What is killing white pines?

[hillbilly beef man]

I bought a place several years ago that had been neglected for decades. The place stayed covered with white pine sprouts that the previous renter would bush hog off every third year. That was all that was ever done to the place. After I bought it I limed it, started spraying it with grazon every other year, and fertilizing every other year. Now my white pine problem is gone. What killed them? Corrected PH? Grazon? Higher stocking rate allowed by fertilize?

 

[greybeard]

ph correction would be my guess, tho it's also very possible it was a combination of all the things you did.
There has always been some debate regarding pines and acidic soil. The general thought is 'pines make the soil acidic' but there has also been some scientific studies that lean toward 'pines simply prefer acidic soil' and therefore the soil was already acidic before the pines showed up.

 

[Ebenezer]

Grazon

 

[jltrent]

My guess PH level as they would come back with the other, around here you can have pines on one hill and cedars on another, but very rarely together. From soil test the PH level will suit which one is growing. That one question got me an "A" on one test in an Environmental Science class about a hundred years ago. It was a fill in the blank question for extra credit and I was the only one in the class to get it right.

 

[ga.prime]

If you spray a field with Grazon every other year, there will not be any white pine seedlings in that field no matter what the pH is.