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Lightning struck trees

During a recent thunder storm, lightning struck a tree right outside Bunkey’s house. “It sounded like a bomb went off.” The tree looked like that had happened. The damage is thought to be caused by the electrical charge of up to 100 million volts at thousands of amperes that vaporizes the water inside the tree, creating super-heated steam that explodes when it exceeds the structural strength of the wood.

How can you tell if your tree has been hit by lightning, other than the boom that flips you out of bed? A common indicator is a vertical stripping where the bark, and sometimes the wood underneath, is torn from the truck or a major scaffold limb. It can be most of the way up the tree or hit and miss, straight up or spiral around the tree like a stripe in a candy cane. In some cases, the bark can be violently blown off the tree in sections or completely around the whole trunk. A sneakier strike may not show any damage but the strike has fried the roots. Since sap is a better conductor then wood, damage is usually related to how much moisture there is in and around the tree. If it is between the bark and the wood, the lighting will follow a channel and blow the bark off the tree. A tree with a wet center may be totally blown apart. Or, the lightning could flow around the outside of a wet tree and flow into the ground.

So, what should Bunkey do next? First of all, stay inside until the storm is over. Then, if there are broken limbs, they can be cut off. If the tree has landed on the roof, he should get a professional to do the removing. Don’t immediately cut down a lightning struck tree, unless it has been blown apart. Take a wait and see attitude. If it leafs out next spring, it will probably live another 50 years.

Apple maggot time is coming. Thin your apples to one per six inches about the 1st of July, or when they are dime-sized. Then, put a plastic bag on them, cutting the bottom corners off. You will have beautiful large apples with no worms and apples every year instead of every other. It takes about one hour to bag 100 apples. You never eat your entire crop anyway. Why not have a smaller crop of perfect apples instead of a large crop that have worms in most of them. If you grow apples to feed the pigs or horses, forget the bagging. If they are for you, you know what to do.