Backyard Wisdom - March/April 2022
by: Gilbert A Smith, ISA Board Certified Master Arborist

I’m sorry to say it, but we had to take this tree down for safety reasons. But, it has a story to tell us, from the inside out!

This Norway Maple landed as a “whirly bird” seed on a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan in Lake Forest in 1960. I counted the annual rings as best I could. I guess everyone knows how to count the tree rings to determine the age of a tree. In April 2019 in our Wisdom From The Trees article Lesley and I talked about how trees grow and how they heal. Also Aldo Leopold, in his famous book, The Sand County Almanac explained the history in the rings of a tree.

Backyard Wisdom - January/February 2022
by: Gilbert A Smith, ISA Board Certified Master Arborist

Driving through Deerfield a few months ago I stopped to take a picture of the above (left) pictured declining Norway Spruce. Almost every day we get asked, “What is killing my trees and what can you spray on them to save them?” When I drove up to these sick trees my thoughts were similar. Is this being caused by a disease or by a bug?

Backyard Wisdom - June/July 2021
by: Gilbert A Smith, ISA Board Certified Master Arborist

I got a call from a client this spring (2021) asking me to check her Beech tree this summer and spray any caterpillars that might kill it. This Beech is her favorite tree. I told her that I would do that and not to worry because caterpillars on Beech trees are normal, natural and healthy. She replied with enthusiasm, “Don’t tell me that! I don’t want my tree to die!”

Backyard Wisdom - May 2021
by: Gilbert A Smith, ISA Board Certified Master Arborist

This White Oak branch has been hanging in there for about 80 years so we can assume that it is pretty strong. Growing in Old School Forest Preserve in Lake County, IL, this tree is in its natural state, but what if it was growing in your landscape? Would you worry about this branch falling? Many homeowners worry, and for what seems like good reason; this branch is low, long and heavy. We wonder, how can it possibly not break? Because of that, in many landscapes, all of the beautiful low branches on our trees are cut off.

Backyard Wisdom - February | March 2021
by: Gilbert A Smith, ISA Board Certified Master Arborist

With snow on the landscape and temperatures in the cold range you're probably not thinking about trimming your deciduous (non-evergreen) shrubs. Still, now and until the leaves come back in May/June is a really great time to trim them. I’m going to give you easy to follow, step by step directions.

But first let me explain why.

“What is the matter with my Boxwood?” Lesley and I have been asked this question much too often in the last few years. Boxwood (Buxus sempervrens, microphylla, etc.) have many troubles, for example: Leaf Minors, Leaf Curlers, Spider Mites, Psyllid, Volutella and Phytophora fungal blights, Nematodes, too much water on overhead sprinklers, or too little water, winter damage, frozen soils, heavy soils, Boxwood Decline and most recently, Boxwood Blight. None of these by themselves are the cause of most of the Boxwood dieback. We can go through all kinds of soil and tissue samples, fertilizers, fungicide and insecticide sprays and still be missing the main cause.

Backyard Wisdom - December 2020
by: Gilbert A Smith, ISA Board Certified Master Arborist

Most of us have had a lot more time to be observing our own back yard this year. In your wanderings have you noticed little 1/2 inch mounds of soil often with pencil sized holes right in the center? What you’re looking at is the work of 250,000 native earth worms as they farm your back yard soil. What are they doing? They’re coming up to the surface, grabbing leaves, pulling them into their burrows and eating them.

Backyard Wisdom - November, 2020
by: Gilbert A Smith, ISA Board Certified Master Arborist

I didn't rake any leaves in my landscape this fall. I never rake leaves. That’s not because I have someone else do it, nor is it because I’m lazy, (though that point can be debated). It’s because leaf raking is a waste of my time and a waste of the fuel that powers our back yard ecosystem.

Backyard Wisdom - September 2020
by: Gilbert A Smith, ISA Board Certified Arborist

Forty-five years ago in Agronomy class I wondered what was so important about soil structure? Those of us in the plant world know that soil is made up of various ratios of sand, silt, clay and organic matter. We can test it for plant essential minerals like, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, etc. But what exactly is soil structure and why is it so important?

Summer 2020 - Backyard Wisdom
by Gilbert A Smith, ISA Board Certified Master Arborist

Right now, in our forest preserves and our landscapes we see the evidence of too much water causing our trees to die from drought. Let me explain. Trees, like every organism, need to breathe. Of course, we all know that during the day tree leaves use CO2 and give off O2, through the miracle of photosynthesis. What we may not realize is that trees, like us, respire all the time using O2 and giving off CO2. They don't have mouth parts, but they do have openings called stomates in their leaves, lenticels and ray cells in their stems and roots through which they ”breathe”.

by: Board Certified Master Arborist, Gilbert A Smith
Backyard Wisdom - April/May 2020

Fifty years ago when I was a young “tree skinner” Yes, that’s what they called us and with good reason. I was taught to paint all of the cuts that I made with tree tar. That was the measure of a good job. My father would say, “I saw a lot of ‘white eyes’ in the trees you trimmed today.” What an insult! “White eyes” were the newly exposed round tree cuts that looked like eyes on the branches.

by: Gilbert A Smith, ISA Board Certified Master Arborist
Wisdom From the Trees - February/March 2020 - Backyard Wisdom

So why does all this dirty talk matter?

