Is the tar from the mid-1800's the same stuff as today?

Hi All,
I am reading an interesting book called "10 acres enough" about a guy who moved from the city to the country to start a farm in the mid-1800's. There is a lot of stuff he got right, as well as a lot of stuff I would disagree with.

In this chapter, he suggests something I had not heard of before. He suggests to paint the bottom couple feet of the tree trunk in tar, in order to avoid a certain kind of peach moth that liked to burrow into the bark/roots and kill the tree. The theory was that the smell and stickyness would work together to deter or kill. The tar I hear about today would fall in the toxic gick category... but some places say the old fashioned tar was made from pitch.

If it was just pitch... that might be an interesting thing to try. If it's the nasty stuff from today... not so much. Anyone have any idea?

It would be different as oil is refined differently now.

But pitch would work.

There is a product specifically for this task.  It works even better and the family switched to that when it became available.  Can't remember what it is called.  Chickens also stick to it really well.

r ranson wrote: ...Chickens also stick to it really well.

HAHA

Honestly, I'd probably still consider tar made from pitch pretty toxic. It contains many of the same compounds that are problematic in tar produced from oil. I don't know for certain, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if modern "tar" is actually pretty safe because the refineries know what compounds are environmentally safe to leave in their tar products, and which ones are really nasty.

AI generated by google:

Pine pitch tar, while historically used for various purposes, can contain toxic compounds like phenols, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), particularly benzo(a)pyrene, which are considered carcinogenic if present in significant quantities; however, modern manufacturing processes aim to significantly reduce these harmful components, making commercially available pine tar much safer for topical use when properly diluted.  

The whole reason it is effective at things like preserving wood is because it contains a bunch of compounds that are essentially poisons.

Is it "Less bad" than tar produced industrially now? Maybe. Would I want to use it for anything that humans are likely to consume, or be in direct contact with? No.

Sometimes the "natural is good" narrative needs to be approached with care.

Tanglefoot was the name of the chicken catching stuff.  Probably less toxic too, as the chicken was fine albeit missing several feathers after we cut her off the tree.

Sounds like I might be better letting the chickens do the catching of the grubs and moths than something sticky.

I use Tanglefoot as a deerfly trap, spread on dark blue solo-cups that I drop over the top of a bamboo pole and stick in the ground near where I'm weeding. I hadn't really ever thought about it's potential to be toxic gick...now I need to look that up.

Tanglefoot says it's non-toxic and all that. Also non-selective judging by the chicken missing a few feathers :)

It works well on trees if above normal chicken walking hight.

I think the superior stick is why the family made the switch from cheaper tar/pitch.  But it was before I was born so I don't know the details. But they wouldn't switch away from traditional methods of doing something without a significant advantage.

Matt McSpadden wrote:Hi All,
I am reading an interesting book called "10 acres enough" about a guy who moved from the city to the country to start a farm in the mid-1800's. There is a lot of stuff he got right, as well as a lot of stuff I would disagree with.

In this chapter, he suggests something I had not heard of before. He suggests to paint the bottom couple feet of the tree trunk in tar, in order to avoid a certain kind of peach moth that liked to burrow into the bark/roots and kill the tree. The theory was that the smell and stickyness would work together to deter or kill. The tar I hear about today would fall in the toxic gick category... but some places say the old fashioned tar was made from pitch.

If it was just pitch... that might be an interesting thing to try. If it's the nasty stuff from today... not so much. Anyone have any idea?

I think I have a copy of that book around, somewhere, even if I haven't yet given it its due diligence.  Though, I'm not quite sure just where it is.  But, the thing of which I am absolutely certain is that the problem is an insufficient number of bookshelves, and definitely not too many books!

Does he just call it "tar", not "Stockholm tar"?

Does he give any other contextual hints?

If just "tar", it could possibly be coal tar, as well (definitely in the category of "toxic gick", though it did traditionally have medicinal uses and is still on the WHO's List of Essential Medicines, as well; as Paracelsus so aptly stated, with many things "the dose makes the poison").  However, the infallible Wikipedia states that coal tar was first used industrially as a dye feedstock in the 1850s, and this book was written in 1864.  This seems a little early for coal tar as a commercially salable byproduct of the manufacture of coke or coal gas, though I am no expert on the history and exact timing of the marketing of these products.  Perhaps someone else here has better knowledge?

As I am sure you are well aware, pine tar has ample historical precedent for wood preservation, including the stave churches of Scandinavia, a few of which are now approaching 1,000 years old.  Only a small fraction of the original number of stave churches still exist, many of which were replaced by stone structures, and some which burned down.

