oldgustav

Planted 4,000 ash whips in 2007 to 2010 as part of a new native species woodland in west Wales. Up until 2015 they were doing well. Now 3,950 are dead or seriously unwell. It's very depressing

Thanks to all for great advice and comments. I think I may need to get someone in to guide me on this.

Thanks very much for the advice. Yes, very windy here. I'm nervous about thinning because our site/farm was treeless until we started planting in 2007 and I have become very attached to them. We now have 20,000 trees - mostly as belts but all connected. Here's a link to a photo taken last October. It's the trees in the foreground that we planted first that need thinning. Should I leave this until winter - and since I appear to have a lot of ash die back, perhaps I should start with them

Planted a shelter belt of 4,000 trees (mostly ash, alder, sycamore and lodgepole pine), in 2007 in west Wales. Spaced at 1.5 - 2m we have a substantial canopy over much of the belt. This year I've noticed that the lower branches under the canopy are without leaves. It's all a bit bare and empty. Should I be thinning to let in more light? The trees are for shelter, habitat and amenity. Thanks!

Thanks Coppiceer. Great advice. When you say remove the guards begin to crowd the space inside because of rot - this is my worry with the grasses inside the tubes. But I think I'll just have to attend to the worst cases and get as many as I can done. It's a bit like painting the Forth Bridge...

But it does look like this - and yet your document says it is not found in the British Isles...

No, nothing like this. The dusty covering was across the entire area of the underside of the leaves.

We planted a few thousand alders last year and in 2007/8. Late this summer I noticed that quite a few had a rust coloured powdery fungus on the underside of the leaves and that the affected trees were losing their leaves. Is there a name for this fungus? Will it affect the trees growth? Will it return next year and/or is there anything I can do about it? Thanks for help.

Thanks to everyone for all your replies and advice. Kerb granules sound like a good idea but will cost over £1,000 to do this lot. And, because the grasses have done so well in the tubes I won't be able to drop the granules into the tubes - except for the one we have manually weeded. I think we will get one pack of kerb granules in to treat the worst cases and see how they do. For the record, we planted 15,000 trees through the BWFW scheme. The native species all went in last December/January. in 2007 we planted about 4,000 trees through WGS. The alder and ash have done well - in some cases they are up to 10-12ft. There is however one area where the trees just haven't got going - they are still 2-3ft and struggling. We don't have rabbits around here but we do have voles. The voles appear to under-mine the trees (they are not eating the bark because the the trees are tubed). I haven't weeded since 2009 and where they are doing poorly there is a lot of plantain. Could this explain the trees poor growth? Thanks again for all comments and suggestions. This is really helpful.

Hi Goaty. Thanks for your reply. Yes, the sweating of the vegetation in the tube is apparent. Our worry is that this will rot the young trees. Some, mostly hornbeam have been swamped by the grasses in the tubes (but they may have been killed by the hard winter). It does seem to be mostly grasses and some buttercup, which tend to go powdery. Dropping a herbicide granule inside the tube sounds good. Can you point me towards some?

Thanks for your reply. All the trees are fenced off from stock is that's what you mean. I'm not familiar with mechanical spraying or beating up. Please can you explain? If this perhaps what's done with industrial-scale softwood plantings?

Last January we planted about 15,000 whips into grassland on our little farm in west Wales. All the whips were planted with 60cm tubes and canes - and then we sprayed out about 30cm all round in April. Despite a cold start, our exposed site and a dry spring/summer, most of the new trees have done well in their first season. The only problem we have is that most of the trees are inundated with weeds/grasses that have grown up through the tubes. We have manually 'weeded' a few hundred - pulling the grassed out of the tubes and splaying out - but with just the two of us here we're never going to get around all of them. Should we be worried by this prolific weed growth inside the tubes (we can't be the only people to have had this problem) or can we just let nature take its course and leave the trees to it? We will be spraying again in the spring but the spray will not get to the tightly packed weed growth inside the tubes.