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Hi I'm Sam Carman with the Indiana Division of Forestry and we're out in the woods today
to talk about competition in the woods. With me is district forester Janet Eger. Janet
how do trees compete?
Trees compete for sunlight, space and nutrients. Most of our woodlands, particularly in southern
Indiana, have way too many trees.
Too Many?
Trying to grow in too small of an area and sometimes we have to thin down the forest
so that the trees can grow at their optimum.
In this stand you've selected this tree in particular, what are you going to do here?
One of the reasons why we selected this tree, Sam, is because it is competing with a tree
the landowner wants. We always have to look and see what the landowner wants out of their
woods. This particular landowner really likes wildlife and so we're looking at trees that
are going to provide a lot of benefits for wildlife through fruit production or perhaps
mast and den trees. Not only for wildlife, but the landowner is interested in growing
some good timber for future harvesting. And those things work very well in hand.
This particular tree is competing with a persimmon tree behind us which has wonderful wildlife
values. There are also some young oaks in the area so we want to eliminate this tree
from the competition.
All right, well how are you going to do that?
The easiest way to do this, Sam, is with a chainsaw.
Cut it down!
The problem with cutting trees down, Sam is that we have a safety issue there and we want
to stay as safe as possible in the woods. Instead of cutting the tree down we're actually
going to cut a ring, actually two rings, around this tree and that will cut off the flow of
water and nutrients to the tree. In the mean time, this tree is dead, it will be providing
good habitat for other species. So we get a double benefit and we're also safe in the
woods.
Okay Sam, I want to point out a couple of things that are really important when making
these girdles. The first thing is that it has to be deep enough so that the cut goes
into the live wood. You can see the white area in there, that's the live wood. The other
thing is that it has to be a complete girdle, where it actually makes a complete circle.
Sometimes when you're on a hillside like we are right here is difficult to make a perfectly
level circle and that doesn't matter as long as the ring is continuous. That's what happened
here.
So is that it? Is he done?
He can be. On sassafras they will die just by using the chainsaw girdle. However we can
really ensure a kill by using chemical. And he will go ahead and put the chemical all
the way around the bottom ring. And that will take care of it. The chemical does not have
to run out, it just has to saturate the ring.
And Sam, that is essentially it.We have now deadened this tree, we have released the trees
that we want from any competition and our other trees will grow fine.
For more forestry information, be sure and visit our website. Thanks for watching and
we'll see you in the woods.