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If they root deeply, and the punch-bar or injector-needle methods of feeding are used, put the food insertions much closer together, more shallow, and extend them much farther beyond the branch spreads than most "experts" recommend. Give up to five pounds of well-balanced dry fertilizer, or five gallons of dissolved, for each inch of trunk diameter breast high. If an old tree seems in dire condition, and its special character impels you to give it special treatment, there are measures which the expert can take that have not been mentioned. One of these is foliar feeding—spraying the leaves with a solution containing freely available nitrogen, for quick assimilation into the sap stream. This procedure, which resembles putting a human patient under an oxygen tent, can be combined with an attack on the immediate cause of the tree's trouble, such as an insect (like gall mite) or a fungus disease (like anthracnose). A specific control agent for the parasite is sprayed on along with the nutrient solution. Another procedure parallels intravenous feeding. An in-vibrator is put directly into the ailing tree's sap channels through holes bored at intervals around the trunk, where bottles with feeder tubes are hung. Neither of the remedies just mentioned is inexpensive, and they should be bought only from practitioners of the highest repute. But sometimes one or both will work wonders, and well repay you. It has been pointed out that, often as not, the basic cause of trouble aloft in an old tree lies down in its underpinning, (See Photos. 3, 4, 5.) In finding and relieving "girdling" roots, your own efforts can match the experts'. But when severe restriction of moisture and nutrients has been of such long duration as to cause major dieback in a tree's head, much pruning will be needed aloft, of wood alive as well as dead. For this part of a salvage job it is folly not to hire professionals. Ladders, ropes, and sharp tools up old trees are not for the novice. |
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