What to do with all that Woodlands timber downed by Hurricane Ike

The supply of tree trunks and stumps left behind by Hurricane Ike has been steadily dwindling. Yet there is time to find some if you are handy at woodworking. One idea is to take some of the hardwood and put it to the side to dry. You can make some beautiful bowls with it if you have a turning lathe. I ran across the article below on how to make bowls out of the cut wood. Some of us may want to try this out. Oak trees provide some pretty wood. Pine trees provide a soft wood that is more difficult to dry out. There are variations in between. Of course we can keep warm by using the wood in our fireplaces. My grandmother utilized pine prolifically in her fireplace but of course a lot of creosote accumulated in the chimney, creating a fire hazard that called for a Chimney Sweep every few years. I am planning to make a chair out of one stump. It will require a little sanding and varnishing, but the end result will be a nice looking piece of lawn furniture to sit on. So here is the "how to" method for changing a block of tree trunk to a bowl.

Making a bowl out of a piece of tree trunk

Arbor Day 2009 in The Woodlands - time to plant some trees

Arbor day is right around the corner. Here in The Woodlands, we will have the opportunity to acquire free seedlings and add to our forest, whether it be in our yard or in a green area. Yes, some people and some groups will plant along the paths or in parks where the seedlings are not likely to be mowed down. If you do that, I advise to put a bright ribbon on the seedling to show it is not a weed. This year we lost many trees to Hurricane Ike. If we plant many trees on Arbor Day, we can at least do our part to compensate somewhat for that damage. Seedlings will be available at Rob Flemming Park in the Village of Creekside Park near the Gosling entrance to the village from 10AM to 2PM. There is always an excellent variety of trees offered. This there will be 35,000 seedlings issued in 12 varieties. The trees offered will include canopy as well as under story trees. Also enjoy inflatable rides, rock wall climb, free pony rides, hay rides, and a petting zoo.


Related Article - 2008 Arbor Day in The Woodlands

Composting in The Woodlands

I have meant to write about this for so long! I had the pleasure of discussing this with a resident who I casually met today and he took me over the edge to write this article. Remember that I give you larger pictures, and you can see any one in higher resolution by clicking on it. Definition: "Composting is the decomposition of plant remains and other once-living materials to make an earthy, dark, crumbly substance that is excellent for adding to houseplants or enriching garden soil. It is the way to recycle your yard and kitchen wastes, and is a critical step in reducing the volume of garbage needlessly sent to landfills for disposal."¹ For a more technical presentation of this subject, you may want to refer to the website dedicated to his subject.¹ Note that the process of decomposition includes bacteria, water, and organic material. Decomposition produces heat, as much as 130-140 degrees F. Mine generally runs about 110 or so.

An entire year has passed by since my first lesson in composting from the Woodlands Association. I knew zilch about it at the beginning and felt totally incapable of doing this. Little did I know then that one year later there would be a terrific pile of material to use for fertilizing my garden. Definitely quality material! In addition to the composting process, this method also produces plenty of earth worms without any attempt on your part to introduce them to the compost pile. I am now going to share with you how to make this. If you like to garden, you will not be disappointed. If you like to fish with night crawlers, you will like it also.

First I recommend you take the association class on the first Saturday of the month, typically offered in the fall and winter. The paid staff in the service company will sell you one of these green wire cages, if you wish, at any time - at a scheduled class or from your ad hoc request. I say do it! They are available from the association at a reasonable cost. Be prepared to pay $25 cash for one. As you can see in the photo below, the bins weather very well and hold the compost material neatly within a confined area, providing a means to aerate the content while releasing excess water.

Next, find a location where you can discretely put your bin without alarming your neighbors. The location could be in a shady or sunny spot. I chose a shady spot. For one single deployment, you will need enough space for two of them. By using these bins and following advice on household stuff to help decompose your leaves, you should have something that blends with the environment and not smell bad. Note that composting is regulated by deed restrictions in The Woodlands.

Place your wire cage at one end of the space that you have dedicated for this purpose. Fill it with your fall leaves. You can use deciduous tree leaves and pine needles. I used both quite successfully. Fill it to the top. You will need as much as you can get into the cage to produce a sufficient volume of material for your gardening needs. Crush the material as much as you can to produce space for more raw material. Water the leaves down well after each few inches you have crushed.

