Is Something Wrong With My White Oak Tree?

Mike in Massillon asks, “I just had a question about a large white oak, and every year when it blooms it has those long brown catkins. They fall to the ground and make such a mess. This year it’s like half or a third of the catkins made it. I don’t know if that’s an indication of the health of the tree or the winter. The tree is probably 20 years old.’

Okay. Weather will determine the blooming cycle on all the spring flowering trees. Apple orchards deal with this, but it also happens on the nut trees as well. What will happen is that the flower can start to come out and then the cold snap happens and it knocks the flowers back and you’ll get significantly less nut harvest generally.

It could also be something where the trees are not getting enough nutrients. So you could use that all-season fertilizer, on a tree that and size that age, instead of the five scoops recommended on the package you’re gonna use more like ten scoops. A tree that age is gonna have a deeper root system, so I would take a screwdriver or a dowel rod of some type, and I would poke holes in a circle out from the trunk of the tree, probably six to eight feet. Then go down about eight inches, and then you’re gonna put a partial scoop in each hole. Do that in maybe 40 spots around the tree.

What that’ll do is it’s gonna help get nutrients down to the root system of the tree right away. That’s gonna feed it for the whole year, but it could just be a weather thing as well. So sometimes, it’s hard to say, but those are the two main causes when we get less of a flowering in the spring. There should be less acorns this year as well.

A white oak is actually one of the largest acorns of all the different oak species. It’s actually highly sought after for feeding the deer and for turkey. It’s probably more of an environmental thing than a nutrient thing. I mean I can remember last year it sounded like hail falling in the woods when I was out there in the fall.

The weather will determine our nut harvest in the fall and the spring, no different than the apple orchards. If the apple orchards get a frost when the blossoms are fully formed, then it’s gonna reduce the apple harvest that year.

Questions? Email us at [email protected] or call one of our two locations: Portage (330-499-0101) or Everhard (330-492-1243).