Trevanion
Greatest Of All Time
Been spending a few nights now dealing with the ash trees we have on the land that overhangs the road and telephone wires a little bit, I hadn't had any experience cutting dieback trees until now but it's been quite interesting as well as a bit depressing. We're dealing with them ourselves as a bit of pre-emptive action as the council has been going around marking trees with dieback and the giving people notices saying something along the lines of "You have two weeks to deal with the trees, if they are not dealt within that time we will cut them down and bill you for them at £500 per tree minimum" I'm not sure how true that actually is or not but I've heard it from a few people now that I trust. So, late nights when no-ones about, get the chainsaw out 
Even though there are some new shoots on the branches, once you've cut into the branch the majority of the timber inside is dead and rotten, it's fairly solid feeling but there is quite heavy spalting in some branches as though it had been on the ground for a long time and the fungus had got to it. I can now see why they say that the branches are very brittle and liable to snap onto the roads now, if these trees had rotten any further they definitely would've been rather dangerous overhanging the road and the telephone wires. Another thing was one of the more dead trees had what I could only really describe as diamond-shaped eruptions in places in the end grain a bit like a bad heart shake which I hadn't seen in a standing tree before. I should've taken photos but I didn't think to.
The tree branches over-hanging the wires came down in sections off a ladder for the most part without too much fuss, main trunks cut and dragged off the stump high up avoiding the fairly new wire fence with a rope and 4x4. Two trees we managed fell completely without pruning the branches off but once they hit the ground it was almost like a grenade had gone off with all the rotten sticks flying everywhere, never seen anything like it.
It's depressing, we've done 8 trees so far and there's a few more to go that aren't on the immediate road that also need dealing with really. Funnily enough, the only ash tree I can see that doesn't seem to have it and is pretty healthy at the moment is a tree that accidentally had a gallon or so of heating oil leak into the ground around it years ago and it was ill for a very long time but now it's definitely the healthiest tree here. I don't think there will be many ash trees left once it's run its course.
Even though there are some new shoots on the branches, once you've cut into the branch the majority of the timber inside is dead and rotten, it's fairly solid feeling but there is quite heavy spalting in some branches as though it had been on the ground for a long time and the fungus had got to it. I can now see why they say that the branches are very brittle and liable to snap onto the roads now, if these trees had rotten any further they definitely would've been rather dangerous overhanging the road and the telephone wires. Another thing was one of the more dead trees had what I could only really describe as diamond-shaped eruptions in places in the end grain a bit like a bad heart shake which I hadn't seen in a standing tree before. I should've taken photos but I didn't think to.
The tree branches over-hanging the wires came down in sections off a ladder for the most part without too much fuss, main trunks cut and dragged off the stump high up avoiding the fairly new wire fence with a rope and 4x4. Two trees we managed fell completely without pruning the branches off but once they hit the ground it was almost like a grenade had gone off with all the rotten sticks flying everywhere, never seen anything like it.
It's depressing, we've done 8 trees so far and there's a few more to go that aren't on the immediate road that also need dealing with really. Funnily enough, the only ash tree I can see that doesn't seem to have it and is pretty healthy at the moment is a tree that accidentally had a gallon or so of heating oil leak into the ground around it years ago and it was ill for a very long time but now it's definitely the healthiest tree here. I don't think there will be many ash trees left once it's run its course.
