SNOW WARNING!
May 31, 2021
With the onset of what promises to be a cold winter, this photo provides a timely reminder of what happens to wattle trees when it snows. No! It’s not a good idea to plant wattle if snow is a possibility. The only thing you could use these broken trees for is firewood. The photo was taken near Weza a few years ago.
Pine is much better suited to handling snow. Most of these seedlings seem to have survived the snow onslaught and will probably grow OK over the course of their rotation.
Eucalypts don’t do well in snow either. A few years ago Ian Crouch of Five Star Contracting invited the SA Forestry team to see how he straightens Eucalyptus saplings bent over by a heavy snowfall in the Bulwer area, a notoriously cold spot …
This is what the Eucalyptus compartment looked like after the snowfall. 
This is how eucs grow out after they have been snow damaged during their early years. There’s not much you can do with these trees at harvest time.
Ian Crouch ready to straighten a snow damaged euc. 
Ian bends it all the way back in the opposite direction to ‘fix’ the bend.
Then he lets it go … and it ends up straight again, as it was before the snowstorm. It’s labour intensive but effective, and probably needs to be done as soon as possible after the snow event before the tree starts to harden the bend.
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