After packing and crushing the leaves to the top, you will be ready to start your process. Start collecting your egg shells, potato peels, unused raw vegetable materials, coffee and tea grounds (with paper filters), and anything green without seeds, into a container. Green works best because of the nitrogen content. I use a large plastic margarine container which seals in the odor, and I keep it under the sink, ready to access when we cook. Don't throw everything except the kitchen sink into this. Be specific - carrot peels, lettuce leaves, etc. I occasionally put some left-over cooked rice into it as well, but make sure the food is kept down so you do not have a smelly compost pile afterward. Tell your spouse or family cook(s) the plan and what should be put into the container. No meat, generally no cooked foods, nothing that will cause your neighbors to knock on your front door and read you the riot act!

This will not be your sole source of decomposition agents. You will also use grass cuttings and anything from the outside that is leafy and green without seeds.

Now you need to put this material into the compost pile. I do this every week or two weeks, whenever the indoor container fills or whenever I cut the grass. Dig a small hole in your pile and place some of the organic stuff from your can into it. Cover the hole with leaves. Place the organic stuff in as many places as practical a few inches deep into the compost pile. Water it down into the compost pile.

Once a month, pick up the green cage and place it on the other side of the space you have reserved for the cage. You are now turning your compost. The top of the pile will end up on the bottom of the new pile and the bottom on top. You can use a pitch fork or even your hands to do this. I use my hands but usually with a plastic glove. After all, you are picking up rotting material. Take a few inches off of the top of the pile and place it in the cage. Make sure the outside leaves are rotated inward into the pile, because the outside will be the first to dry out. After transferring a few inches, water down the transferred material. Saturate the material with water. Continue doing this until all the material has been transferred to the new location. Now you have turned your compost pile. If you have some organic stuff in the house to feed your pile, this is a good time to empty it into the new pile.

Well how about the worms? After you have turned the material, check to see if you have any worms on the ground surface where the pile was located. If so, transfer as many worms as you can find into the new pile. This is accomplished by simply using your hand as a blade to pull the worms out of the ground. They have been in a whole in the ground under your pile. You will scrape some dirt out in the process. The first couple of months you will not likely have any worms, but in a few months you will see them when you are picking up the last part of the material with your hands, transferring the last of the pile to the new location. As the pile matures, you will see worms in the pile itself.

At the end, when harvesting your compost pile, you will want to screen filter the material with a compost filter. I am not doing this part of the process this year, so the quality of my harvest will not be optimum. One filters the material to take out the twigs and all the matter that has not sufficiently decomposed, it can be used for potted plants or sensitive plant situations. I will use it for a vegetable garden this Spring, so I am willing to put all the material into the garden whether fully decomposed or not. Insufficient decomposition will result in extra heat in your garden and may impact the production of the garden.

So now you have it. It is never too late to start a pile. You obtain information from the association for your cage(bin) at this website:
Woodlands Association
Click here for a schedule of classes.
¹quoted from How to Compost.org.

So you want tree color in The Woodlands Texas - Fall Color Ratings

Color generally means hardwood and decorative species, but let's make it deciduous native trees as our focus. Color is not only possible here, it is very achievable with the right mixture of trees. We have many natives and should use them wherever possible to maintain the ecological relationships about us. Let's view some of the trees in our neighborhoods and parks as examples to plant for color. These are but a sampling. I hope to add more as I have time. Note that photographs are captioned beneath the photo. Click on the photo to see a larger view.



A sampling from leaves picked up off the ground underneath those trees having color.



Yaupon provides the red berries for a festive season. This year, the squirrels are more into berries. This may be a fallout from the loss of so many acorns and pine cones. Bit for sure, this small tree add much color to our neighborhoods in the fall and winter. A 10 on my fall color scale.


The Sycamore provides varying color depending on the location in the sun. This one is surrounded by trees and gets less sun and less exposure to frost than some of the trees out in the open. A 6 on my Fall color scale color scale.



Sycamore



Redbud. This magnificent tree shows off its color each Spring and Fall. A 8 on my Fall color scale.



Bald Cypress. Although the color is not bright, it is uniform and showy. A 9 on my Fall color scale.



River Birch. With it ornate bark and lively yellow colors, this tree is one of my own favorites. A 9 on my Fall color scale.



Shumard Oak. A 10 on my fall color scale.



Pecan. Spectacular yellows are found in the forest with this tree. It's dramatic yellow leaves contrast to the deep green of the forest. A 10 on my fall color scale.

One of the most beautiful missing here.

The problem we face these days is the public admiration of our beautiful outlawed tree, public enemy number one, the Chinese Tallow. This invasive tree, we often love, is not presented as an alternative for planting. See the related article in this blog.

How did our trees fare from the fury of Hurricane IKE?

