Dave wrote:
A few of years ago I had to cut down a large cherry tree in our garden. It
wasn't dead but I'd cut off many branches over the years to keep the neighbours
happy. Anyway some of the pieces of cherry were pretty large (1 foot diam, 3
feet long) and in my Darwin award plan I decided to do a bit of eco'ing. I made
a couple of wood piles of cherry at the far end of the garden (we leave that bit
to do what it will). I'd read that this can be a good idea and lots of bugs etc
get to live there and it's a little eco-world of it's own. This has proved to be
the case over several years now.

Now the problem! Yesterday I was on safari at the far reaches of our garden
(about 30 yards from the house!) and noticed one of these large chunks of wood
had fungus on it. A very spectacular layered fungus (pic on request). Actually
this piece had rolled away and disappeared under a holly bush which is why I
hadn't seen it before. Now it is nearly always wet under there. Anyway I looked
up the type of fungus and it looks to me like DRY ROT!!! Arrgg! and similar
expressions! So the problem is do I try and get this hefty log into a plastic
bag and to the tip? Or does disturbing it risk spread spores so best to just
leave it? My concern is that it's not that far from the house - so is there any
danger of it getting there? There is a path nearby so we walk down there quite
often.

Hi Dave:
What you did with the logs was commendable and safe. Yer house will
not catch any diseases from yer garden. By layered, do you mean like
brown saucers sticking out of the wood? There are lots of fungi that
look like that. Dry rot is actually very fussy about where it lives.
Just leave it where it is.

Des "fun guy, honest"



I've seen what dry rot can do to a house and it doesn't appeal to me very much.