N.S. trees inoculate against Dutch elm
The Cape Breton Regional Municipality is branching out in a new direction as it fights a disease attacking the stately elm trees hat line its streets.
Forestree Care, a New Brunswick company is inoculating 150 Sydney trees against Dutch elm disease using a bio-vaccine called Dutch elm.
Forestree Care arborist Ed Czerwinski (BScF'04) said it’s the first commercial injection of the bio-vaccine in Nova Scotia.
Dutch Trig contains distilled water and spores of a fungus that stimulate a tree’s resistance to the organism that causes Dutch elm.
Dutch Trig will only work on trees already free of the disease.
Selected trees will be inoculated three times over three years.
Forestree Care charges about $100 for each tree based on its size, but Czerwinski said that’s a small price to pay compared to the esthetic cost of losing a 100-year-old elm, and removal costs of $1,000 to $2,000 for diseased trees.
Dutch elm disease, a fungus spread by the elm bark beetle, has infected an unknown number of the estimated 4,000 elm trees in Sydney and surrounding areas.
Czerwinski will inoculate 150 in the municipality.
~ Chronicle Herald, May 27, 2010
