Jason Gaskill from Davey's Wilmington, Delaware, office talks about how to prepare your trees for summer such as checking your trees before summer storms and dealing with pest problems.
In this episode we cover:
To find your local Davey office, check out our find a local office page to search by zip code.
To learn more about storm damage and clean up, read our storm damage blogs.
To learn more about the most common summer insects, read our blog, Tree Problems - The Top Three Insects in Spring and Summer.
To learn more about summer tree care, read our blog, Most Common Questions About Summer Tree Care.
Connect with Davey Tree on social media:
Twitter: @DaveyTree
Facebook: @DaveyTree
Instagram: @daveytree
YouTube: The Davey Tree Expert Company
LinkedIn: The Davey Tree Expert Company
Have topics you'd like us to cover on the podcast? Email us at podcasts@davey.com. We want to hear from you!
Jason Gaskill from Davey's Wilmington, Delaware, office talks about how to prepare your trees for summer such as checking your trees before summer storms and dealing with pest problems.
In this episode we cover:
To find your local Davey office, check out our find a local office page to search by zip code.
To learn more about storm damage and clean up, read our storm damage blogs.
To learn more about the most common summer insects, read our blog, Tree Problems - The Top Three Insects in Spring and Summer.
To learn more about summer tree care, read our blog, Most Common Questions About Summer Tree Care.
Connect with Davey Tree on social media:
Twitter: @DaveyTree
Facebook: @DaveyTree
Instagram: @daveytree
YouTube: The Davey Tree Expert Company
LinkedIn: The Davey Tree Expert Company
Have topics you'd like us to cover on the podcast? Email us at podcasts@davey.com. We want to hear from you!
Doug Oster: Welcome to the Davey Tree Expert Company's podcast Talking Trees. I'm your host, Doug Oster. Each week, our expert arborists share advice on seasonal tree care, how to make your trees thrive, arborists' favorite trees, and much, much more. Tune in every Thursday to learn more, because here at the Talking Trees podcast, we know trees are the answer. I'm joined this week, again, by Jason Gaskill. He's an assistant district manager for the Davey Tree Expert Company in Wilmington, Delaware. Jason, I think last time we talked about getting ready for winter. Now, we're going to talk about getting ready for summer. Are you the seasonal tree expert?
Jason Gaskill: I guess I am, and I'm happy to be talking about summer instead of winter this time.
Doug: Me too. Before we came on, we started chatting. We're both so happy that spring is here, right?
Jason: No doubt. We've had a nice spring, and it's been long, and unfortunately, we had a couple of late dangerous frosts, but it's been a nice warm-up to summer so far.
Doug: When I'm thinking summer, I guess the first thing I start thinking about is big storms that are on the way, here and there. Those summer storms are scary. From an arborist point of view and from a homeowner's point of view, what should we be thinking when we're thinking of our trees for summer storms?
Jason: Well, inspection is one of the biggest things, and when we had this major storm that was supposed to come through earlier this week, we got a little nervous about the type of damage that we would see, and I almost say that when I come onto a property, a lot of times, storm damage that I find, it's usually from prospective clients that actually never used our services, because when I see a tree that's failed, it's almost always predictable. I could always find a problem with a tree, whether it had decay, broken limbs or cracks, or you could tell that the root system just wasn't a quality foundation for the tree. Inspection would be certainly the number one thing that you'd want to have done.
Doug: Look up, have somebody come in, look up, and look down, and look around.
Jason: That's exactly right. A whole 360 view of the tree. That's right. The most important part being the main stems, and then also looking at major branch unions and see how those branch unions look. When two, what we would call codominant limbs start growing together, they tend to start compressing against one another. You can imagine when you start getting growth rings that are growing yearly and yearly, and as they tighten against one another, they're pushing against one another, and what happens is you start to get in the decay pocket in between those two leader unions, and what happens is that they can pull apart like a wishbone. There's ways that we can reduce the liability and the risk of failure in a storm by doing things like cabling those limbs or doing what we call end weight reduction pruning, which we would prune the weight off of the end so that we're reducing the physics on the outer part of the canopy that's going to cause stress during wind.
Doug: Well, when you get a predicted storm, you're all getting ready, like, "Okay, here we go." What is the feeling like, though, when the storm misses you?
