# Grafting cedar limbs



## Steve Neul (Sep 2, 2011)

Anyone know of a quick and easy way to graft limbs on a eastern red cedar. While I was working Friday the moron county people butchered 22 cedar trees I have on the front of my property. As is I know the limbs won't come back on their own.


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

They will come back, our a hole neighbor planted a bunch of cedars 5 ft from the property line and we have cut them off on our side quite a few times and they keep coming back


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## Steve Neul (Sep 2, 2011)

Catpower said:


> They will come back, our a hole neighbor planted a bunch of cedars 5 ft from the property line and we have cut them off on our side quite a few times and they keep coming back


Over the last 30 years any cedars on my place you cut the limbs back and they don't come back. I think I'm going to have to put up a fence in front of the trees and plant vines to cover the damage. My first thought was to plant another row of cedars in front of the damaged trees but that's too much work and takes too long. Cedars grow slow.


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## GeorgeC (Jul 30, 2008)

Steve Neul said:


> Over the last 30 years any cedars on my place you cut the limbs back and they don't come back. I think I'm going to have to put up a fence in front of the trees and plant vines to cover the damage. My first thought was to plant another row of cedars in front of the damaged trees but that's too much work and takes too long. Cedars grow slow.


It would take more work and longer to graft limbs. 

George


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

Steve Neul said:


> Over the last 30 years any cedars on my place you cut the limbs back and they don't come back. I think I'm going to have to put up a fence in front of the trees and plant vines to cover the damage. My first thought was to plant another row of cedars in front of the damaged trees but that's too much work and takes too long. Cedars grow slow.



I guess I misspoke, what I meant to say is we have cut them off and it didn't kill the branch, these have continued to grow, might be a different kind of cedar


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## Steve Neul (Sep 2, 2011)

Catpower said:


> I guess I misspoke, what I meant to say is we have cut them off and it didn't kill the branch, these have continued to grow, might be a different kind of cedar


The trees I have on my place are the eastern red cedar, the same wood you get aromatic cedar from. From what I understand cutting the limbs and having them not come back is a common trait of evergreen trees. This tree I cut the lower limbs off once 30 years ago so I could mow under it and not so much as twig has tried to grow back.


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## Toolman50 (Mar 22, 2015)

Steve, 
This is the wrong time of the year to do anything. Work the trees in cool/cold weather. This gives you plenty of time to talk to a knowledgeable arborist.


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## Steve Neul (Sep 2, 2011)

Toolman50 said:


> Steve,
> This is the wrong time of the year to do anything. Work the trees in cool/cold weather. This gives you plenty of time to talk to a knowledgeable arborist.


I was being a bit facetious about grafting limbs. That would probably entail 1000 limbs and I have a whole lot less free time than I used to. 

I did do the work transplanting the cedars I have during the winter. You know how hot and dry it can get here in summer. I even did this project when we were having a drought every summer. It's one of the reasons it took me 10 years to complete the row of trees.


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

Steve Neul said:


> The trees I have on my place are the eastern red cedar, the same wood you get aromatic cedar from. From what I understand cutting the limbs and having them not come back is a common trait of evergreen trees. This tree I cut the lower limbs off once 30 years ago so I could mow under it and not so much as twig has tried to grow back.



I think his are mountain cedars, but we never cut the branches close to the trunk, just the ones sticking through the fence so they are still at least 5 feet long


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## Steve Neul (Sep 2, 2011)

Catpower said:


> I think his are mountain cedars, but we never cut the branches close to the trunk, just the ones sticking through the fence so they are still at least 5 feet long


I wonder if mountain cedar is the same thing as western cedar. Makes it very confusing to call two completely different trees cedar. 

I think the only solution for me is to plant bamboo in front of the trees. It's evergreen and will grow to 20' high in a month or so. I have some against a side fence that is becoming a nuisance so I have lots that could easily be transplanted. I've already moved two that have traveled into my yard which had to go anyway.


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## Sawdust512 (Jul 13, 2017)

I have cut my cedars back and they grow back very well. I think if you cut the limbs back beyond the damage you should see new growth within a couple of months. A clean cut makes alll of the difference.


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

Steve Neul said:


> I wonder if mountain cedar is the same thing as western cedar. Makes it very confusing to call two completely different trees cedar.
> 
> I think the only solution for me is to plant bamboo in front of the trees. It's evergreen and will grow to 20' high in a month or so. I have some against a side fence that is becoming a nuisance so I have lots that could easily be transplanted. I've already moved two that have traveled into my yard which had to go anyway.


I read or heard, that there really is only one true cedar in the North American continent, what we call cedars are really junipers, but don't quote me I am getting old and fuzzy LOL

I used to have a customer that had about 25 acres on the southeast side of Inwood and Walnut in Dallas, he had lived there for years before the city had come to him so to keep it quiet he planted a row of bamboo along the streets, and had put down steel banding about 6 inches into the soil to stop the roots from spreading, after about 25-30 years the steel rusted away and the bamboo literally infested his acreage. But he had gotten older and couldn't keep up with it so he just kept it clear where he wanted it


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## Steve Neul (Sep 2, 2011)

Catpower said:


