Trying to save my pine (again)

[davidwyby]

Make it epic David. We're counting on you since us Northern latitude folks are mostly in the dark now.

Sun goes down at 4:35

I was cutting dusteuc firewood yesterday evening in the dark with a head light…in a tee shirt. 😆

 

[stikine]

Haha, tee shirt. We went from 17 degrees with a foot of snow to rain and 46 degrees today. What a miserable mess SE Alaska winters are.

 

[davidwyby]

I don’t see bug holes and all the dead is on the sunny side. So maybe lack of water. We have auto sprinklers but that is just surface water on clay soil.

We were saying maybe just a pine in the desert thing but they’ve lived this long. Neighborhood used to be full of Aleppos and or Montereys. Maybe they have lifespan.

 

[davidwyby]

 

[davidwyby]

I should have taken video

 

[Kaveman]

Spray it with water from the underside and from all over with a hose. Get it wet. Stemflow will penatrate your clay no problem, but she never sees stemflow without rain. Trees also absorb water through their bark and micro pores on the leaves/needles. Bring the rain.

What's it gonna hurt to try?

 

[davidwyby]

When I realized it a couple months ago I started deep watering. Bit late in the summer though.

 

[Burnham]

Hard to not think about some changes to your climate (even hotter and dryer?) maybe being the straw that is breaking the backs of those off-site trees.

 

[davidwyby]

Hard to not think about some changes to your climate (even hotter and dryer?) maybe being the straw that is breaking the backs of those off-site trees.

I think that combined with me not keeping up with care (deep watering) to offset.

 

[Nutball]

I'm wondering if borers find a way to survive hidden in the bark until a tree dies or is changed by whatever near death conditions make it possible for the borers to penetrate the bark. I've brought fresh healthy hickory into my house to speed dry and stay out of reach of borers only to find adult borers emerging months later. Around here it is a matter of days that a white pine is cut up before you hear munching in the wood.

 

[davidwyby]

I guess my reason for posting about it again was trying to figure out if it was burnt or bugs. I don’t see bug holes…

 

[SeanKroll]

Can you under- plant, keeping it while you can, and have the replacement growing?

 

[Kaveman]

Air spade is another option. You're in a desert on clay, that means hardpan. You've gotta break that crap up, get some water and oxygen to the roots. Then, plant a decent sized ponderosa sapling on the sunniest side. Ponderosa isn't a shade tolerant species, they like the sun and won't burn too bad. Your problem is in your soil, your location, and your climate. You're in low desert, and most pines are not that.

 

[davidwyby]

Good ideas

Sissoo smack in the middle of the yard

Where it belongs…

 

[Marc-Antoine]

I guess my reason for posting about it again was trying to figure out if it was burnt or bugs. I don’t see bug holes…

The mothers of a lot of borers are attracted by the the chemicals emitted by the trees under stress or dying. So they may have laid their eggs inside even before you noticed that the tree was in serious trouble. The adult form can bore the bark to get out when the limb/ tree is still alive. The modalities vary with the species of course. But a hole in the bark is a wound and the living bark try to block it by filling the void with pitch. That's the droplets seen in your pics. I bet that you can find a hole under each of them (or at the source if it has flown down).
The hollow holes which you expect to see are made by other borers more inclined to fest on the already dead parts.