[AT] Osages to maples

[Cecil Bearden]

That is a great change.  Osage Orange or Bois DÁrc  (Board Ark) as they 
are called in this country is the biggest problem around water lines.  
The roots will compress the pipe and find or start a leak in a joint.  A 
new shoot will start from a root sometimes 200 ft from the tree.  If you 
start pulling the root, it will lead back to the tree.  If the root is 
large, you can form it into a cane or any other shape and let it dry.  I 
made a cane from a root and it polished up with a great grain and 
beautiful color. Otherwise they will take over a good pasture in a few 
years.  A 6in Osage orange will give my 30K lb trackhoe one heck of a 
pull. The D6D will pop it out then I spend the next half hour chasing 
the roots.....
Great Work Dean!!
Cecil

On 11/5/2019 5:52 PM, Dean Vinson wrote:
>
> About five years ago I started clearing out an old osage orange 
> hedgerow, maybe 150 yards long, that hadn’t been tended in many 
> decades.   Lots of time with the chainsaw, lots of bonfires, lots of 
> work with the Super M dragging logs and pulling roots and hauling 
> firewood, lots of work with the JD 620 and rear blade grading and 
> smoothing. Yesterday I had a crew plant eight new red maple trees on 
> the same line where the osage trees had been, and this afternoon I got 
> the Super M out again to haul trashcans full of water back to them.
>
> The top half of the attached photo is the 2014 view, showing one of my 
> first bonfires as I began clearing out the osage and honeysuckle and 
> briars.   My goal back then was just to clear out some breathing space 
> around a nice mature walnut tree that I’d discovered earlier that year 
> after noticing its top sticking up above the canopy of the older but 
> shorter osage trees.   It’s not visible in the photo but it’d be to 
> the right of the bonfire.   After a couple of years of occasional 
> trimming and cleanup and thinning out, I set my sights on removing the 
> hedgerow completely.   (There’s also another one, but I’m just 
> cleaning it up and will keep many of the big trees).
>
> The bottom half of the attached photo is the view from a few hours 
> ago.   The mass of trees and brambles from the top photo had been just 
> to the left of the little gravel lane behind where the tractor is now 
> sitting. The tall trees behind the tractor had all managed to survive 
> despite being engulfed by the sprawling osages; the dark one in the 
> middle is the big walnut I’d first started clearing out around five 
> years earlier.    Interesting that those trees all lean slightly away 
> from where the osages had been.   The new maples, hardly visible since 
> they’re small, are dead on the centerline of the original hedgerow.
>
> Will be interesting to see how the new trees do over time.   It’s been 
> fun, sort of, plugging away at that scraggly old hedgerow over the 
> years, and darn nice to have a couple old tractors to help.
>
> Dean Vinson
>
> Saint Paris, Ohio
>
>
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