[Arid_gardener] Shamel ash problem

[Clstrge at aol.com]

We planted a large (36" box)  Shamel Ash last August and it did well  until 
the very hard frost hit last winter when it lost all its leaves. when the  
leaves came back the main branch and one adjacent branch never leafed out,  
leaving the tree lopsided. Now the bark on the same side that "died" has split  open 
(about 3" wide x 10" high) and the wood inside the split is cracking. There  
are small stress looking cracks in the bark below this. Trunk caliper is about 
 5-6". Two questions: First, can the large split in the bark be encouraged to 
 heal? There are ants present and we treated the area around the tree with 
amdro  this morning. An examination of the bark above this damage shows a 
reddish  discoloration that looks like it split once before. Second, our inclination 
is  to prune the damaged branches back to the healthy wood but this would 
make the  tree even more side heavy and it looks like we'd have to take a couple 
healthy  main branches off to encourage it to grow straight. I think if we do 
nothing,  the tree will continue to bend away from the damaged side and 
eventually fall  from its own weight. Does this sound like a lost cause to you? 
Alice Bauer
     
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