Jason: I would say, a lot of times, it's a sense of relief, but there's also a sense of like, "Okay, because we do help people, but it's kind of like being a firefighter." You're there to fight fires. That's your job, and that's part of your rush and your adrenaline that you get out of it, but at the same time, you don't want to see catastrophe. You don't want to see people hurt, injured, and you don't want to see their homes and livelihood taken away from them because it's a long, arduous process. When you see a tree fall through a house, it doesn't get fixed the next day. It's a process going through the insurance company, and it's, a lot of times you drive by the house and it's a year later and they're still trying to get back off their feet.
Doug: I never thought of that part of it. When a tree does fall through a house, I guess it's not an arborist job, but I just wonder, what do you do? Yes, you call your insurance company, but how do you stop the rain from coming in from a roof with a tree coming through it? You just tarp it, or what do people do?
Jason: Yes, I mean, you can't really tarp it until you get the tree off because there's too many limbs, and it's just too complicated, and you just couldn't ever find a tarp. You need a helicopter to do something like that. It's just part of the suffering, and part of the damage to your house is going to be water damage, unfortunately. The first step is getting the tree off the house, typically. Insurance company will either will help you through the situation and may have us directly contact you. We work with a lot of insurance companies. They rely on us to do that, and then typically, either they have a restoration company that can do the tarping themselves, or if they don't have someone like that, a lot of times, I have roofers in my back pocket that I recommend that are trusted vendors that'll get out right after us, and they can be really good and fast and do proper tarp installation to keep further water damage from happening.
Doug: When talking about summer prep, what else comes to mind for you?
Jason: One of the biggest things, of course, is there's so much pressure of insect and disease and then also drought and heat. Summer can be a really hard time on plants because they're actively growing. Plants aren't stressed in the wintertime because they are dormant, but in the summertime, when it's 100 degrees, and it's hot and dry, plants, the leaves are going to desiccate, insects are going to flourish. It's kind of ringing the dinner bell for the insects to come jump on the plant. You want to try to eliminate insect populations that are at that point where they're damaging the plant or affecting the looks of the plant, the aesthetics, and then you want to help the tree be able to overcome disease.
Doug: There seems to always be a new insect working its way north or working its way into the country or whatever it might be. You got to keep up with that stuff, right?
Jason: Absolutely. That's just part of globalization. As we globalize more in trade and commerce works from different countries that have different types of diversification. China is a much more diverse environment than we are, and there's 450 species of oaks or something like that in China, where we have 100 and so species. That means there's just that many more insects that we don't know yet that may be that our trees might not have natural defenses against, which can be scary, which is what happened to our ash trees with the emerald ash borer.
Doug: Yes. Is that the worst that you've seen, or is there something else that comes to mind that came through that was as devastating? To me, in my era, it's been the emerald ash bore. It's hard to believe that over here in Pittsburgh that we really basically don't have any more ash left.
Jason: I heard a talker once call this a generational killer. Every generations had its major killers. Started with the chestnut blight, and then you had the Dutch elms disease, which would be your-- Then emerald ash borer, and you call those your big three, and then I'm sure and terrified of what's next on the horizon, that we're going to see one of our great species of trees that we love, like white oaks or something like that, disappear because of some funky insect or disease that we just don't know what's on the horizon yet.
Doug: Before we started talking, you told me that there's a new type of treatment that you've been working with, and I'm going to have a lot of questions about this because it sounds pretty interesting.
Jason: Yes. This is polyphosphate 30. Polyphosphate 30 is basically a fertilizer. 0027. It can be applied foliar, so it could be a systemic foliar potassium phosphate product, or it can be injected into the soil, and what it really does is it provides potassium. It's a slow-release phosphate, and it helps with
resistance to heat and drought stress and simulates the plants defenses against disease, and then also aids in the compartmentalization of wounds, so you can actually spray it on a damage like where the tree's been damaged and you can spray it, and you can actually get better reaction wood than just letting it do its natural thing. We used to spray trees with tar and that sort of stuff. Those aerosols, those type of things actually inhibit the tree's ability to compartmentalize, so those things are actually bad, where this is actually helping the tree start this compartmentalization, it stimulates that even quicker.
Doug: When did this come into play? This is the first I've heard of it.
