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wellington womble	Ash I have just taken some low branches off my lovely ash tree. can I use the small ones as cuttings? If not, can you cultivate ash from wild seed? Anyone done it? I'd like more ash trees.
Nick	Ash seems to grow like a weed round here. I'm forever cutting out saplings.
Tavascarow	Ash seems to grow like a weed round here. I'm forever cutting out saplings.

dpack

from seed seems the best way going by the number of randoms.

under a tree in autumn a quick sweep should give more than enough.

if you want them in particular places propagate the seed and transplant young ones the next winter seems a reliable means to do it with most trees .

Nick

Ash seems to grow like a weed round here. I'm forever cutting out saplings.

Ditto.
Except I transplant them not cut them out.
I don't think fraxinus propagate easily from cuttings.
This page says they root from semi ripe cuttings in a mist unit.
Cheaper to grow them from seed & you might be lucky to raise plants that are resistant to Ash dieback.

I'm a remote house in the middle of thousands of acres. Ash will survive being taken out of my lawn, drive and guttering. Smile

wellington womble

I've got a fine mature tree, but not a single baby. Admittedly things have been somewhat overgrown here recently, but then regular(ish) mowing is hardly going to help either. I'll try some cuttings now, and look out for seeds in the autumn. I haven't cleared the land where they're going yet anyway, but I was hoping that cuttings would take now, and I could plant them out over the winter. Mistress Rose

I think ash is more usually grown from seed. It seems to do it very easily here anyway. If you don't get seed of your own, try looking locally and get it from a healthy tree. dpack

i was about to suggest a ds collection, between us we could post a few seeds from a wide diversity of ash genetics upping the chances of getting some die back resistant ones among the new plants. Tavascarow

Ash seems to grow like a weed round here. I'm forever cutting out saplings. Ditto.
Except I transplant them not cut them out.
I don't think fraxinus propagate easily from cuttings.
This page says they root from semi ripe cuttings in a mist unit.
Cheaper to grow them from seed & you might be lucky to raise plants that are resistant to Ash dieback.

I'm a remote house in the middle of thousands of acres. Ash will survive being taken out of my lawn, drive and guttering. Smile

& I'm an old tree hugging hippy who wants as much ash coppice as possible. Smile

We don't have any natural ash woods near here.
The oak is dominant & it's too slow growing & valuable for wildlife to be a good coppice tree.
So any Ash or Hazel is welcome. Nick

Drop me your address. I'll uproot and mail them. Smile

dpack

i will post some seeds come autumn if you want em .

2 gene pools and counting Wink

wellington womble

Well, if the cuttings root, you can have some of those as well. dpack

Well, if the cuttings root, you can have some of those as well.

the ones i have planted are from seed chucked into the 7 acre wood which is in hudds and all seed planted.

i havnt had a look at it this year but will try to get some snaps in the autumn,the mixed oaks plus other stuff do a nice mosaic of colours.

ps i have pretty much run out of space on that one and somebody will need to do some management in a couple of decades Laughing

Tavascarow

Most of mine goes in gaps in the hedges but I plan to plant about a half acre of mixed woods on a steep bank behind my neighbours house. I want the trees to stabilise the bank & reduce erosion & it will be a good timber/fuel supply in coming years. wellington womble

I've got about 3/4 of an acre I'd like to plant up with trees. Heavy-ish soil and a bit shady in places. Currently under about 8 foot of brambles. There's a huge ash, a big sycamore (and a couple of smaller ones) and some hoarse chestnuts, as well as some hazel coppice and a couple of lovely oaks already on site (They all have TPOs on, or I'd have the sycamores out for firewood). Initially I wanted ash for coppicing, but as I can't get hold of it, I was going to go for hazel coppice with oak standards. But if I can get some ash in, I'd like to try. dpack

i plant by chucking seeds roughly where i want trees a bit later,seems to work fine.

it might be worth flailing the brambles a few times and maybe even plough em first Mistress Rose

Please don't send ash seedlings or cuttings around at the moment. If they have chelara, it could spread it. As far as I know, seeds are safe. Nice idea to establish some hazel and possibly ash coppice Tavascarow. Valid point Mistress Rose. I'm saving from local seedlings.
Planting from stock already adapted to the local environment but with the genetic variance seed gives will hopefully ensure some survive if chelera gets a hold.
Although I'm hoping it's not going to be as bad as some have predicted. dpack

afaik seeds are safe, bits and seedlings from somewhere else might be bad. wellington womble

We are in the national forest, and there is a scheme where I can basically have a small wood planted FOC. I beleive they may even clear the land, but they did say I need to get rid of the abandoned vehicles first! I will probably flail and plough though. It's so delightfully easy with the kubota. At least, it is when the stuff is out of the way. Trying to remember where exactly the old wardrobe, pig house and pile of biodegrading pallets are is a bit taxing! Mistress Rose

Glad you have all agreed with me. The best thing to do is to get seed from as many local healthy trees as you can. With any luck some of them will be resistant. As you say, Tavascarow, local stock will be the best suited to your area. Ideally, let the see germinate where it wants as self sown seed is likely to grow in the best place for itself. I know this isn't really practical in a lot of cases, but will produce the strongest, if not best shaped and placed trees.