Here in The Woodlands, there was really a big mess after the storm. Right afterward, one could hardly go from one place to another. Day by day, more trees were cleared from the road and put to the side so that traffic could pass. Residents helped some where they could to make the roads passable.

Mobility was the primary issue of course, but our interest here is mostly on what could have been done to prevent the loss of trees or damage to the houses. All in all, I believe nothing could have realistically been done. There were some interesting things learned however.

Trees are usually top heavy around here, especially pines. Many of our pines grew up surrounded by the forest, especially peer trees as they all reached towards the heavens competing for light. Tree branches would die underneath the canopy as the trees aged, leaving the trees to spread out and mature in high places. The twisting winds of a direct hit of a hurricane generates many rotational currents that often twists the tree. So the top is broken off, like spinning off its top. The failure of the trunk will occur wherever the weakest point is located, often leaving 1/2, or 2/3 or 1/3 or even less of the tree above the ground. I show an example of this phenomenon in the accompanying photographs. No type of tree was exempt from falling. Some, including the pine tree were uprooted. I saw about every kind there is, down on the street or down in a yard. Our parks were heavily affected with many downed trees.


There were many trees damaged or fallen by the strong winds. Each homeowner had the responsibility to clean up the yard, front and back. Often, there were broken branches to be sawed into manageable size pieces of wood. A chain saw came in handy for that purpose. But afterward, it seemed to take forever before the trash trucks came by. Many homeowners had their yard maintenance contractors haul away the refuse. One reason for that was that the grass was going to die under the refuse. It was better to pay the contractors to haul the stuff away. Putting the refuse on the street was prohibited since it would stop the water drainage systems, which in fact actually happened during the storm. Neighbors pitched in to help each other to clear the storm drains during the height of the flooding and after the hurricane already passed through. So many limbs and leaves had washed into the storm sewer entrances, causing major street flooding.

Afterward, we had to clean up the small stuff which turned out to be a major chore also. It was amazing how many small stems and dead branches were broken by the winds and scattered on the ground.

One additional observation about the damage was what happened to the Yaupons. The wind swirled them around like a mix master. They entangled their limbs with each other and the winds made them lean in different directions than they did before. We thought they were far enough away from the house only to find out that some of the taller branches leaned close to the ground and reached all the way to pound the side of the house in the strong winds. Today, I have still have branches laying low to the ground that used to be high in the canopy and am trimming them back. In the middle part of the canopy where the Yaupons normally reach, the branches of other trees fell, such as pines and oaks. Getting them down out of the Yaupons was a chore. I just finished that chore!

One more observation that is worth considering for the future - if you cut your vines in your trees and leave them to decay naturally, a hurricane will change your mind for the future. The vines are very very slow to decay up in the trees. I ended up with bundles of old vine stems that became sails in the wind. That caused some of the trees and Yaupons to completely change their configuration, entangling many of the limbs. The good thing was that the Yaupons were very bendable. They swayed and danced with the wind regardless if the wind was twisting or straight lining with the wind.

One piece of advice - always trim the stuff away from the house at the beginning of the summer. That is needed to let the house breathe properly as well as protect the house from incurring damage due to tree or plant limbs too near the house. Also, board up windows vulnerable to tree limb damage even if the limbs seem far enough away, within reason of course.

In short, we love our trees and would be highly upset if anyone cut them down because they are a threat in a hurricane. We all know they are a threat in hurricanes, but we lost not one person here due to our trees! We are The Woodlands. Your trees are ours and ours are yours. Property value is dependent on you being a responsible caretaker of our forest. We do have covenants that include protection for our elder trees (these are part of a legal obligation every homeowner has agreed upon in buying a home here).

Tree identification by bark

I have taken the identification of trees in The Woodlands Texas a step further by photographing and documenting several species of local trees, found mostly in local parks. This is a living article and will be expanded as I find time.

The bark of a tree is an indicator of the type of tree, but it is very difficult to identify the exact species by its bark, although we will often find several variations of bark for the same type of tree, revealing the actual species. Look for the color and texture of the bark. Our goal is to be able to walk through the forest without looking up and calling the tree by its probable name. The leaves will usually make the final distinction in "name that tree".

Bark on trees here in The Woodlands is typical of Southeast Texas forests. One will find a great deal of white on the bark and often evidence of Woodpecker damage. The softer woods will typically have more damage than the hard woods. If you are interested in the use of bark, there is a fairly lengthy internet article produced by the US Department of Agriculture at this link.

