Ash borer question

notjustair

Well-known Member
I don't get this.

I am needing 40 stumps for a bench project so I headed up to the hilltop timber and cut some good straight ash trees. I've got nothing but time with this rain, anyway. These trees have stumps in the neighborhood of two feet in diameter. I was in an area of only ash trees but it is mixed timer in most areas. Not ONE of those trees has a hole from an ash borer. Not one.

These are the same kind of ash trees that are in the barnyard. They all have holes and I have started losing some. We are talking right up the hill in the same section - a quarter mile maybe. What gives?
 
Common names can be confusing but what I know as mountain ash is not of the ash family. If the tree you are referring to produces small red fruit it is Sorbus americana, of the rose family.
 
(quoted from post at 23:07:51 05/25/16) I don't get this.

I am needing 40 stumps for a bench project so I headed up to the hilltop timber and cut some good straight ash trees. I've got nothing but time with this rain, anyway. These trees have stumps in the neighborhood of two feet in diameter. I was in an area of only ash trees but it is mixed timer in most areas. Not ONE of those trees has a hole from an ash borer. Not one.

These are the same kind of ash trees that are in the barnyard. They all have holes and I have started losing some. We are talking right up the hill in the same section - a quarter mile maybe. What gives?

Ash trees are dying around here like elms died 50 years ago. Most people figured they would never see a live elm again. Now it's common for find elm trees 12" plus diameter. A few old timer elm here and there date prior to the 1960's.
 
All of your trees will eventually die back. This is different than Dutch Elm Disease. The borer is a very active creature and can move from place to place easily. No such thing as isolation. I have been on a boat in the middle of Grand Traverse Bay and seen an ash borer floating on the water, no doubt hoping to make shore in Wisconsin. I have a 20 acre woodlot with hundreds of dead ash in it. The largest surviving tree is about 6-7" caliper, but it is partially infested as the top is dying. There is SOME hope. The ash trees do not die. Only the tops are killed and a ring of vigorous suckers come up all around the dead trunk. In my woodlot some of these suckers have now reached 8-10' tall. When they get much larger the borer will kill them back, but they will sucker again...eventually the borer is going to lose this battle as the trees will adapt.
 
I heard yesterday that 24 states have released millions of miniature wasps that feed on the larvae of the EAB. I wonder what they will eat when they run out of EAB larvae. Sorry for the cynicism, but the wasps are or will be considered an invasive species.
 
I heard yesterday that 24 states have released millions of miniature wasps that feed on the larvae of the EAB. I wonder what they will eat when they run out of EAB.
Sorry for the cynicism.
 
I timbered all of my big ones once they started to die. There is plenty of small ones for firewood. I wanted to see them be used instead of burnt up. I had ash trees up to 40" and about 90 feet tall here in the river flats. The neighbor lady wants me to cut the dead ones off her to clean up the woods a bit, and since I have thousands of them myself, I don't usually go over there unless the water on mine is higher than it is on hers. She still has a good number of 36" + ash trees standing that have been dead for 4-6 years. Root balls are all rotted off, but trunkS are still hard as a rock and still standing. They get bad pretty quick once they lay on the ground for a bit.

Ross
 

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