My articles page is the place where I have written about most aspects of arboriculture in Calgary. Everything in an arborists' trade, from tree care, trimming and pruning, arbor care, and even being a tree doctor. There are over 150 separate tree resource articles arranged alphabetically. Whether it's, "a mindset for healthy trees" all the way through to "yellow leaves", most of the important aspects of Calgary tree care are included. Have a look, prairie hardy fruit trees, selecting evergreens, tons on planting and pruning, please enjoy this free resource.

If you'd like to take a deeper dive into the internal workings of trees, check out my Botany Talks.

Quotes

I am not so much a commercial Arborist as an Artist who works with Trees and shrubs.

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Phomopsis Canker of Russian Olive

Every Tree gets something; the Russian Olive's main pathogen here is Phomopsis, a fungal canker-forming disease.

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Old Hacked Apple Trees -- Pruning a Tangle

This is a very different condition than I described in Toba Hawthorn, Pruning a Tangle. This is man-made, usually out of ignorance, and is a serious attack on its system. Thankfully less common than it used to be, it is still out there. It is a lack of thinking and knowledge, knowledge that I speak of in Botany 1, the Whole Tree.
What happens is that a decision to shorten, to top the Tree at a certain height is made. The lower you go, the more leaf mass you remove. On crab apples, if you go low enough, so that your cuts are 3 inches in diameter, you will effectively have removed most of the leaf-bearing branches. You will have removed most of the leaves. For a being that feeds itself with its leaves, this is an emergency. The Tree's reaction will be immediate, to grow as many new shoots as possible to replace the lost leaf mass. The other major damage is inside the trunks, unseen; a large percentage of healthy trunk tissue has been used up to defend the Tree's inner system from the air.
See An Arborist Thinks on Compartmentalization.

In the year following this attack, the cut ends of the trunks will begin to look like brooms, with dozens of new shoots working hard to feed the starving Tree. The best thing is to leave it alone for a few years. This will do two things: allow the Tree to stabilize after the emergency and allow the dominant shoots to assert themselves. Once the Tree has recovered and is showing major dominant shoot growth, we could now think of pruning, thinning the tangle.

I use a system where I keep as many of the dominant shoots as possible. Most times this requires selecting the strongest two or three and removing the others. I also thin most of the little guys, especially those who grow back into the Tree or into other sections of the Tree. When this thinning work is completed the Tree won't look much different from before the initial hard pruning, with one huge exception; its life span has been reduced, due to the loss of healthy interior trunk space. Fortunately this situation is in decline. As people educate themselves more about Trees, and wives take away dangerous toys from their husbands, Trees will be allowed to flourish.

Ash Leaf-Cone Roller


The Ash leaf-cone roller is one of many of our crawling and flying visitors who stop by, usually for lunch, and then move on, leaving little damage behind. These guys are newcomers here and have been around since the end of the 90s.

The adult females lay their eggs on the newly forming leaves. They hatch and the tiny larvae feed inside the leaves. Later they migrate to new leaves using long threads. It is in their last stage that they roll the leaf and prepare to pupate. Inside they spin a cocoon and after completing their last stage the adult moths emerge. They are small moths with a wing span of just over a centimetre in width.

The Ash leaf-cone roller causes no harm to the host Trees. The trace of their passing is cosmetic only and should not cause alarm.

Why not spray to control this insect? Insecticide spraying is just not good for the world. Many times other beneficial insects are destroyed along with the targeted species, which causes greater overall environmental harm than the slight Tree damage. Also, protected inside their cones the larvae are pretty much spray proof. Many times after the adult moth flies away, the cocoon will eventually blow away and the leaves unfurl.

There are rare cases when spraying still seems to be the right answer. A heavy outbreak of yellow-headed saw fly is one, when it comes down to either spray or lose the Tree.

Diplodia Gall of Poplar

The fungus that causes this disease is common throughout the west. Most native and hybrid poplars are susceptible, including the Aspen, Balsam poplar, Brooks hybrids and others. It is first seen as small knobby, bumpy growths on twigs and small branches. Infections on larger branches and trunks display rough bark and swollen areas with dark black fissures in the bark. The fungus can attack any size of branch or trunk. Watering to increase Tree vigor and pruning to reduce the population are the remedies.

Why KRL?

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