How to girdle & kill a tree?
pickler_gardener
15 years ago
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jean001
15 years agopickler_gardener
15 years agoRelated Discussions
Does girdling kill berry plants?
Comments (3)My outside of the blade housing on my riding lawnmower made a good mess of one of my Chester blackberry canes last fall. If I had to guess, I'd say it effectivly girdled 150 degrees of that 1 cane. But, now, you'd never know by looking at the top of the cane. You might be OK? at least on the Blackberry? I'd at least leave it up until you see signs of a problem. What do you have to loose? -Glenn...See MoreSpruce Tree Girdled
Comments (8)Have hope--the tree could bridge a cut so narrow. Many years ago I girdled a black cherry tree in an attempt to kill it (it was crowding another tree). I did a cut maybe exactly like what the kids did--I took a regular carpenters saw and made a cut all around the tree--very much deep enough to sever the cambium layer. The tree lived. I inspected it carefully afterwards and the cambium was cut, but it bridged the gap. Now that was a black cherry tree, not a spruce. But when a tree is girdled, both the top and the part under the cut live for a time. Roots can still supply moisture to the top, and the top can still produce the materials for growth, but they just can't send them back to the roots, which is done through the inner bark. But the roots have materials stored, so the effect of the severing of the inner bark is not to have the roots--and the part of the trunk below the cut to die immediately. There is still growth prtential. So what happened with my cherry tree is there was enough growth potential in the two parts of the tree for long enough for the growth of the cambium--either upward from below the cut, or downward from above the cut, or both, to make a joining. That cherry tree was very young--only about 12 feet tall--and very fast growing. Your spruce is older. What I would do is make sure it has plenty of water and hope for the best. --Spruce...See MoreRoot girdling and playing tree doctor
Comments (16)james, Roughly where are you? Zone 10 should not have cold enough winter temps to worry about damaging the root system. As for what you did, I don't like the tar ideal at all. The tree will have to grow new roots, and those start from the pruned end of of the cut roots. Putting tar on these could very well interfer with that process, not to mention hold moisture that would favor infection with various bacteria and fungi from the soil. No, I don't like it AT ALL. Beyond that, some shading from direct sun would likely be very beneficial. Would certainly reduce water stress while new roots generate. Keeping the soil cool and moist but not wet would be beneficial as Im sure you know. Judging from the pic, that probable won't be an issue. As for Acer gresium, they actually seem to be more forgiving to girdling. I have seen where trees were kept in those tree band pots for too long and been potted up. Those roots had actually grafted on top of the original flare, and the tree was non the worse for the experience. I assume since the bark is so thin and sheds annually, that this facilitates the grafting. If you look online at mature Paperbarks, I don't believe you will find many with indications of bark inclusions at branch points. I know I don't remember seeing any despite some tight angles. That also would seem to suggest that they self graft freely. Arktrees...See MoreHow to kill cherry tree suckers without killing tree?
Comments (2)Unless the parent tree was own root the sucker yours came from is the sweet cherry rootstock and not the named cultivar that was presumably grafted onto it. Either the rootstock seedling happens to be a yellow cherry as well or the whole parent tree, including the roots was the yellow cultivar. Sweet cherry is actually a weed species in this region and suckers to form groves on local wooded hillsides, where it even overtakes and overtops the native red alder trees often present in quantity on the same sites. It also crosses with the much less exuberant, native bitter cherry to produce a nearly fruitless, intermediate hybrid called Puget cherry. Some ~tall examples of the latter are conspicuous when in bloom, on undeveloped land between I-5 and Lakeside School (near Seattle). It is usual to have problems with suckering and bony surface roots with plantings of sweet cherries - perhaps all the more so when these are present as rootstocks for Japanese flowering cherries. All you can do is uncover the bases of the suckers and saw them away. If there are horizontal runners that lead back to the original planting follow these back to the parent tree and saw them off at their points of origin, pull the rest up. You don't, of course want to saw off normal roots of the parent tree - just the ones that are suckering runners like aspen trees and running species of bamboos produce. This post was edited by bboy on Sat, Mar 15, 14 at 17:05...See Morejean001
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