Hermann Phleps may give some info on the use of pine tar for groundfast posts in "The Craft of Log Building", since he presents a lot of historical harvesting, curing, and construction details (including girdling or "injuring" Scots pine several years prior to harvesting to increase the internal resin content, and so to increase durability - he also presents many structures which were several hundred years old and still sound in the 1940s when the book was first written).  I'll try to remember to check this evening to see what Phleps says about below grade use of pine tar.

Kevin Olson wrote:
Does he just call it "tar", not "Stockholm tar"?

Does he give any other contextual hints?

He just calls it "common tar" and compares it to another kind of tar which I don't recall the name of. I don't have the book with me right now to check.

Matt McSpadden wrote:He just calls it "common tar" and compares it to another kind of tar which I don't recall the name of. I don't have the book with me right now to check.

Hmmm.

My grandfather painted a 2 or 3 inch wide stripe of axle grease around the trunks of his oak trees to prevent "army worms" - some sort of caterpillars, maybe Gypsy moths, but i don't recall for certain - from infesting them.  As a young boy, I was invited to "help" him.  The stripe was up beyond the reach of small boys, for obvious reasons!  I don't know if I really was of any true assistance, but I remembered well the process.  A few caterpillars would still blow on the wind into the trees, but most would make a multi-lane superhighway, circling and circling below the stripe, but not crossing it.  I've done the same on fruit trees with Vaseline (white petroleum jelly).  As a young man, my grandfather worked as a farm hand on a farm that still used horses, and for heavy draft, oxen.  When he first drove a Model T Ford, he called out "haw", "gee" and "whoa" to it, reflexively.  He was "old school", had learned Latin in public schools, knew how to eat stale bread soaked in milk for dinner because that's all there was.

I now have some neem oil, and will try that, applied neat in a stripe around the trunks of my trees, the next time we have such an infestation.  I can report that a spray of neem oil, mixed with hot water and sprayed through a pump-up garden sprayer, will well and truly shipwreck Gypsy moth caterpillars after they've hatched, especially when caught young; they do seem a bit tougher when they are older.  I don't know by direct experience how reliable it is in rendering Gypsy moth egg masses unhatchable, because I didn't buy it early enough last spring to catch them.

Anyway, a stripe of grease or other sticky substance will fend off caterpillars, and may be worth a try.  I would think pine tar is a likely candidate.

I had not heard of tar or pith being painted on trees.

I have heard of using whitewash though to protect the trees from damage from insects.

The author says "common tar" in the book. He differentiates this from "gas tar" later in the chapter. He does not include the cost of the common tar in his cost breakdown of the orchard, so it must have been cheap. He does include the cost of wood ashes he sourced from soap making operations, so the common tar would have been cheaper than that.

I would imagine that the practice is fairly effective against burrowing moths that land on that portion of the tree.

Based on the 1860's date of publication, the low cost of the product, and the location of his farm in New Jersey with extensive maritime operations, I would guess the author is referring to wood tar- the "tar" of nautical usage and easily produced from the native pine trees of New Jersey.   Wood tar is obviously a lot better for the land than coal tar or pitch.

Older folks used to paint trees with whitewash for the same reasons, probably less effectively, back in the day.

The book is available free at Project Gutenberg, by the way. Good book.

Jeff Lindsey wrote:The author says "common tar" in the book. He differentiates this from "gas tar" later in the chapter. He does not include the cost of the common tar in his cost breakdown of the orchard, so it must have been cheap. He does include the cost of wood ashes he sourced from soap making operations, so the common tar would have been cheaper than that.

I would imagine that the practice is fairly effective against burrowing moths that land on that portion of the tree.

Based on the 1860's date of publication, the low cost of the product, and the location of his farm in New Jersey with extensive maritime operations, I would guess the author is referring to wood tar- the "tar" of nautical usage and easily produced from the native pine trees of New Jersey.   Wood tar is obviously a lot better for the land than coal tar or pitch.

Older folks used to paint trees with whitewash for the same reasons, probably less effectively, back in the day.

The book is available free at Project Gutenberg, by the way. Good book.

Yup, I'm thinking his "common tar" is pine tar/Stockholm tar, since he draws the distinction with "gas tar", which would almost certainly be "coal tar" - the "gas" being "town gas" driven off in the process of converting coal to coke.

I did flip through Hermann Phleps repeatedly last night, but no hints about tar that I could spot - though it's still a darn good book!  I was pretty sure discussed ground fast posts in more detail, where something on tar might have been found, but I only found details on dry laid and sill foundations.  My all-too-faulty memory must have reared its head once again.  To be fair, I have been reading a lot of stuff on old-fashioned construction techniques, and framing in particular, over the past few months.

Thanks for pointing out that "10 Acres Enough"  can be read at Gutenberg.