I have got a large weeping willow in the corner of my garden. Toward the ends of last year it started looking a bit peaky. With half of it going brown before the end of the season. This year its mostly bare, with a few bits of green. Much of the wood feels very dry and brittle.
formatting link
would be quite tricky to take down a piece at a time, however relatively straight forward to fell in one hit.
Anyone think there is a chance of it perking up before I get all medieval over its trunk with a chain saw?
I've taken down a couple of pear trees piece by piece and with a decent ladder, saw and a couple of pieces of rope you should be able to take it down piecemeal
Take the rope from above where you're sawing across to one of the other boughs at about the same height. Before you cut through your branch, take note of where the cut part is likely to move. When it falls, it'll only fall so-far. If you're not sure of where it'll fall, attach another rope to the branch to fall to ground level, and when you've part sawed through, descend to floor level and use the rope to direct the fall.
On the other hand, your willow looks a damn sight taller than the pear trees, so maybe a tree surgeon would be the better idea.
I used a variation on this. Rope as you say, have a second person tensioning the rope stongly from a safe distance (out of the fall zone).
Cut the V-notch and saw most of the way though the other side but not quite. Retreat from the ladder, and with (if required) the second person's help, give a few good yanks on the rope. With a bit of help from resonance, the cut will fracture through and the limb is pretty guaranteed go in the direction you are pulling.
This does have the advantage that the branch is highly unlikely to fall where you don't want it (ie on the neighbours) and you aren't up the ladder when it goes.
But I'm too scared to do any of this on a tree > 3-4m high! ;->
Yup, well this is more like 12m tall and given how brittle some bits of it are, I am reluctant to stick ladders against bits of it. (I did about a month or so ago - to take off a few dead branches and see if that helped it recover any. However I stuck to the main trunk, rather than risk going too far out on a limb!)
There is one big bough that hovers above a neighbours garage - so I don't really want to take that off while over it. However the whole tree leans quite substantially into my garden in pretty much the direction it would need to come down - there is also plenty of landing space for it. So I am not too worried about cutting a notch on the front and then cutting from the back just above it to create a hinge. If there was any hint of the back cut closing then I would probably stop, wedge it, and call for help!
Can't really see much from the picture. You'd need to tell us what stresses the tree has been under. Is it in wet ground (what most willows like); dry ground; has the ground been compacted lately; has there been a drought; has someone gone mad with the strimmer and ring barked it (the fate of most of the town/park trees in Luton); has someone gone mad with 'selective weedkiller' underneath it; has anyone (your neighbour) dug his half of the roots away/drained its water supply/poisoned it? And, we just had a very cold winter which it may not have liked, of course.
If it is any of these bar the strimmer ringbarking, there is a good chance the tree will recover when the weather returns to normal. The first sign you should see that it is fighting back is when new shoots - epicormic growth - appear from the main stem and thicker branches. Often parks depts take this as a sign of a sick tree, but it is actually a sign of a recovering tree. I have seen several trees recover from similar leafless conditions, but I don't think I've seen it on a willow yet, though I have seen it on poplars. These, when allowed to, have gradually leafed back up fully over a couple of years.
If compaction is the problem, some tree experts - as recently shown with horse chestnut trees at Boxmoor, Hemel Hempstead - have developed a technique of blasting the ground with compressed air to break up the earth, and then adding missing nutrients back to the soil.
All this said, if you do some googling you will find various willow diseases you can check for:
formatting link
probably better to look for UK sources as many refs are US which has a much more varied climate range and probably some different diseases:
formatting link
would tend to hold off with any drastic hacking yet - esp as you say the tree would only fall into your garden and not do much damage if it did fall. I wouldn't ask your local council or the majority of 'tree surgeons': all chainsaw happy. Try a conservation group such as the tree council:
formatting link
for tips on any local experts you can trust to diagnose your tree problem properly if it fails to leaf up again. After all, it will take a long time to replace this tree with a similar one!
The tree looks terminal, probably weakened by something like anthracnose and then a fungus getting at the root. What you need to be aware of is how brittle the stem may have become from rot. If you're sure about the lean and the back hanging branch doesn't counterbalance it then okay. Is there scope for damage if it hits the ground and rolls? How about a fell line high in the tree just in case?
There are a few tutorials online about this but it needs to be about right, make the notch (sink) 45 degrees and reaching 25% into the diameter. Make absolutely sure the bottom cut of the sink does NOT over run the top cut, because this weakens the hinge. Also if this closes before the tree has momentum to snap the hinge the trunk may split and strike backward.Try to come in horizontal and only one kerf above the bottom cut of the sink. Be aware than if the grain is spiral or angled a cut above the hinge may look well away from the sink cut but in fact have no fibres inline and cleave straight to the sink leaving nothing to resist sideways movement.
It's the hinge that controls any sideways breakout away from the intended direction so leave enough. Sound wood is very strong in tension and weak in bending, which is why a felling hinge works.
formatting link
If there was any
Too late by then, wedges are fine for production work but one offs like this are better controlled with a rope.
We had two, both taken down -the larger of which about that size and over my garage. I took it down piecemeal, but despite that the trunk began leaning more and more towards my garage. I ended up having to prop it with a ladder, to get it to fall away from it.
