I have the prettiest red dogwood tree in my front yard. Unfortunately, it is in a sad, sad state. When I bought my house almost two years ago -yikes! two years already?!- the tree was half dead and rotting at the trunk. Slowly but surely I've been pruning back dead branches, a few at a time, with a hand pole saw. This is work. Hard, hard work. Now it was (past) time to deal with the rotting trunk.
Here's the method I used.
I picked up a bag of quick-set ready-mixed concrete at Lowe's.
After mixing this up and beginning to fill in the hole left by the rotting wood, I realized I was going to need some sort of framework.
Hmmmm... what do I have around my house that might work for this purpose... hmmmm....?
I was instantly transported back to my Freshman Design-Build in Penn State's Architecture Department where a classmate and I used bubblewrap to form concrete benches. Maybe plastic wrap would work in this instance...
I wrapped about half way up the whole with several layers of plastic wrap and then filled with my mixed concrete.
I then added some more plastic wrap and some more concrete, working my way up the trunk of the tree.
Filling all the way to the top of the whole, completely covering the rotten part of the tree trunk.
I then waited for the concrete to cure before peeling back the plastic wrap.
If this worked like it should, the tree will grow around the concrete and heal itself. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!
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