Totteridge yew

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

I wonder around what really is the most benefit to ailing trees in terms of what 'we' decided to use & do for them.

Particularly ones where we have intervened and (more often than not) not done any pre, during and post soil sampling.

How can we be sure that soils are impoverished for certain nutrients and that what we add 'fixes' the deficiencies.

 

I recall looking and talking around one of the vet (1000 year old) oaks at Windsor a few years ago where Casper & Bill retold how a two/three year drought had severely depleted the energy reserves of the tree to the point where it wasn't producing enough photosynthetic material to sustain itself that year.

 

Casper mulched it & near drowned it with a bowser full of water which appeared to do the job.

 

These images below are from a couple of years on from when he watered it (sadly no shots of it ailing)

 

Perhaps we just don't do the basics enough and try and science up the issues.

 

Who knows whether the added NPK will have helped the yew or not, or whether it was just the mulch & water.

Guess we'll never know.

 

 

 

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well, this is relatively easy to answer, water is the base ingredient of all life, before all other considerations we all must have hydration, so soil profile and organic content is the obvious first line of approach. next we have to consider the basic elements available, none of which are available even if present if not in soluble form and no water available to make a soluble!

 

I think that very few scenarios in tree health issues cannot be rectified by an application of adequate water, a dressing of slow release NPK such as blood fish and bone with a mulch dressing above that.

 

Tree health is inherently linked to its growing conditions, the better the conditions (adding light to all the above) the more robust health is.

 

Stress can be easily avoided for minimal outlay, I find it most remarkable that it is still widely ignored in practice, with chainsaws the preferred administrative process!

[swinny]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 29, 2013 by swinny

[David Humphries]

Thanks Chris, good to see it again.

 

A special tree

 

 

 

 

 

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