Yours, if dead, sounds very dangerous - I would be inclined to get the experts in and make sure they are insured.
I would recommend a tree surgeon. Not only are they experts on whether the tree is recoverable, but I found the prices quite reasonable when I had a couple of trees removed and the stumps ground out about 12 years ago.
I agree. I had a 12-14m leylandii with loads of offshoot limbs and tons of foliage taken down for 200. That included keeping my choice of a few logs for the kids, choice to keep about 3-4m3 of chippings (good for the garden in a few years and great weed control in the meantime) and disposal of everything I didn't want.
If John has space to burn that tree, then DIY is obviously cheaper. If you factor in disposal where that means not burning it in your garden, it probably isn't such a great saving.
If it's down, then round here people would almost certainly take away as much wood as you had, and bring their own chainsaw. Might even be able to get a few quid. The hard bit is getting it down safely in the first place.
True - it wasn't a leylandii :) No one will burn that stuff for an indoor fire as it's liable to clag up the flue with s**te. Otherwise I'd be burning it next year in my fire!
Clay soil, level ground - quite wet in winter, dry in summer. Not near a stream or anything though.
Possibly - it backs on to the driveway of the farm next door, and they recently (last summer) block paved the drive... So its quite possible that the ground over some of its roots has been compacted or otherwise disturbed. The amount of water run off will also probably have changed. (The drive was laid with a loose aggregate previously - although probably well compacted.
Nope definitely no strimming. Not used any weed killer personally - although I don't know about the paving contractors thinking about it. Having said that, all the other foliage along that border seems ok.
Roots may have been affected - its only a metre or so from the boundary. Poisoned - probably unlikely.
True - although it did start looking poorly before autumn set in last year though - it lost its leaves sooner than a similar sized willow tree in the other neighbours garden. Also half of them turned rather redish brown before falling off.
I will keep a close watch then...
There is *some* green on it - mostly toward the top and right hand side in that (rather poor) photo.
formatting link
>
formatting link
> I would tend to hold off with any drastic hacking yet - esp as you say the
Most of it is leaning our way. There is one side of it that overhangs a garage though. The predominant wind direction however is from the west - which would tend to direct it into our garden again if it went.
Thanks for that - I will have a read through the links. I am reluctant to chop it down if it can be resuscitated since its a lovely mature tree, and as you say would take quite some time to replace.
I could burn it in the garden if needs be. Not sure what willow is like on an open fire. If its any good that would probably serve to save a £75 load of logs for the fire from the local woods.
>>> I would tend to hold off with any drastic hacking yet - esp as you say >> the
Very glad to hear you like the tree and want to give it time: nowadays, most people really don't think in 'tree timescales' and expect everything to be instant. They also forget that trees have immune systems and adaptive responses just as we do: it just takes them a bit longer than us!
It seems most likely to me that your tree is suffering from having had half of it's normal water supply cut off when next door did their drive. The contractors will probably have tried hard to compact the ground for the block paving too. If this is the case, your tree will probably be throwing its energy into making longer roots to find more water - which may include lifting some of their block paving back up, unless they really have removed major roots.
If they *have* removed major roots, your side of the tree may need propping, so I should, if you are on friendly terms, make some inquiries of the farmer, just what they did when they went past your tree. If they just ploughed through its roots with a bulldozer, and then compacted, your tree will undoubtedly be in the tree equivalent of 'shock'!
What has happened is that it has just woken up after a hard winter, and suddenly found half its roots not getting any water, so it is having to reduce its leaf area to balance the water supply until it can make more roots. This will probably mean you will get some dead branches, but the main structure of the tree should survive, with new, short, epicormic growth. Wait to see which ones are really dead before you trim any that are in dangerous positions (tie up any dead ones over the garage before you cut them): even the dead ones are useful to wildlife, if they are not dangerous, or too unsightly for you.
Note that, even if the tree does fall, it is unlikely to die unless it has a really serious disease. Willows and poplars are 'designed' for river sides where they are often undermined and fall over. When they fall they just take root along the old trunk and you end up with a line of trees instead of just one. Older ones become hollow and eventually fall and reroot along their length too. In this way, they can be very long lived even if their 'life' as a 'standard' tree seems relatively short. Take a walk through any old water meadow and you will see what I mean. (Incidentally, it is not just 'waterside' trees, that keep growing once they have fallen - it's the principle behind hedge laying after all. To actually kill a tree outright, is not an easy thing to do. It's mostly just conifers that die after they fall, and even some of these have drooping boughs that take root and spread that way.) Trees are usually felled for the convenience of people, rather than for any real problem of their own.
Its dead. Don't put a ladder against it as it may break.
Throw a rope over it and then back from the other side so it around the trunk and pull it over from a safe distance. If it wont fall with your weight do a partial cut and try again.
Mature trees should recover from dieback if this is the problem.
Couple of points on the farm roadway..... was it salted in January? and would the block layers have put down weedkiller? Pikey tarmac drives were always started with a dose of sodium chlorate.
I fear that many path layers might start in similar vein: though sodium chlorate is coming up for a ban, if not actually banned already - mind you, they say the best way of getting rid of any you still have, is to use it... 'Pikeys' might not be so conscientious these days though! At least the OP says the path sides don't look too dead, which is a good sign.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.