Assessing the Health of Your Trees

David Epstein: Welcome to this edition of Growing Wisdom, I am here with Dave Ropes, he is my buddy here, my Tree Specialist from Tree Specialists, right? Dave Ropes: Right. David Epstein: And I brought you in because I have this Maple tree that I absolutely love. I think there might be a problems, we want to assess this tree. Dave Ropes: Well, first we will do is stand back and look at the overall tree and try to get an idea of its overall health and vigor. You could see that the bottom portion is very thick and full of still green but there is some coloration up at the top that is advanced and there is some minor twig dieback and so that does tell us there is a little something going on with this tree. David Epstein: What else we want to look for? Dave Ropes: Well, we are going to get closer to the tree and look at the stem and the branches and then we are going to look at the base of the tree. David Epstein: Great. Dave Ropes: So here, I am going to pull back some of the leaves and organic matter just to see if there is any decay. There is evidence of a rotten mushroom right here which may been from a saprophyte plugged in to the tree, decaying it. And also this bark pulling away, so there is something going on down here. I am thinking probably Armillaria, shoestring root rot which is very common particularly to wooded settings like this, and by itself, it does not mean that it is not the death knell for the tree. But it is an indication of tree stress and so I would definitely recommend some soil testing and amendments, mineral amendments do not need to be applied on an annual basis, it is pretty a one time application. I have decided to take a sample out of your lawn area, get back from the tree’s root system a little bit. I like to take the sample just above where I am finding that orange sand. The results are less likely to be influenced by any surface amendments you might be using on your lawn. David Epstein: So you will send this out to the lab? Dave Ropes: Right. David Epstein: And then I will get back what? Dave Ropes: You will get back a report. It will have information about the percentage of sand, silt and clay, the percentage of organic matter and then a micro and macro nutrient assay. David Epstein: We have assessed the soil, the bark, we have looked the canopy, we have looked at the branch structure and we could also even send leaves, you are saying we could do a tissue sample in the leaves as well, right? Dave Ropes: Yes, in some cases that gives you valuable information about what is lacking in the plant. David Epstein: So, it is really just a complete holistic approach to – from the ground all the way up. Dave Ropes: That is right. David Epstein: Thank you very much. Hope this was helpful, comeback every week for all of our videos here at www.GrowingWisdom.com.