#arboriculture

Daisugi is an ancient Japanese technique that involves pruning a mother tree to create a platform of sorts, from which new shoots are allowed to sprout. These shoots are then carefully pruned and trained to grow straight upwards.

The purpose of Daisugi was to produce high quality, straight timber (known as 'taruki') for construction without having to cut down entire trees.

This method of forestry not only saves space but also allows for faster timber production, as the shoots grow much faster than they would if they were planted separately.

Plant of the Day

Saturday 11 January 2025

A large, deciduous tree Castanea sativa (sweet chestnut, Eurasian chestnut, European chestnut, Sardian nut, Spanish chestnut, castanwydden) makes an imposing avenue, forest or specimen tree. With age trees develop a spiral, grooved bark and produce spiny fruits containing edible nuts.

And trees do a lot of heavy lifting for atmosphere conditions and air quality, so the lack is telling of just how bad life on the Ground can be.

Not to mention the lack of flowers means that flowering plants that humans eat like apples, pears, tomatoes, broccoli, squashes, cucumbers, melons, cherries, plums, lemons, peaches, eggplants, and so much more.

Not only have the beasts of burden mutated under the pollution caused by the Sphere, but a lot of plants and animals would have had to adapt to the conditions or wound up dying out completely.

What I'm saying is that the Vianders and other associates must do a lot of heavy lifting to make things that are not only safe for human consumption and nutritious, but also actually taste good.

I mean, just how much work do they have to do that they have sugar? Something that in real life cost thousands of lives when it was being mass produced by slave labour in plantations. They have ice cream; do they have vanilla? Do they have honey? Are bees still around? Are there enough flowers to continue making honey? Or do they have honey from the before times stored away for special uses only? I have so many food-related questions because food is how people not only survived but live!

I run around administering birth control several times a week.

Not to people, I don’t have that sort of training.

Suppressing fruit or seed pods from a tree can have a number of benefits. Sweet gum trees create spikey balls that weigh down branches and sometimes cause failures, tripping hazards and at the very least create an annoying mess on people lawns. Acorns from Oak trees can be an annoyance for folks who don’t want to hear them dropping on their roof all year long. This is not to mention undesired fruit production.

The trick is timing. This fiasco usually starts in early March with cherries. You see, I have to catch the tree in a very specific stage. I’m waiting for the tree to ovulate. Yep, trees ovulate in case you didn’t know. Depending on specie, their buds will start to flower at different times in spring. It has no bearing on what the leaves are doing, I’m watching the flower buds. If they make it to full flower, they will have been pollinated by our local bee population. Then that flower turns into a fruit or seed. It’s been fertilized. Sound familiar? Nature uses the same tricks in different forms and I think it’s beautiful.

This treatment does not harm the bee population. It’s an injection that doesn’t harm nearby trees, does not have lasting effects and can be skipped in order to allow the tree to produce fruit the following season.

This is another way arborists can improve people’s relationship with trees as an alternative to removal. Once they are gone they are gone and we advocate for retention whenever possible.