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  1. #1
    Senior Dog janedoe's Avatar
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    Tree advice please.

    The older neighbor whose lawn I have regenerated has an oak tree on the property line. The tree is huge and seems healthy but I don't know. Today a huge rotten branch came down, crashed into another branch and brought that one down as well. One of the branches is too heavy for me to move on my own and I'm not a lightweight. There are some other rotten branches but they seem to be over his garage and our structures are not threatened. Does anyone have any ideas on this tree? Should it be evaluated for disease or is this a pretty common occurrence for an oak that is at least 80 years old?

    (Just as an aside, how pretty is that lawn? That used to be bare or moss and now it's all green grass. OK. Brag over. )
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  2. #2
    Senior Dog Maxx&Emma's Avatar
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    I have a huge oak on the side of my yard, during SS Sandy a huge branch came down on the roof of my car and smashed it pretty good. I did get it checked by a tree service and it was pronounced healthy. The tree in your picture looks to be in the same condition mine is, for what that opinion may be worth, lol. The lawn looks spectacular!
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  4. #3
    Senior Dog Snowshoe's Avatar
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    You'll need a professional arborist or tree service company to come in and look at the tree. Branches can come down and not mean anything is wrong with the rest of the tree. I'd be checking my home owner's insurance though, because they can do do damage. Or I guess it's your neighbour's insurance.

    How did you get grass to grow in place of moss? Moss usually indicates there is not enough sun for grass. It looks like that beautiful big tee has few lower branches, you just trimmed it up higher to let sunlight in?

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  6. #4
    Senior Dog Meeps83's Avatar
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    I've noticed that with Oaks the can have massive dead branches and look hideous and still have tons of green leaves (and acorns ugh) and be healthy and live for 10, 20, 30 years just growing into even more hideous healthy trees. I'm not an oak fan, but I do love how large they get.

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  8. #5
    Senior Dog windycanyon's Avatar
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    Agree with getting the professional arborist in, or at least a reputable tree service dealing w/ dangerous trees (usually require boom trucks, etc). Perhaps your neighbor will do the right thing and pay for the service. If not, it still is to your benefit to have any weak limbs on your side removed if they could possibly do damage since it's your responsibility to mitigate potential losses.

    Most insurance will cover damage by neighbor's trees under Act of God clauses but it would be wise to take photos of the tree on/ over the property line and speak w/ your neighbor about your concerns. Your insurance co (if it came to this) would likely try to collect on any loss from your neighbor's if it was a serious loss. Some insurance co's have been known to put their homeowners on notice and even refuse to renew insurance if they are aware of dangerous trees. I know of one friend whose insurance co cut her off due to overgrown trees and I surely do not blame the insurance co in that case.

    I've dealt w/ this before w/ a neighbor and also have some poplars on one side of my property that I've had to gradually have taken out. The one neighbor had an insect/ borer infested pine that over hung the property line over my dog kennel roof and shop, and that was like pulling teeth until the tree guys had a talk w/ him and offered to take the overhanging limbs off at the trunk (the proper way to do it) at no charge to him since they were doing so much work for me already at the time. The tree guys explained the legal situation which could result if they did not, since he had been put on notice of the situation (and I had photos to show how bad it was). The tree guys ended up getting my neighbor's account the next year when they finally decided to take out some poplars, etc., so it was a win-win situation for all of us.

    For now, ask around your neighborhood to see if a young person can bring over a chain saw and cut it up for firewood. Most folks around here are happy to get some free firewood. Anne
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  10. #6
    Senior Dog POPTOP's Avatar
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    Totally agree, get an arborist to check it out. There may be other large branches that need to be pruned out before they cause damage. We had it done on our maple and feel that is the reason we were able to keep it going for so many years.

    The yard looks terrific. That's no small amount of work.
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  12. #7
    Senior Dog janedoe's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Snowshoe View Post
    You'll need a professional arborist or tree service company to come in and look at the tree. Branches can come down and not mean anything is wrong with the rest of the tree. I'd be checking my home owner's insurance though, because they can do do damage. Or I guess it's your neighbour's insurance.

    How did you get grass to grow in place of moss? Moss usually indicates there is not enough sun for grass. It looks like that beautiful big tee has few lower branches, you just trimmed it up higher to let sunlight in?
    It's definitely an issue for the neighbor's house. We rarely park that far up the driveway and it leans toward his house so it's really more of a danger to him. It looks like everything on that side came down at the same time. I'll get a specialist out though.

    I burned a bunch of maple last winter from a tree that we had taken out after lightning hit it years ago. Turns out that hardwood ash kills moss and very efficiently. So I spread three Home Depot buckets of that then a little composted maple leaves, grass seed and aeration and a few months later it was a done deal. Basically, his soil was just very poor. He had moss growing in full sun and a lot of it was this weird brown stuff that I've never seen before. Woody pointed me to a moss site that really helped. I didn't realize how many species there were and how hardy they could be. Some of the grass is still thin but we have so much compost from our goats and leaf piles that I'm sure I can get that corrected by next year.

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  14. #8
    Senior Dog labsnewfy's Avatar
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    We had a nice big oak tree in our front yard that we have had trimmed and examined several times over the years along with three ash trees. The wood peckers started going after it and our ash trees so we had a guy come out and look at them. While the three ash look a bit ill, sucker branches coming off the main trunk and dead branches the oak look good on the outside. Wasn't until he started trimming up that found it was rotting on the inside. You can look at the branches that came down the wood in the middle should be clean wood, we noticed on our ash trees that middle of some of the branches coming down were dark in the middle same with the oak branches coming off when they started cleaning it up.

    If the tree is leaning towards his house I would defiantly call and have it checked at the very least thinned out a little.
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  16. #9
    Senior Dog janedoe's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by labsnewfy View Post
    We had a nice big oak tree in our front yard that we have had trimmed and examined several times over the years along with three ash trees. The wood peckers started going after it and our ash trees so we had a guy come out and look at them. While the three ash look a bit ill, sucker branches coming off the main trunk and dead branches the oak look good on the outside. Wasn't until he started trimming up that found it was rotting on the inside. You can look at the branches that came down the wood in the middle should be clean wood, we noticed on our ash trees that middle of some of the branches coming down were dark in the middle same with the oak branches coming off when they started cleaning it up.

    If the tree is leaning towards his house I would defiantly call and have it checked at the very least thinned out a little.
    The big branches actually look good in the middle. I was considering burning some of it this winter (his fireplaces aren't functional). Thank you. That makes me feel better.

 



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