> I read or heard, that there really is only one true cedar in the North American continent, what we call cedars are really junipers, but don't quote me I am getting old and fuzzy LOL
> 
> I used to have a customer that had about 25 acres on the southeast side of Inwood and Walnut in Dallas, he had lived there for years before the city had come to him so to keep it quiet he planted a row of bamboo along the streets, and had put down steel banding about 6 inches into the soil to stop the roots from spreading, after about 25-30 years the steel rusted away and the bamboo literally infested his acreage. But he had gotten older and couldn't keep up with it so he just kept it clear where he wanted it


All over dallas I have seen bamboo used as a privacy fence so I thought I would give it a try. I have a road on my property going down the side that is less than 10' from the fence. My daughter used to ride her bike up and down that road all the time. Then my neighbor on that side even though he has 12 acres put a dog pen on his place about 30' from the property line and put a pit bull in there that would growl and snarl at anyone on that road so I planted the bamboo there in hopes it would grow thick enough the dog really wouldn't see anyone there. The plan didn't really work, I only put in three plants to see what would happen and it took quite a while for it to get established. Then unlike the bamboo in dallas mine is pretty thin the bottom 2 to 3 feet. By the time the stuff got to really going the neighbor got rid of the dog and my daughter outgrew the bicycle.


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

Once it gets established it spreads like wild fire, but to keep in in an area use about 10 ga steel buried on edge about 6 inches deep, might have to go a little deeper but it spreads with it's roots, stop the roots stop the bamboo


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## Toolman50 (Mar 22, 2015)

Steve Neul said:


> I did do the work transplanting the cedars I have during the winter. You know how hot and dry it can get here in summer. I even did this project when we were having a drought every summer. It's one of the reasons it took me 10 years to complete the row of trees.


After 10 years of planting and nurturing a living wall of trees, I bet you were big time pissed that the county would come in and do a whack job like that. 
You wonder what were they thinking. Of course the answer is they weren't thinking.


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## Steve Neul (Sep 2, 2011)

Toolman50 said:


> After 10 years of planting and nurturing a living wall of trees, I bet you were big time pissed that the county would come in and do a whack job like that.
> You wonder what were they thinking. Of course the answer is they weren't thinking.


Yea I was mad and they were out there Monday morning and I let them know. They are suppose to put a note on their records to stay off my property but I don't buy it. When I get the bamboo going I will lace rebar through it. They will know it real quick if they bush hog the bamboo.


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## Steve Neul (Sep 2, 2011)

Catpower said:


> Once it gets established it spreads like wild fire, but to keep in in an area use about 10 ga steel buried on edge about 6 inches deep, might have to go a little deeper but it spreads with it's roots, stop the roots stop the bamboo


If I wasn't so busy with work the bamboo could be kept at bay just by mowing. The only time it spreads is in the spring. Part of my property I've all but abandoned do to the lack of time to keep it mowed. The bamboo there has spread about 80' from where I initially planted it. This winter I will try to dig those up and move it to the front of my property where the damaged trees are.


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

That is what happened with the guy I was talking about in Dallas, and I sure you know how tough it is on tires after it gets good sized mowing kind of like mesquite is those thorns will go right through a tractor tire


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## Steve Neul (Sep 2, 2011)

Catpower said:


> That is what happened with the guy I was talking about in Dallas, and I sure you know how tough it is on tires after it gets good sized mowing kind of like mesquite is those thorns will go right through a tractor tire


I don't have any problems with the tires mowing the bamboo. When it gets full grown it's like mowing down a small tree and is more than my little tractor can handle. Before I was put in the position of trying to transplant it I had planned to take a chain saw to it and save the stalks. I bet I could have found some use for it.


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## BigJim (Sep 2, 2008)

I wish we could grow bamboo here but that would be risking a law suit, if it got away and started spreading to other peoples property. I think bamboo is pretty.


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## Nathan Parker (Jul 23, 2016)

Sorry about your trees. I know that experience.

That bamboo looks like one growing at my mom's place. I've used quite a bit of that over the years to make light garden fences and such. The stems don't get bigger around but they do add material on the inside each year, so the oldest stems are the sturdiest. You can put a nice finish on them just by carefully playing a propane torch over the surface; they turn a beautiful golden brown and get a sort of lacquer-like surface from whatever juice is in them bubbling to the surface under the flame. A friend of mine used to make candle-sticks with them.

If anyone's interested: "cedar" refers to quite a few different conifers. The original cedar is _Cedrus libani_, the Cedar of Lebanon mentioned in the bible and prized throughout the ancient Mediterranean and Middle East for its aromatic wood. There are several other closely related cedars in the genus _Cedrus_ that grow in North Africa, the Middle East, and the Himalayas. No true cedars are native to North America. American "cedars" are a group of not very closely related conifers with more-or-less aromatic wood; eastern or aromatic red cedar is a juniper (_Juniperus virginiana_); western red cedar and northern white cedar are arborvitae (_Thuja plicata_ and _T. occidentalis_ respectively); Atlantic white cedar and Port Orford Cedar (=Lawson cypress) are false-cypresses (_Chamaecyparis thyoides_ and _C. lawsoniana_ respectively); stinking cedar is a nutmeg-yew (_Torreya taxifolia_); and so on. Other "cedars" include Spanish-cedar (which is neither Spanish nor a cedar, but a Latin American cousin of mahogany, _Cedrela odorata_), New Zealand cedars (_Libocedrus_ species), and Chilean cedar (_Austrocedrus chilensis_) as well as probably several others I'm not thinking of at the moment. So, "cedar" is definitely a term that should be used with caution.

Sorry, botany nerd. :blush:


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