disinfecting saws

C

carya

Location
phys.,Pa. mentaly,all over.
This is my first post so it will be interesting to see what the replys are like.I live in s.e. Pa. and have been climbing in this area for 17yrs.,over and over I see so many oaks in the red oak fam. dying or declining of the same (not exclusivly,of course)predominant three diseases,Endothia,botryospheria,and bisconiauxia.So much so i'm thinking i should just make up disclaimer cards to give customers.now my question is, aside from deadwooding to reduce infection courts,preventative anti-fungal inject.does anyone have any thoughts on disinfecting saws to help slow the transfer of these diseases?ANY thoughts or experiances on this would be great.
 
I attended a couple seminars on palms here in florida, where the presenters advocated sterilizing hand saws between trees, to prevent the spread of palm diseases. 25% solutions of either bleach/water, pinesol/water, or lysol/water were recommended with a 10 minute soak time.

According to one presenter, in some high end properties with particularly expensive Phoenix palm species in the landscape, pruning contracts are being spec'd to provide for a brand new handsaw to be used from tree to tree.

I don't know that this will be helpful where Oaks are concerned, since chainsaws would tend to be used along with hand saws for most pruning,crown cleaning and deadwood work.

According to the presentations I attended, there's really no satisfactory way to sterilize a chainsaw, which just makes sense.
 
yea disinfecting chainsaws would be pretty impracticle,what i was mainly wondering was how many folks really disinfect saws period,whether pole or hand.It all seems impracticle,who has time?But i was also wondering if anyone has had notable sucess/w anti-fungals as preventative treatments.i could research till the cows come home (and will) but curious as to real time exp.
 
Sterilizing saws in contact with palms (particularly Canary Island date palms) that may have the Fusarium disease is a good idea. Even if the palms are not symptomatic, folks do seem to be doing the sterilization.

The only North American temperate zone system for which sterilization has a strong consensus is with fireblight of pear, mountain ash (Sorbus), apple and other potential hosts. Some folks sterilize gear after pruning for oak wilt, but probably the deal with pruning is that the fresh cuts attract the insect vector of the disease, rather than the tools being s source of inoculum.

I think of botryosphaeria and biscogniauxia (maybe better known as hypoxylon) as being opportunists rather than strong primary pathogens. Reduce wounding, soil compaction, etc. and disease frequency should be reduced. Sanitation pruning can help with the former. Still, they do cause problems, but tool disinfection is not likely to be much help.
 
Sterilizing while working on palms really comes down to having either a spare blade, or a spare saw, so that one can be soaking while you're working on the next tree with the alternate saw. It's really not a time issue, as long as you have the redundancy in your gear to allow sterilization of the saw from the last tree, while you're using a sterilized saw on the next one.

Above and beyond protection against Fusarium, it also helps to set me apart from the "hold my beer while I trim this tree" crowd, so I advocate and demonstrate hand and pole saw sterilization. Now that Fusarium is starting to show up in Sabal palmetto, I think it's going to have to become a broader practice.
 
This discussion has come up many times over the years. What I've gathered is that a 10% bleach solution and the tools being soaked/immersed for at least 10 minutes is the most practical solution.

There are so many disease vectors to consider. the chances of a disease hitchhiking on pruning tools and being transmitted is so low...but, that doesn't mean that extra precautions shouldn't be taken.
 
I read a paper published by Bartlett researchers which had concluded that sterilizing tools didn't result in anything much more than a calm feeling in worried clients.
Has anyone else read a similar paper? I'm afraid that paper is somewhere in the stack of interesting stuff which I'll never find again if I tried, so I can't give a good reference.
 
I worked on a couple city jobs while I was in San Francisco that required sterilization between Palms. They even went so far as to have a consulting arborist watching over us. We had extra hand saws and soaked them in a PVC pipe filled with alcohol between Palms. We were not allowed to use chainsaws either, they are impossible to sterilize. I was also told you could use Lysol to sterilize your saw. Never sterilized a saw on anything other than a Palm though.
 
kevin the consensus is not so solid anymore--the bartlett paper referred above may have been on fireblight--researcher there said they tried hard to spread it with saws but "failed".
 
What, that's not factual enough?
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away from library now but recall hearing and have in notes Bruce F. say that quite pointedly they could not transmit fireblight via saws.

but maybe there are different strains, some less contagious?

and some hosts are more resistant?

precaution never hurt, and lysol is cheap.
 
well i found the conference notes but it does not refer to a publication; unpublished research as they say.

so it's anecdotal hearsay, as reliable as he source may be; dip or spray away; i often do. ;)
 
i've heard the same things, only "the study came out of the U of Oregon" but could never find a thing about it. "anecdotal hearsay" sounds about right to me. why can't ISA's TREEFUND put together some kind of study and update us on the probability of tools vectoring pathogens.
 
This morning I went searching for publications on disinfecting handsaws for landscape tree pruning and didn't find anything. When you look for articles such as this you're going to run into articles focused on food crops (potato, apricot, etc) because they're a more important crop as far as economics are concerned. There are plenty of articles studying crop diseases by disinfecting pruning tools. The few that I saw this morning included controlling gummosis on Apricot (is caused by the fungus Eutypa armeniacae), Cytosporina infection of Apricot, and bacterial diseases of potato. The main control mechanism for all these diseases is sanitation, whether it be cleaning containers, using clean potting mix, or sanitizing pruning and planting tools.

The take home message is that most fungi, bacteria, nematodes, viruses, etc. are transmitted in similar ways, respectively. So one you know one system you can *usually* treat them similarly.

I will admit though, that it would be nice to have some data on landscape tree pruning.
 
[ QUOTE ]
why can't ISA's TREEFUND put together some kind of study and update us on the probability of tools vectoring pathogens.

[/ QUOTE ]1. the tree fund is not isa's; it's wider than that. 2. maybe because no one has proposed it! something a midwestern arboretum might take on eh?
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[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
why can't ISA's TREEFUND put together some kind of study and update us on the probability of tools vectoring pathogens.

[/ QUOTE ]1. the tree fund is not isa's; it's wider than that. 2. maybe because no one has proposed it! something a midwestern arboretum might take on eh?
cool.gif


[/ QUOTE ]

1.) Right, TREE Fund raises money and then researchers write to TREE Fund get awarded grants, fellowships, etc. to do projects

2.) What kind of sucker would want to do work like that?
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We were instructed by Sask. Environment to use Methyl Hydrate, mixture of bleach or straight rubbling alcohol to sterilize our saws. The DED regs REQUIRE saws be sterilized between pruning elm trees.

The Tree Fund was supposed to allocate money for research, WHAT changed Guy?
 
[ QUOTE ]
The Tree Fund was supposed to allocate money for research, WHAT changed Guy?

[/ QUOTE ]Nothing; that's what it does.

Basis? Point?

What kind of sucker indeed? as always the amount of variables makes sample and methods leading to broadly useful conclusions very difficult to reach.
 
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