Everyone who loves the natural world is concerned with global warming and its unpredictable effect on our’s and our children's lives. But it often seems as if it is out of our hands as individuals. It turns out, however, that carbon is the currency of the underworld, even in our own backyard. Let me explain.

by: Gilbert A Smith, ISA Board Certified Master Arborist
Backyard Wisdom - January 2020

How do roots grow through the soil? How do they know where the life essential water and minerals are located and how do they “eat and drink” them? In January 2019 I wrote in Wisdom from the TreesTM about the leaves’ long journey into the soil. Today, I want to take you further on that journey into the underground world of tree roots.

Backyard Wisdom - November 2019
by: Gilbert A Smith, ISA Board Certified Master Arborist

Everyone knows that deciduous trees go dormant and shed their leaves so that they don't freeze in the cold winter. So why don't evergreens shed their needles too? Actually, they do loose their older needles continuously throughout the year, as the older needles are shaded out by younger ones. This may happen most heavily in the fall, as is demonstrated every autumn, by our clients who begin to call, worrying about brown needles on their evergreens. The good news is, they never lose all of their needles, unless they’re dead. Evergreens are green throughout the year, but they don’t have the same needles forever!

by: Gilbert A Smith, ISA BC Master Arborist
Backyard Wisdom September 2019

Years down the road from the time your landscape was originally planted, Arborsmith Ltd. is called in to diagnose tree problems. Why is my River Birch doing so poorly when my neighbor’s is healthy? It is hard to answer that question without going back to the original construction. Most of our tree problems begin and end with the soil. We can’t see under the ground. We can test the soil and sample the leaves but all we have to do is move 10 feet away and the soil conditions change. Let me tell you the story of a typical suburban soil and how it affects tree health.

Backyard Wisdom July/August 2019
by: Gilbert A Smith, ISA BC Master Arborist

Every spring/summer I have to clean out my gutters after my River Birch drops its seeds and twigs. The funny thing is that you can see all of the germinated seeds, thousands of them but only in the gutter. Search the ground throughout my yard and you won’t find any young Birch seedlings. So what are these smart seeds teaching us?

Backyard Wisdom - June 2019
by: Gilbert A Smith, Master Arborist

What can I spray to get rid of moss in my lawn, or on my tree trunks or my roof shingles and what is causing it to grow so much? Although you can find moss herbicides, I do not recommend it!

It’ s a mistake to think that moss is an alien invader which competes with and ruins trees, roofs, or grass. There is nothing further from the truth. Mosses have been around on our planet for 400 million years, in fact they are the oldest living plants on land, and they've learned to survive and adapt to conditions where other plants cannot grow.

Backyard Wisdom, April 2019
by: Gilbert A Smith, ISA Certified Master Arborist

They don’t, at least not the way we think of healing. Damaged tissue in our bodies is replaced by new healthy tissue. Once a tree is damaged, however, it remains damaged for the rest of its life. This is because trees don't grow like people. Maybe a better comparison would be that trees grow like coral, annually adding new living layers on top of old mostly dead structure. We can count these new layers or annual rings to tell us just how many years the tree has been alive. Because of this “layered” growth pattern, no matter how tall a tree grows, the height of each individual branch on the trunk never changes.

Wisdom from the Trees, January 2019, Backyard Wisdom
by: Gilbert A Smith, ISA BC Master Arborist and Lesley Bruce Smith, ISA Certified Arborist

I fondly remember the autumn smell of burning leaves when I was a kid in the 1950s. Our push mower wouldn't grind them up so my brothers and I had to rake all those leaves out to the street and burn them. In the 70’s the environmental movement stopped the burning and it became the responsibility of the villages and cities to haul the leaves away. This month I’ll tell you the story of leaves from the tree’s point of view. It may change the way you perceive this annual ritual of fall.

Backyard Wisdom - March/ April 2018
by: Gilbert A Smith, ISA Board Certified Master Arborist
photo credits: Gilbert A Smith and Lesley Bruce Smith
    
Give your trees a breath of fresh air? Normally we think the other way around, that trees give us a breath of fresh air, and they do. Without trees we would soon choke on our Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and die from lack of Oxygen (O2). Thank you trees! But did you know that tree roots breathe just like we do, “in with the O2 and out with the CO2”? Now you can amaze your friends with this myth busting fact. Try it out on your most knowledgable gardening friends. You'll be surprised by how few people, even landscapers, know this.