Emerald Ash Borer

[toughguy]

I have a 15-20 foot ash tree in my front yard. Does anyone know what it costs to have a tree this size treated for the emerald ash borer? I my mind I have 3 options.

Wait until the tree becomes infested and chop it down.

Chop it down now and replace it

treat it and hope for the best.

I'm leaning towards option 1 if it costs too much to have it treated. What do you guys think?

[Powerstroke]

Its not too terribly expensive to treat the tree yourself. You can buy products and do a root drench or you can call a service and see what they will charge.

I wouldn't cut it down, but I might consider planting another tree.

[fishuhalik]

The service I work for will be treating for emerald ash borer within the week, we will be doing an injection instead of a drench. Good for 2 years of protection. We haven't figured out pricing yet but I'm hearing $45-$60 per tree. Can I post the name of the company I work for? If it makes any difference I wouldn't get anything out of it, my branch is up in Vadnais Heights and we don't service Lakeville out of my branch.

[Dotch]

Interesting. If it's as effective as it's rumored to be, that kind of pricing would be worth it relative to the alternative for a lot of people. We have a row of 5 or 6 ash on the south side of the house that provide wonderful shade and keep the house cool in summer. Would rather spend it on treatment than the electricity to run the AC.

[DARK30]

I have a bunch of nice ash trees...hopefully they make it. Remember dutch elm disease...there are still lots of elms.

[toughguy]

It's still relatively small so I think I'll try and treat it myself. Heck if I chopped it down and planted a maple there would probably be a maple disease next.

[WaveWacker]

Any chemical brand names out there for doing the root drench?

[LwnmwnMan2]

The one I keep hearing advertised is Bonide's "Eight".

Wouldn't any 'borer / catepillar' insecticide that works systemically work though?

Thankfully I don't have many Ash trees. I understand the big concern with St. Paul and Minneapolis, as well as outstate, but like Dark said, look at Dutch Elm disease, and we still have Elms.

Yes, there were millions of trees lost east of here, but everything I heard before about 13 / 14 weeks ago, was there was nothing that could be done.

Now everything you hear is "get out there, buy our product, and save your Ash".

Which is it? And if we can save the trees, won't the borer die out with nothing to eat? Or will it mutate into something else?

Also, here is a link to the U's extension service in regards to the EAB.....

Emerald Ash Borer

They say do not apply any insecticides to trees outside of the range of the Ash Borer. Anyone know what the range of the borer is?

[Dotch]

I have lots of ash trees. However, they were planted some 20 years before I bought the place and are just now becoming nice shade trees. Since we've owned the place, we've planted a diverse selection of trees including hard maple, bur oak, red oak, hackberry, spruce, white pine, Austrian pine, arborvitae and the list goes on. In reference to the elms, there are a lot fewer elms than there used to be when I was a kid and quite a few of those are not necessarily American elm. The problem with blanket use of insecticide is we increase the risk of the pest developing resistance as well as money being wasted on unnecessary treatment. Plus, it will be difficult to treat all the trees scattered across the landscape. Being in outstate, we haven't been made aware of any EAB outbreaks, yet, so I don't plan on purchasing any Bayer Advanced or calling any tree care folks just yet. It would be a shame to lose the ash trees on the south side of our house however. This may have been posted somewhere else but it answered a lot of the questions I had.

http://www.extension.umn.edu/extensionnews/2009/dont-treat-ash.html