Potential Garden Foe?

Regarding my sick oak tree (galls), should I remove the Ivy vines that are climing it now? There are no leaves as of yet, but I am sure there will be shortly. Is it okay just to strip them off? The vines are about an inch to and inch and a half thick. Also, we were going to train our wisteria to grow up the tree, but maybe that would be bad idea. The wisteria is growing right up against the base of the tree. It is a relativly small plant at this point. It does not even reach up into the branches of the tree.

Thank you,

Amanda

You don't have to strip the vines off, you can just cut all the vines at the base of the tree and that will kill anything on the tree. You can also try to pull up the vines after you cut them.
If you are going to try to save the tree, I would think its better to keep anything off it, but I am not a tree person!

Hey Amanda,
Your vines, dependent upon which species they are, will probably need to be treated with a chemical of some sort or I can almost guarantee they will come back to haunt you. Best to know which vine you have before you select a chemical. You can certainly cut them however it might be best to pull them off the tree for now and I wouldn't try to uproot them until you know what you are dealing with. There are some vines out there that are really frustrating in that if you try to pull them out of the ground and miss so much as one root, that fragment will resprout. Imagine the night mare of disturbing the wrong species of vine and ending up with 50 of them mocking you trying to crawl up other plants you have in their path. The proper chemical can reach to the end of the roots and destroy them to avoid the scenario above and then you can dig it out. Different chemicals out there. Some you paint on to the stump after you cut off the upper growth to kill a vine and some you spray on the leaves to kill the vine. Again, depends on the vine you have which is why I wouldn't get rid of the leaves just yet if you want to preserve options to make it go bye bye for good. I routinely pull vines off trees and spread them out on tarps to spray them with herbicides. Some vines I merely cut down and paint the stump with RoundUp or another form of an herbicide. Just depends on what type of a vine I've got trying to strangle and choke the life out of my trees.

I wouldn't train your Wisteria up that Oak tree just yet. You might want to consider holding off. Sometimes when Oaks are infested with galls, it stresses the tree creating a clear path for other pathogens (such as bacterium and fungi) to attack it. This "piggy backing" usually kills off the tree in no time flat. Most galls aren't an issue but evidently you have the type of gal that is an issue in your region and I suspect you will have to remove the tree and replace it.

Poor little you, brand new home and you "inherited" a few issues.