Sudden Oak Life by Lee Klinger

Last week I examined and re-photographed a hillside of sick oaks in Toro Canyon, near Santa Barbara, that received fire mimicry treatment in January of 2009. By January of 2010 the oaks were responding very well (see Toro Canyon oaks). Due to the good results the property owner decided to hold off on additional treatments, despite my recommendations to treat the oaks again.

The results below indicate that the oaks showed very good improvement up to two years following the treatment, but by the third year, many of the oaks began showing a marked decline in health, due, I believe, to the lack of any follow up treatments. As can be seen in the photos, the oaks after three years are still notably healthier than they were initially, but many have shown a decline in canopy health compared to one year ago. Other property owners have similarly been fooled into thinking that, given the good initial response of their trees, further treatments were no longer necessary.

The lesson here is that a single fire mimicry treatment is not sufficient to reverse the many years of poor soil fertility and oak health.

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Last week I visited Santa Barbara to check on a large stand of oaks undergoing restoration using fire mimicry. The oaks first received the treatments three years ago. Below are the results.

Please feel free to share these and the many other results posted on this blog with friends and neighbors who care about their oaks, and who do not wish to use toxic fungicides and pesticides.

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Last week I visited some oaks in Santa Barbara which have been undergoing fire mimicry treatments, some for two years, others for three years. Below are the results, unedited at usual.

Three year results:

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Last month (on December 1, 2011) severe Santa Ana winds blew through the central coast of California downing and damaging thousands of trees. At Hearst Castle, winds were recorded in excess of 70 miles an hour. Fortunately, none of the oaks involved in the case studies being conducted at Hearst Castle were lost, though several lost some limbs and many leaves were blown off the canopies. Despite the high winds, a number of the oaks are still showing marked improvement over the six years of records following initial treatment with fire mimicry methods. The photos below fairly show the improvement in some oaks, as well as the oaks damaged by the high winds.

For previous years results from Hearst Castle see Sudden Oak Life posts here and here.

I have prescribed an enhanced level of treatments for these oaks in the coming year, and we will see next year whether or not the oaks have recovered from this wind event.

Note, the first four sets of photos show, alternately, treated vs. untreated oaks.

Treated:

Untreated:

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On Monday I visited some oaks in Marin County that have been receiving fire mimicry treatments for seven years. I have been working with my good friends and colleagues Leith Carstarphen of EcoLogic Landscaping and Alan Mart for several years to improve the health of trees and soils on this property in Fairfax. The results have been outstanding. It is interesting to note that at least three of the oaks shown below have had signs of sudden oak death infection since before treatments began, yet they appear to be in remarkable health for being diseased.

Also note, in case number 20041129.4 there are several fruit trees in the foreground (peach, left; citrus, center; pear, right) that have also been treated with fire mimicry. Check out how well those fruit trees have responded.

While these results are only a small portion of the hundreds of case studies that document the efficacy of fire mimicry, they are important in showing that the improvement in tree health with these treatments is more than just a short-term, transitory effect.

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