Doctor Links and Plant Health Care links .
In total, we have over 1,000 links on our website, and we keep adding more! Obviously, with so many links, some occasionally go bad and need to be updated. If you find something that needs to be updated please let us know So that we can continue to make the Arbor Doctor the biggest and most comprehensive arboricultural and meteorological website anywhere.
Please see the following links for recent blog postings:
Listen to Arbor Doctor Ron Rothhaas on In The Garden With Ron Wilson, the Podcast
Spotting the Spot - Springtime Spotted Lanternfly Update
Risks From Trees - a short discussion
Chop Chop! Is that any way to trim trees?
Ohio Box Tree Moth Quarantine is Expanded
Why does every tree I plant in that site die? Maybe it’s Site Selection!
The fascinating complex life cycle of hemlock wooly adelgid (HWA), Adelges tsugae Annand
Box Tree Moth (BTM) Federal Quarantine Expanded
WSDA, USDA Announce Eradication of Northern Giant Hornet from the United States
Biochar Application - A Practical Guide for Improving and Constructing Soils for Urban Trees
Workouts for Trees
As I have been working on this newsletter, one of the many spring wind storms has been howling outside. We have had a lot of wind this spring and unfortunately some of it has been violent enough to cause damage. Violent winds are not good, but wind is.
Why? Wind means exercise for trees. Just as the human body needs movement and exercise in order not to atrophy and waste away, trees need that too. For a new tree, swaying induces the tree to form a stronger trunk and stronger roots, as well as stronger branches. This is why we no longer recommend rigidly staking trees.
The same is true for older trees. Trees grow in response to the forces that are applied to them. A tree growing in the open will form a stronger trunk and stronger root system than a tree growing in a dense forest, protected by other trees. When we carve out a new development in a forest we expose trees which have grown all their lives without being exposed to strong wind forces. Such trees have not developed physiologically to be standing on their own and are more susceptible to wind through.
When development and clearing of trees is combined with root damage, the effect is even worse. I have shared this with clients who work in the medical profession and they tell me, ‘of course, that's the same as the human body.’ I once shared this with a pastor and he responded that this would make a great sermon illustration.
Many of us would like to think that our lives would be all sunshine and puppy dogs but life is not like that. We face trials and tribulations, births and deaths, gains and losses. Some people seem more fortunate than others but all of us experience tribulation. When we go through such experiences we can cry out, ‘God, why?’ Too often, life just doesn't make sense.
I'm not going to pretend to make sense out of tragedy. Why would a young person die in a car accident or a drowning? Why would a woman have a miscarriage? Why would a person die in a random act of violence? I don't have the answer to any of that. I take comfort in the fact that the God that I trust in is omniscient and is able to see a much bigger picture than am I. I also know, and have personally experienced, that going through severe loss and severely painful experiences, when I walk through those valleys with God, allows me to become stronger over time.
When we carve out a new development in a forest, the trees that have been protected their entire lives are more vulnerable to wind throw. A few might fall but many others do not. The longer they grow in their new environment, the forces of wind they are now exposed to induce them to form stronger trunks and stronger roots and even change their form to accommodate their new growing situation. It seems like a terrible thing to suddenly be exposed to the winds and the storms but over time those winds and storms make the tree stronger.
Easter Sunday is coming soon, a sacred holy day for Christians. The days leading up to the first Easter were days filled with pain, torment, and the most horrendous circumstances imaginable but the Easter morning which followed brought resurrection, hope, and salvation. What seemed like a tragedy turned out to be the greatest story ever told.
Have a blessed Easter season and to my Jewish friends, a blessed Passover.
