Thursday, August 7, 2014

Great oak photos and info...

Tons of great stuff on this blog post.

Gobs of great info about Middle Eastern and other oaks I wasn't familiar with.  Gorgeous photos.  And some of the smartest things I have read about oaks outside of this blog.  For example,

"Many Oaks are both fast growing and an investment that will last for many centuries... 1 inch of fill during regrading can kill an Oak by suffocating the roots. Drip irrigation is not recommended. Water more than once a week can cause chlorosis or kill. Roundup on weeds surrounding an Oak is ok. The fact that Oaks like to be left alone may also be one of the highest qualities. They withstand drought and bad soil better than almost any other tree and on good sites can be very fast growing and extremely long lived. They add permanence to the landscape... Here are a few of the many types of Oaks that make awesome landscape plants." (Emphasis mine)

I love how he capitalizes Oak!  As it should be.

"Let it be an oak..."

Click here.  Scroll down to September 17, 2014.

I got into those whole whacky urban forestry caper back in the mid/late 80s because I believed that oaks were massively under planted.  They still are, but the tide is turning.

Today I got an email from a tree tube customer in Kansas.  He said he has now planted 12 different types of oaks on his property.  How awesome.

And (returning to the subject of the link above, instead of - as usual - making it all about me) on September 17  Trees Atlanta will host "Let it be an oak" at their office at 225 Chester Avenue, a program that will extol the virtues of oaks as landscape trees and encourage tree planters to choose oaks.  Super awesome.

Back in the 80s (to return to making this about me) I worked at a couple of different landscape garden centers in suburban Minneapolis/St. Paul.  The first one didn't even offer any oaks for sale, and the second one did but rarely sold any.  Too "messy" (those darn acorns, how dare they litter my lawn?).  To "slow growing."  Homeowners were obsessed with planting seedless green ash. 

Which has worked out really well for them.  On the plus side, I doubt very much that many of those seedless green ashes even lived long enough to be affected by EAB.

Well done Tree Atlanta!

Thanks for the tip Lucas.