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Dont shoot the messenger. I didnt write O'Hara's article. I was wondering how prevalent the anti-natural target pruning crowd was. Never come across an article like it before.
 
In all fairness, he makes some valid points about the need for more empirical and repeatable, data intensive studies. Really long term ones require a new generation of interested people. I've never considered pruning for clearwood production, have no interest in dissecting trees, and prune outside the branch collar. I confess that I haven't felt the need to spend a lot of time weighing the scientific evidence for it... I just don't like the looks of some of the flush cuts I've seen that were very old. Many of them were places where I had to shine a flashlight to look for nasty tempered raccoons. So, I assume that Shigo knew what he was talking about and run with it. Not scientific, at all. On the other hand, the guy never inspired any form of hero worship in me, and I think there's a ton of people out there with his gift for trying to educate people in the industry. In fact, some of them are on here. They actually inspire me more than Shigo ever did, truth be known.

I enjoyed reading it, bro... I don't really think anyone will come after you with pitchforks and a sack of chicken feathers. Well, not for posting the article, anyway. It would probably be for... uh... ok, we'll not go there. ;)
 
And we've also seen raccoon habitat created by "collar cuts" on big limbs...but OHara is right; harvesting clearwood is one objective, maintaining tree health is quite another. I like Kevin's reply about the false dichotomy/false choice/"fool's choice" logical fallacy at the heart of the stub cut vs. flush cut conundra. It's not either/or; it's either/or/or/or...

If OHara advocated a *slight* nicking of the collar in some cases, I would not argue, as light wounding can trigger tissue growth. The edge of the collar is a moving target anyway.

I'm a fan of the Hamburg method, but the quality of the data was dissed by parties here in peer review. To me, images are good data. Glad it still got published. And JD's right: "There's far too much talk and policy regarding attacking fungal pathogens, removing trees with conks/brackets...". At the ASCA conference and elsewhere, TRAQ training focuses on 'interior decay' as inevitable 'defects' that we can predict the spread of, as if CODIT never happened. Some corporations have an abysmal risk tolerance and little incorporation of biology in their business. That's up to them, but their approach should not be Standard.

On the other end of the ecospectrum, in the UK, the Boddy/Rayner work is elevated to religious levels. The line between crown reduction and "ruining" aka near-monolithing is blurred as they merrily make 6"+ cuts on stems, and carve coronets. When it's pointed out that coevolution of fungi with trees does not prove codependence, and so there is no reason for trees in general to be excessively wounded to create habitat for "symbiotic" fungi, the tar starts boiling and the feathers fly, and that pitchfork is sharp!

Their tar is as nasty as the brand brewed here when the usefulness of decay/defects as the focus in risk assessment and "heading cuts" as guidelines for pruning is examined. Worse yet, anyone who constructively questions anything in the A300 corporate standard gets slammed as an "egoist". Reasoning closely about tree-centered tree care is a high-risk activity on either continent.
 
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Great reply, and it is a shame that more debate is discouraged here. :cry:

I can tell all that far more folks, both here on the Buzz and tree geeks in my neck of the woods, have GREATLY increased the use of and discussion about employing reduction cuts rather than large diameter removal cuts. There's also an improved trend of new tree structural pruning but the nursery growers havent followed suit to any great extent here.
 
Your neck of the woods reaches above a lot of others.
Yes any movement away from amputation and mutilation is gratifying, but because the big corporations will not change, the progress seems glacial. Maybe it's the ice outside I'm seeing...
 
guymayor said:
And we've also seen raccoon habitat created by "collar cuts" on big limbs...
Click to expand...

That's certainly fair enough... and OHara's article certainly noted that those big limb cuts pretty much were going to be a problem with whatever cut you choose. In a perfect world, everyone who calls me would do it before a limb with the potential to be a real problem gets large. I really don't like whacking huge limbs off of otherwise healthy trees, because when I see a huge wound on a tree that has healed well... I take note of it. I hardly notice the huge wounds that are 'coon habitat, because they're so common.

I'd like to take a more proactive approach to tree care, suggesting early pruning for trees that are clearly going to be a problem in coming years. In this limited market, that approach makes the villagers very restless. The idea of spending five minutes of their time, let alone money, on a tree that isn't about to fall on their house is anathema, so I end up taking a lot of large limbs off that should never have been allowed to get that large.

The cut used, and that other constant debate, about painting the wounds, continue to be the most common questions I get asked when I have to make large cuts.
 
My bad... I was lumping all wound treatment products into the same can. By "painting" the wounds, I was speaking of them all.
Another subject that gets the tar kettles warming up.
 
But question remains if the Trich. paints are all created equal and where, when, and on what species it MAY be a viable option. I know very little about the subject really.
 
My wife and I garden extensively, and she always wanted fruit trees, so over the last few years we have planted a lot of them on both properties. I found a lot of information both pro and con regarding the subject... the pro information was usually specific to certain species, and always about large cuts. I wish that I was better equipped to decide when and where it might help. I probably need to do a lot more research on it, or hope that @KTSmith and @guymayor weigh in on the subject and save me a lot of work.

We have terrible drinking water here... it's a toxic concoction that's almost as bad as the stuff I use to kill tree stumps. One of the locals asked me, the other day, how do you tell if there's e. coli in the drinking water... I said, "It will taste like shit." It's that bad attitude of mine... answers like that... that lead people to believe that I take nothing seriously, or that I don't like so-and-so, or that I'd rather be drinking beer. Nothing could be further from the truth. I'm passionate about lots of things... unfortunately, one of them is being a smartass. Probably detrimental to the cause. There are lots of people on here whose opinion I respect far more than my own, when it comes to tree care. There are lots of forums out there.. I'm on quite a few of them. But, this is the first place I stop when I want the good info... the juicy, meat of the matter. I'd discuss this further, but I think there's a couple of beers in the fridge.
 
Trichoderma products could very much end up being like mycchorizae ones. You need to find a brand(s) that is consistently viable and a place selling it where it hasnt been in the warehouse gathering dust. I'm guessing it would need to be used fairly quickly and I'm guessing on specific trees or situations.
 
Thanks MrTree, I hadn't noticed that that APS volume had come out. I knew it had been in process. Dr. Samuels is a tip-top mycologist to be sure. My doctoral work was on the Hypocreales in a broad sense (the Clavicipitaceae for me, to be specific) so I had to come to grips with his stuff back then. I'll get that from the USDA Ag Library and check it out. Frances Schwarze has been quite engaged with Trichoderma in recent years. I still stand by my take on the mode of action, although history may have passed me by on that one:
https://www.researchgate.net/public...ple_wounds_treated_with_Trichoderma_harzianum . I suspect that the APS volume looks more at what we used to call "suppressive soils" rather than control of wood decay in living trees...but I will check it out.
 
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