Fall is the perfect time to trim your trees. When trees enter dormancy for winter, they heal faster and experience less post-pruning stress. This is also an excellent opportunity to get rid of weak, broken, diseased, or dying branches before heavy snow loads weigh them down. To ensure fall tree-trimming success, take advantage of these six tips.
1. Wait Until Your Trees Grow Dormant
Although autumn is the perfect time for tree-trimming, you must make sure that your trees are dormant before cutting. If you’re unsure whether a tree has entered dormancy, you can perform a quick scratch test. Simply scratch off a small section of bark with your fingernail. The underlying cambium tissue should be moist and green. The tree’s branches should still be soft and pliable, and some tree species may even have small buds.
The surest indicator of dormancy is total leaf loss. Always prune your trees before the first hard frost, but only after they’ve shed their leaves.
2. Make Sharp, Clean Cuts
Sharpen your pruning tools before getting started. Make sharp, clean, and concise cuts to minimize stress. Clean cuts heal faster.
To prevent the spread of infection when trimming diseased trees, sanitize your cutting tools before reusing them or putting them away. You can use a mild bleach and water solution with nine parts water and one part bleach.
3. Make Cuts Outside the Branch Collar
Find the branch collar for each branch you cut. This is a rounded, slightly swollen knob where the branch extends from the tree trunk. Cut just below the branch collar for optimum results.
4. Don’t Overprune Your Trees
While pruning is good for trees, overpruning can cause significant stress and make trees more prone to disease and weather-related decline. You should never remove more than one-third of a tree’s total canopy during a single pruning session. If the number of weak, diseased, or dying branches exceeds this, contact a tree care expert.
5. Take Diseased Wood Off Your Property
Don’t leave tree trimmings lying around in your yard, especially if you’re pruning diseased trees. Among the best ways to prevent the spread of illness and infestation from one tree to another is by quickly removing diseased wood from your property.
6. Consult With a Tree Care Expert
Tree trimming is an important part of your duty of care. Failing to prune diseased and dying branches could result in serious physical injury or property damage. When snow falls and the wind blows, weak limbs can come crashing down on people, roofs, cars, and more.
If you’ve never pruned your trees before, consult with a tree care expert first. Tree care companies can show you how to safely thin out dense canopies so that trees aren’t at risk of being uprooted by strong winds. They can also determine which branches should come off and which should remain. This way, you can stabilize your trees, fulfill your duty of care, and prevent the spread of disease without overpruning.
Leave Your Trees to Us
You can get the best results by letting a licensed tree care company do your autumn pruning for you. To schedule professional tree trimming and pruning in Peoria, IL, get in touch with Central Arbor Tree Care today!
