Most phone calls I get start with “I think my trees are dying”. No one likes to look up and see something wrong with their trees. I usually start by reassuring people that there are varying degrees of unhealthy trees and they don’t all end in tree death. However, in order to diagnose anything, we […]
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Author: Kris Tiles
Protect your planted trees this winter
We have moved into November and a sacred holiday to Wisconsinites is approaching… deer hunting. For those of us particularly interested in trees, this is one important management tool for protecting young trees. As the snow approaches and food options become more limited, it is a good time to think about further protecting trees from […]
Explore Your Woods Together
Our job as Extension Forestry Educators is to serve as interpreters of the language of forest management. Even that term itself, forest management, feels foreign to many woodland owners. Admittedly, sometimes I miss the mark, like trying to explain basal area to a group of landowners off the cuff. But most of the time, connecting […]
What is forest certification?
Do you remember not so long ago when Harry Potter books were quite the rage? One of those books, Goblet of Fire, sold over 5 million copies. In total, the seven books sold over 450 million copies. Goblet of Fire was 734 pages, or 367 sheets of paper. For that one book, that is 1,835,000,000 […]
Leasing your sugarbush
It’s that perfect weather, with the fire roaring, and you sit down at the breakfast table with your steaming mug of coffee, a stack of warm pancakes, and that sweet local Wisconsin maple syrup. Chances are pretty good it’s from Wisconsin anyway, since we are 4th in the nation for production. In 2010, we reported […]
It’s a Beautiful Day to Be Neighborly
I got home from work the other day, and sat down to take off my work boots and put on my play boots. This led me to start whistling a familiar childhood song. (That would be Mr Roger’s neighborhood theme, for those that haven’t caught the reference.) With that tune came this month’s article topic, […]
When is fire good?
Fire in forested settings is a tricky subject to broach. Recently in Wisconsin, we’ve been experiencing the effects of smoke from wildfires in Canada. We’ve seen headlines about wildfires blazing out West. Locally, once the trees start to lose their leaves, Wisconsin experiences a higher than normal risk of wildfires. With all this information, it […]
Now is the time to plan for the future
I recently I took down the 2017 calendar, and hung up the 2018. It’s actually a really beautiful calendar of Wisconsin natural features. Along with those calendars came some work planning for the year. Funny enough, it turns out that my blog topic for the month is on management plans. The timing for this topic […]
What to expect when you contact a forester
The last couple of weeks, we’ve been teaching our Learn About Your Land classes for landowners in the southeast part of the state. Most of these landowners enjoy their woods, but haven’t thought about it from a management perspective. For some this is a family property they visited as a kid, or land where they […]