The Borers Return With a Vengeance

When walking out to the barn the other day, I glanced up in the canopy of trees that border the eastern edge of our property and immediately noticed a troubling sight - the leaves to three of our oak trees have turned brown and are dead.  This happened so fast it made out heads swim.

Let's back up a bit.  We've lost four water oaks in that same location over the past several years.  The eastern edge of our property was once a shady grove and now, well, it's not so shady any more.  There are some pecan trees in the "grove" that should enlarge their canopy now without the competition, but I don't like to lose trees.  We'll use the wood for firewood and all, but still, I'd rather have a live tree providing shade for the animals in our hot summers.

If you look around the bases of all the affected trees, you can see sawdust.  I Googled it and found that the culprit is something called the Red Oak Borer and the water oak is in the red oak family.  I've blogged about it previously HERE.  It doesn't seem to bother other trees from what can gather.  From talking to a knowledgeable tree expert, I learned that water oaks live for only 70 years.  I've read elsewhere that they live for 30 years and then die for the next 40!!  That's a more accurate way to state it, I guess.  Well you can see the dead/dying trees below.  It looks like fall, but it's not.

It ain't fall.

So here's my plan.  First, I'm going to borrow a chainsaw from my Dad and cut the trees down.  It will be mighty tricky, though, as the tree on the left in the picture below leans precariously over the garden fence.  The tall one on the right below is right near the barn.  I think I'll have to use a come-along to pull the tree in the direction that I want it to fall.  This project is not going to be for the faint of heart. I'll tackle that within the next month before limbs begin falling.

I'll then cut the trees into firewood sized pieces and then split it all and stack it for firewood to be used over the next several winters.  It is hard to even think about firewood at the tail-end of June, though.

Finally, I read that to treat borers you should spray permethrin all over the bark of the base of the tree. I'll have to purchase some of that and spray the remaining water oak trees in the grove to keep from losing any more of them.  I should have done this before, but there's always something else going on and I was negligent in not taking care of business.

Borer Damage

Hopefully, once the remaining trees are treated, we won't lose any more as those trees cast a shadow over the garden until almost noon, allowing me to enjoy shady mornings in the garden on the weekends.  Darned Borers!!

Tree Trouble

While I was in the back yard the other day, I looked to the small patch of trees that borders the eastern side of our property and spotted trouble.  All of the leaves on two water oaks were dead or dying.  I thought that perhaps they had been struck by lightning as we've had some monstrous storms here lately.  This little patch of woods serves as shade for all of our animals and is important to the ecosystem on on our little farm.

During the peak of the heat during summer days, you'll find the dairy cows lounging in the shade, chewing their cud lazily while the chickens dig holes in the cool dirt and sit in them to cool themselves.  We have the paddocks set up in such a way where the animals can always go to the shade trees and water at will and then return to their grass eating once it cools in the late afternoons and early mornings.  The Nubian goats, since they are indigenous to Africa, don't appear to be affected as much as the Jersey Cows.

Anyway, the trees that were dying are what we call Water Oaks.  They are in the Red Oak family.  These trees all have scars in the side of them that appear to be fire damage from when they were much younger, but they have healed over.  The trees further to the east, but still on our property are pecan trees and those trees have grown and are crowding out the water oaks.  In response, the water oaks bend and grow westward.

When I went to check out the trees, upon closer examination, I see that they were not struck by lightning as evidenced by a couple of things I observed:

Two trees in the process of dying

Notice this odd damage to the bark:

Bark damage

And notice the 'sawdust' at the base of each of the affected trees:

"Sawdust"

I did a little research and determined that this damage matches that of the Red Oak Borer.  Here is a picture of this bad boy below:

Image Credit

And here is the larvae of the red oak borer.  I've seen these many times when splitting firewood and it is amazing how they can chew tunnels into mature hardwood.  While splitting firewood, I'll toss these to the chickens and they devour them.  I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that I've seen them 3 inches long and as big around as your index finger.

Image Credit

So what do we do?  Well, I'm going to have to cut those trees down, split them and we'll stack the firewood for use later.  They are tall trees, so I'll have to be really careful so they don't fall over our garden or pasture perimeter fence.  It's not the end of the world.  We'll get a lot of use out of the firewood and the pecan trees will grow and make up for the shade that we've lost.  I guess this is a good example of why plant and animal diversity is important.  Having different trees on the property ensures that if one variety is attacked by disease or insects, you've got others that will be unaffected and that's a good thing, because on hot summer days, the cows need their shade.  And so do I!