Another thing that the FC are suggesting is to have as open a wood as possible. That way the wind will blow through and there is less risk of a build up of spores. Ty Gwyn

Another thing that the FC are suggesting is to have as open a wood as possible. That way the wind will blow through and there is less risk of a build up of spores.

Does that mean the end of conifer plantations as we know them? Mistress Rose

You say it makes no difference to other tree`s,
A few year`s back they were felling and burning certain conifers to stop the spread of the spores because of a certain disease. Treacodactyl

No, just for ash. It makes no difference for other trees. There is a lot less money for planting conifers now though, and with leaving the EU even the grant money available may dry up completely as that is where it came from.

The money comes from the UK, perhaps via the EU but that's via the UK in the first place. So, if the UK voters want more woodland grants they can vote for them and we'll cut out the middle men.

I wonder if the FC have updated their own rules with regard to ash spacing, they've been rather intransigent in the past when it comes to spacing, not wanting to let common sense get in the way of the rules. Mistress Rose

If you plant trees too far apart they don't develop straight stems, so ideally something like 2m spacing. With ash it is an advantage to thin early anyway, so get better spacing. You may be thinking of phytophra in larch Ty Gwyn; that is also carried as spores.

The money for grants comes from the EU but is paid out by the UK, Treacodactyl. Of course the UK could decide to continue to pay the grants, but somehow I can't see it happening as I don't think most politicians would know a tree if it came up and hit them. No doubt we will be told to be 'more efficient'. As grants have been contracted for up to the next 5 years I am wondering if we will contiue to get them or if the government will break the contract. Treacodactyl

The money for grants comes from the EU but is paid out by the UK, Treacodactyl.

As I said, the UK pays the money in in the first place. Funny though, when the money for various woodland grants dried up a year or two ago it was the fault of the current government.

As for grants continuing, you may wish to blame the politicians but it's likely to be down to public opinion. Those on the left seem to generally hate the idea of land owners getting grants. Mistress Rose

The current grants can be paid either to the land owner of the person working the land if they have security of tenure for the life of the crop. Admittedly a bit tricky with oak plantation, but not unreasonable with hazel coppice being cut every 7 years. Means the person getting the grant has to have the right to cut next rotation. HenX

I'm continually removing the dratted things, so feel free to call in here at some stage and collect some. Tavascarow

I fear for the removal of environmental EU legislation because I don't feel there are enough people organised or concerned enough to care.
It's a lumbering beast but it's one that does seem to take environmental & climate disruption seriously. Mistress Rose

I would agree with you there Tavascarow. It is very important that we keep something similar to the current legislation or even extend it. dpack

ditto,but with the likes of leadsom as defra minister i recon we will soon be grant and "red tape" free to wallow in seaside sewage and twitching every spraying season. Mistress Rose

We have had Chelara confirmed in our wood, and it is obvious in the woods attached to ours. Now we know we have it, it is a question of working with it. It seems that even some of the ash thought to have been 'killed' by it in Denmark are regrowing from lower down, which is good news. Makes them useless for timber, but at least the tree is still alive, which is what we are interested in, so hoping for the best. wellington womble

Oh noes!! There is an Ash that I'm suspicious of North of here. I must stop and take a picture tomorrow. Treacodactyl

You can see if it's been found locally here: http://chalaramap.fera.defra.gov.uk/ dpack

ta , from that it looks like there will be plenty of firewood around here Rolling Eyes

yummersetter

Getting closer to us, just about 10 miles east. We've gone from being surrounded by elm trees to having about ten large ash trees around our property, it'll be tragic to see them die.
Especially as the recovering elms are dying, because they reached about forty ft high I hoped they might have fought Dutch Elm disease off.
Driving round Somerset last week it seemed that there won't be many horse-chestnuts soon either . . they were in a very bad way. dpack

re the red death and horse chestnuts we had an outbreak around york that started about 6 or 7 yrs ago. quite a few have gone, some look rather poorly but at least a third seem resistant so far .

going by the way some plantings are all ok and even the ones where most croaked early on one or two of them survived uninfected i recon that they wont be wiped out and any new plantings from resistant tree conkers stand a good chance of keeping the species as a uk favourite.
it will be a few hundred years before the losses are replaced with ones of similar size and as it seems daft to try to grow a new one in the same place as a victim the distribution will be different.

it will probably be a few years before we know what percentage of ash are resistant. iirc in some places the losses have been almost total. Mistress Rose

Recently an aquintance of ours who was very worried about ash in the UK visited Denmark, where it was reported the losses were 80-90%. He said that at least some of the trees seem to be growing from lower down again. From the reports and the method of transmission, it sounds as if it could be a bit cyclical. The leaves contain the spores, so once the tree produces very few leaves, there are not enough spores to infect the new ones that grow. Once the growth gets to reasonable propotions again and produces a lot of leaves there is a risk of re-infection etc. Only time will tell. The current teaching is; if it is practical, clear up and burn or compost dead leaves, and only remove trees if they are completely dead or dangerous. They may seem dead, but resprout half way up next year.

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