Jason: A few years back. We started using it last year, a couple years ago, with experimenting with it, and now, a lot of offices are now starting to use it. We started using it pretty heavily last year, and this year, we've automatically put it into our lawn program, so our summer fertilizer, instead of putting a lot of nitrogen in, we're going to put this on the lawn to help with the drought tolerance, the heat stress, and then also fortify against disease, instead of just trying to push nitrogen, which is going to make the plant try to grow in a stressful environment. Then we're going to inject trees with it, too, to help with the help with the drought stress. We've seen pretty amazing results from a point of view. I could show you a picture here of where a tree was damaged by a car, was hit by a car, and so they started spraying it. Over half a year, the results are pretty phenomenal, to see the compartmentalization process go so quickly, it's like it looks like it was the tree was compartmentalizing over a couple years to get this result. Let's see if I can show you the picture. This was over four and a half months, they traced the bark area, treated with polyphosphate in water, and sprayed the wounded area in May. This is what it looked like by September.
Doug: Wow. Explain exactly what we're seeing there, that is amazing. That tree got nailed hard by a car, and then in that short amount of time, that tree is looking good.
Jason: Yes, you could see where-- so on, I guess, your left side is where the tree initially got hit, and then you can see where the tree is starting to seal the wound. Compartmentalization is a process where the trees don't heal like we do when we get cut, they seal. They seal in different ways, and you can see the callus tissue that's coming over will eventually close that wound. That's a big wound, I'd like to see how it looks now, but that's a lot of growth for just four months, that's for sure.
Doug: Before I let you go, I want to talk a little bit about you and what you get out of your job because it's obvious that you are passionate about this, talk a little bit about that for me.
Jason: I got into this industry, I was a into interpretation and natural resources, I was a park ranger, biology, so I've always loved the sciences. My thought was I wanted to explain stuff to people and teach people things and talk about the natural environment, and so I was a park ranger for a little bit, and then I worked for a nature society where I taught children's classes and adult classes. That's what I was really passionate about, but a lot of times, some of those jobs are seasonal. I didn't see a clear path to become full-time for as far as what I heard when I interviewed other park rangers that it would take quite a while, and so during the winter season, I ended up getting a job as a landscaper, and then I heard about arboriculture. I was recommended to a company where-- When I interviewed, and I just saw the process, I said, "Wow, this is the neatest thing in the world," like we're doing plant health care, taking care of trees, and being a tree doctor. I was like, "This is going to be like the coolest job in the world," and I could see myself being a doctor of living things and trees and plants and shrubs and diagnosis and talking to people and helping solve problems like that was like it clicked me. That was like a dream come true type of thing. That's where I started off was in plant health care. I did that for many years before I got into the consultation and management side of things where I still love talking to people about trees, and I get to solve the problems and help them diagnose why their trees are sick or dying and explain them then about living things and help them.
Arboriculture is a study of trees in an urban environment, I always say, if you're not studying it in an urban environment, an urban can be anything suburban or anywhere where people are living, it's forestry, otherwise, so arboriculture is working with people and solving problems about trees with people and people and trees, and putting that together and finding out what their needs are and what they want to see out of their landscapes.
Doug: Good stuff. Now, before I let you go, though, you have another first on the show. Now, listeners can't see it, but tell us what hat you're wearing today.
Jason: Yes, this is Talking Trees.
Doug: I love it.
Jason: Yes. I got this hat after doing a segment with Katie Dubow.
Doug: All right.
Jason: They said that to me, I guess, last year, and I've it's been my go-to hat since then.
Doug: I've got two of 'em because with my hairline, I need to always have a hat on as soon as I step out the door.
Jason: As well. As soon as I had my first bout of skin cancer, I'm never sans a hat, that's for sure.
Doug: All right, Jason, thanks again for your time. It was great to talk to you again. Boy, that was just wonderful information.
Jason: Oh, thanks, Doug. I appreciate that.
Doug: One of the reasons I love hosting this podcast is every week, I learn something. It might be something about trees or the people who care for them. Now tune in every Thursday to the Talking Trees podcast from the Davey Tree Expert Company. I'm your host Doug Oster. I'd love it if you would subscribe to the podcast, we are always having fun, and as I said, we're always learning. As always, we'd like to remind you, on the Talking Trees podcast, trees are the answer.
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