September = hurricane season. Are your trees ready? Some basic yearly care can save your trees, house, cars, and electricity. Check out the basics in my Southern Maryland News Net article. Here are some more tips and links to useful information/sources.
- When planing near power lines, first check the maximum height of the tree for our area (zone 7A = Southern MD). Make sure the tree will be at least 5-10 feet shorter than the power line.
- Research suggests that trees often die as a result of stresses that occurred years, sometimes decades, before tree death. So prune the properly!
- Trees typically continued growing for up to 20 years after they were injured by some stress, but the growth rate during those years was substantially lower than before the stress occurred.
- Do not water near the trunk unless you’ve planted the tree within the last four or five years. Instead, water the area under the drip-line (edge of the branches) where the tree’s root system extends.
- Water slowly, this allows water to adhere to soil particles on its way down. Soaker hoses and drip irrigation work well.
- Avoid over-fertilizing your trees or you may find that sap-sucking insects such as aphids, white fly and scale are paying you a warm weather visit. Pest populations, including insects and disease, increase rapidly with warmer weather. Keep things in balance and you’ll reduce your problems.
- Do not prune live branches in a severe drought. Removing live tissues forces the tree to expend energy to defend against the pruning cuts. Removing live foliage also reduces the capacity of the tree to grow once rains return.
- Do not fertilize trees in extended drought since this pulls water from the roots and forces the tree to expend precious energy to process the fertilizer.
- Do not dig under the canopy of the tree in drought. Digging under the tree kills the small roots that absorb water, thus reducing the tree’s capacity to uptake water.
- Prune to correct flaws. Realize that large trees will require years of corrective pruning, so don’t try to correct all the faults in one pruning. Don’t overprune.
- Signs of trouble: dead limbs, thinning crown, forked trunks, fungus growth at base, wounds/cracks, sudden leaning, recent (5-10 years) construction disturbing roots, history of failure (lost limbs previously),
- Stake small leaning trees (4in trunk diameter or less)
- Collar (swelling at base of branch) indicates strong attachment = goodDon’t top your trees! Also, don’t “tip” them (similar to topping, but slightly less severe).
- Broken pine trunks do not regenerate well. So broken pine trees should probably just be cut down.
- Find an ISA-certified arborist
- Learn bout pruning during a drought from UPENN and the Tree People.
- Read this University of Miami study that shows hurricane damage was reduced in trees that were regularly pruned for strength
- Check out this study that goes over preparing trees for hurricanes and cleaning up damage afterward
- More on managing trees for hurricane season and structural pruning, from the University of Florida
- A very helpful animation on tree pruning from the Arbor Day Foundation
- Tips from PA on properly pruning trees (alliteration!)
- Lots of good pruning tips here, and an explanation/illustration on why topping/tipping is SUCH a bad idea!