Pruning spring bleeders

[Lee Winger]

Birch ETC is it detrimental to the trees health or not? personally and from experience I don't think it is, please discus..............

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

I would need to confirm but im sure shigo said it did not prove to be detrimental, but still we avoid it, in days gone by birch sap was tapped for a health tonic, and is being revived.

[swinny]

isn't it the same for sycamore's aswell? are there any others to be aware of? (excuse my lack of knowledge)

[Johny Walker]

my uncle used it for making wine/rocket fuel ,it was good stuff

[Lee Winger]

my uncle used it for making wine/rocket fuel ,it was good stuff

 

Boil it down and you can make a type of birch syrup.............

[Lee Winger]

isn't it the same for sycamore's aswell? are there any others to be aware of? (excuse my lack of knowledge)

 

Walnut..........

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

loads of trees will bleed, hornbeam is another

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

I cant see that i is not if only a little draining after all the sap contains mobolised sugars and other goodies so having these effectivley flushing out of cuts must be a loss for the tree.

 

However i think as long as we avoid doing the prune on a bright sunny spring day it wont be so bad, it tends to stop after 24-48 hours so doing it while the spring weather is on a downturn should be all we need to do in order to do what is fair.

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

on the other hand, the flushing might be percieved in a posative light as it could help stop the ingress of fungi spores and as the tree closes the tyloses minimise any subsequent decay possibilities? theres a thought

[Graham]

my uncle used it for making wine/rocket fuel ,it was good stuff

 

Did a job long time ago for a homebrewer. We sank a bottle of his birch wine with breakfast taking down his Lombardy. Amazing what confidence it gives topping and lowering out big sections