To Mulch, or not to Mulch?

[nepia]

Just that one tree is a fantastic advertisement for you and your work - well done; what a beauty.

[David Humphries]

Just that one tree is a fantastic advertisement for you and your work - well done; what a beauty.

 

 

 

Ta very mu(l)ch

 

 

 

 

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[armybloke]

One little addition to this thread if I may I have a small crab apple (Malus sp) in my garden. It looked like it was about to keel over last year. Attended the AA Conf in Manc and a speaker (who's name evades me right now ) suggested a sugar:water mix and a mulch to invigorate the roots and improve growth. With nothing to lose I tried it. I have to say that this has worked a treat. Admittedly it is only on a small scale but the results are quite astounding. If I can find before and after pictures I shall post them on here for you to approve of, or otherwise. I advised a work colleague to do the same on an ailing Prunus sp and his tree has similar results. I realise bags of sugar may cost a few bob but in the grand scheme of all your costs it has to be worth a go? (rhetorically speaking)

 

A personal well done on your efforts Monkey-D , very impressed, and the knowledge shared on here by all has already been passed on to a 'horty business' to try some of your tricks of the trade on garden trees. I shall keep you posted. Thank you

[David Humphries]

Attended the AA Conf in Manc and a speaker (who's name evades me right now ) suggested a sugar:water mix and a mulch to invigorate the roots and improve growth. :

 

Glynn Percival I'd imagine ?

 

Weirdly, I was literally just talking to him on the phone, purely a wrong number as I was trying to speak to someone else at Bartlets & got him instead.

 

 

I would be very keen to see before & after shots of your Malus.

 

Cheers Marco

 

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[armybloke]

Glynn Percival I'd imagine ?

 

Weirdly, I was literally just talking to him on the phone, purely a wrong number as I was trying to speak to someone else at Bartlets & got him instead.

 

 

I would be very keen to see before & after shots of your Malus.

 

Cheers Marco

 

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Yep Glynn is the man.

 

I found a picture from June 2009 in my pile of pictures. Not a very good one because the camera was trained on elsewhere (so I have trimmed it) but you can see the sparse growth behind my bird feeder (which is dead and it is 'planted' post some woodland mgmt job but looks au naturel for my birds). Pics 2 onwards is the tree now. Healthy, flower buds just forming and breaking, lots of leaf cover (probably 50% more), will have some fruit too and the extension growth is very good. All from a sugar solution and a bit of leaf mould.

[David Humphries]

..................Oh dear !!!

 

 

 

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[Le Sanglier]

Ah that brings up something that has been bothering me, most tree surgeon's woodchip piles will contain the remains of diseased trees, after all that is often what we are called out to fell.

I recently dug a pond in my garden, planted some shrubs, chipped it up and hey presto! a month later a forest of, well, honey coloured fungi.

Could it be a very real danger that we are spreading pathogens (if thats the right word)

Sorry if this is covered earlier in the thread, I will go back and look now.

[Fungus]

..................Oh dear !!!

 

David,

Judged from the picture, this looks like the saprotrophic Armillaria lutea (= A. bulbosa), a Honey Fungus using the downside of woodchips to spread/travel and decomposes cellulose to feed its rhizomorphs, that "dive under" once the tree base is reached and then start to white rot the heartwood of the tree from within without entering living tissue, which is shielded off by melanine plaques to prevent the tree to react.

Edited November 15, 2011 by Fungus

[David Humphries]

David,

Judged from the picture, this looks like the saprotrophic Armillaria lutea (= A. bulbosa), a Honey Fungus using the downside of woodchips to spread/travel and decomposes cellulose to feed its rhizomorphs, that "dive under" once the tree base is reached and then start to white rot the heartwood of the tree from within without entering living tissue, which is shielded off by melanine plaques to prevent the tree to react.

 

A closer look Gerrit.

 

What I find of interest here is that I've been watching this tree (30m from my office window) and this is the very first time pre or since the mulch that Armillaria has turned up.

 

 

 

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[Fungus]

What I find of interest here is that I've been watching this tree (30m from my office window) and this is the very first time pre or since the mulch that Armillaria has turned up.

 

David,

With a well developed whitish ring with yellow scales at the lower side once the cap has opened up, this could also be the necrotrophic parasitic Armillaria mellea s.s. Without traces of a ring or "veil" it would probably be the saprotrophic A. lutea.