Texture

Smooth bark: Yaupon, Magnolia, Crepe Myrtle, American Holly

Checkered bark: White Oak, Willow Oak, Chinese Tallow

Flakey or Peeling bark: Pine, Cypress, River Birch, Sycamore

Grooved bark: Sweetgum, Live Oak, Pecan

Deeply grooved bark: Persimmon, Weeping Willow

Directory in alphabetical order
American Holly
Bald Cypress
Chinese Tallow
Crepe Myrtle
Crepe Myrtle2
Elm
Live Oak
Loblolly Pine
Pecan
Texas Persimmon
River Birch
Red Mulberry
Southern Magnolia
Sycamore
Sweetgum
Yaupon
Weeping Willow
White Oak
Willow Oak



1-2 Sweetgum
Native Indians used to chew the bark of this tree; it was their chewing gum.

1-4 White Oak
The bark of this tree was used by American native Indians to treat Diarrhea and other intestinal problems.


1-5 Loblolly Pine
Pine bark has been found to be a good antioxidant. An extract from this bark is used as a natural treatment for the heart and cancer among other. The chemicals believed to affect certain diseases in humans will vary in each pine species. Refer to this article for more information.
1-6 White Oak


1-7 Chinese Tallow


1-9 Southern Magnolia


1-10 Texas Persimmon
The bark of the Persimmon has medicinal attributes, especially for diarrhea and dysentery.


1-11 Willow Oak



2-14 American Holly



1-13 Weeping Willow



1-14 Yaupon


1-15 Elm


1-16 Crepe Myrtle


2-2 Red Mulberry



2-7 Pecan



2-21 Crepe Myrtle



2-23 Bald Cypress

2-24 Leaves Live Oak

2-25 Live Oak

River Birch


Sycamore



Related Articles

1. Tree Identification by leaf
   

Public enemy #1 in The Woodlands Texas - Chinese Tallow

This tree must leave and leave now from our local ecology. In the Houston area, it is now the most populous of all trees and it is not native. There are approximately 1/2 million trees in our region and each adult tree is capable of generating 100,000 seeds in one year. This is an ornamental tree that is very destructive and is now outlawed from being sold in tree nurseries. It initially arrived from an idea that Benjamin Franklin had many years ago. He saw benefit in the plant, but it seems he did not understand the consequences of introducing it to our American forests. The tree is almost indestructable. It takes every opportunity to multiply, from weak or damaged ecological areas, to prairies and areas without trees, to just plain dominance with its killing chemicals, overtaking other weaker species. Yes, the tree has toxic leaves, toxic sap and toxic seed pods that serve as a herbicide to eliminate other plants. The green seeds and leaves are toxic to humans and animals as well. It changes the chemistry of the soil to spread its roots and sprout through its root system as well as through its seed pods. It creates mono-specific forests this way. That is, it becomes the exclusive species of the forest. I have an example in the photograph to the left, located on Reedy Pond in Indian Springs.

This is the ornamental tree we do love in the fall, because it turns such bright red and yellow colors. Sorry folks! But this species has to go!

The Woodlands Association has a program in place to remove these trees from common areas, but we must take care of the problem in our own backyards. How do we accomplish such a feat to protect our forest? The roots become a serious problem in everyone's yard that is infested with this prohibited species. I cannot see any other way than placing the responsibility on the RDRC groups, but first they have to amend the codes to have that authority. Any other ideas how to get these out of our backyards? Our trees are our most important shared asset! My tree is your tree and your tree is mine. Whatever I see in your yard I appreciate and what you see in mind you appreciate.

Some photos from Forestry Images¹:

How do you rid your yards of these? A chain saw is of course a good tool to use. However, I just used a tree cutting saw; it worked for a small and a medium sized tree. First you need to trim the limbs off and top it. That leaves a tree trunk to cut down. I will have a professional bring down the big tree I have. I cut two trees down in my yard and have two more to go. I found that a smooth cut is less useful than a chopped cut. The last tree that I cut down, I sawed to the core, then chopped the peripheral material out and then pulled the tree trunk down with a rope. That left some jagged surfaces on the stump, which helped me to kill the root system. To kill the roots, I took vinegar and cleaned my coffee pot with it. Then I took the hot vinegar and poured it carefully and slowly into the newly sawed stump. The vinegar was soaked up quickly by the tree remains. That should keep it from regenerating itself.

Disposal questions have been answered by the association, waste management, and two experts on trees. We can recycle the limbs, leaves, roots in the normal method. Our hot composting process for all practical purposes breaks down most of the allelopathic substances produced by plants, including this tree.

1. www.forestry.images.com