Trusted the soil report over my own eyes, now I'm digging out a failed maple

Had a customer in Moline whose silver maple looked fine on top but the bark was peeling weird at the base. Soil report said it was just wet, not root rot, and the guy from the lab was pretty confident, so I told her to wait and watch it. Two weeks later the whole crown dropped leaves in one weekend, and when I dug down the roots were basically mush to about 3 feet out. Cost her $1,100 to remove and stump grind, plus a new ornamental tree she's probably gonna lose too. I should have pushed for a root collar excavation right then, the report gave me false confidence. Anyone else had a lab report steer you wrong when the tree was screaming at you?

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1 Comment

max4151mo ago

Lab reports are just data points, not fortune tellers, and if a tree tanks that fast there's a good chance the roots were already gone before you ever got the sample. Maybe the real lesson is trusting a quick lab over a hands-on inspection is exactly the kind of shortcut that bites everyone.