TREE PRUNING
When it comes to pruning trees you’ve come to the right place! We pride ourselves on pruning trees the correct way. Unlike humans, trees don’t heal their wounds, they seal their wounds. This means that once a pruning cut has been made, its future growth will seal over the top of the wound.
Why do we need to know this?
Once a tree has been pruned it will never look the same again, for better or for worse. Trees respond to the pruning cuts that have been made by either putting on more growth to replace what was there, or send that energy into other growth that has remained on the tree.
Improper pruning, also known as “lopping” will result in growth known as epicormic shoots. When these small shoots grow into large branches, they are poorly attached and are more prone to snapping out, thus creating an increased risk which could have been avoided.
There are many ways to prune a tree incorrectly, and on the flip side there are many ways to do it the correct way. This is where you call us! We know the difference and are happy to take care of your trees for you.
At the end of the day, our goal for pruning a tree is to recognise how it wants to grow naturally and encourage it to take that form.
Why bother pruning a tree?
There are several reasons why we prune trees.
1. To keep trees small.
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We constantly look after trees that clients want to keep smaller. Of course, as I always recommend - the best practice is to plant small trees if you want small trees and to plant big trees if you want big trees. As simple as it sounds it resonates with truth.
Forcing a big tree to be a small tree is a time consuming task which needs to be done repeatedly. It’s not the optimal way of looking after your garden, but it can be done. Time and time again we see the wrong tree planted in the wrong spot. It grows and establishes as a nice tree which has many great benefits, however it’s too big for the area. It’s either scratching against a house, or casting too much shade on the garden - whatever the problem, it can be resolved with size reduction pruning. There are a few ways to go about keeping your tree small by utilising different pruning methods of which we discuss during the quoting process.
Transparency with our clients is very important to us at Tailored Tree Care, and we like to inform our clients on what they can expect from our work. This is why we present two options when it comes to keeping your tree small. The first option is to remove the tree and plant something smaller and more appropriate for the area. The second option comes with an ongoing price tag - it’s not a once off job. It comes down to how much the client likes their tree and if they can part with it or not. If you have a tree you need to remove or keep smaller, give us a call!
2. To encourage a great form.
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The best way to prune a tree is to start while it’s small. Trees deal with smaller pruning cuts much better than they do large ones. So it’s important to prune off the undesirable branches before they grow into large problems. Formative pruning is the process of removing poorly grown branches to encourage the tree to put its growth on the better branches.
Part of the formative prune involves the removal of crossing limbs and branches that have weak union points. There is a big difference between trees that have been pruned well from the beginning compared to those that have been lopped or not pruned at all.
Although formative pruning is best done in the earlier stages of a tree’s growth it can also be done on an established tree.
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This gum tree in Geelong had not been pruned and had grown very bushy and heavy in certain parts. We gave it a formative prune and thinned out some heavier branches resulting in a stunning difference. The tree now has a neater canopy, better air flow and reduced load on the heavy limbs.
Unfortunately, these tear-outs were the result of neglect. Ornamental Pears like these ones are prone to having large branches fail. Identification and correct pruning of the branches can prevent this from happening.
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We pruned the trees to avoid something like this happening again.
3. To reduce the risk of limb failure.
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Weight reduction pruning is a great way to look after your larger established trees that present a greater risk. Large trees are great to have in our urban landscape, they just need to be managed.
Weight reduction pruning involves either thinning or tip pruning the branches whilst taking no more than 30% of the canopy away on any given branch. The balance point is this - if too much is taken off, the tree responds with a wild amount of growth. If too little is taken off, the problem remains.
When done correctly, weight reduction is the perfect way to manage large trees in your backyard. Give us a call if you have a tree that needs to be weight reduced.
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This is an example of an iconic Golden Elm on Shannon Avenue in Geelong. This tree belongs to a dental clinic we work for and needed some weight taken off it to help reduce the risk of limb failure. Many people come in and out of the clinic as well as having cars parked underneath. We also did a formative prune while working on the tree, removing dead wood and crossing limbs.
This was a gum tree from Ocean Grove. This particular tree had been lopped in the past and had grown back with poorly attached heavy branches. It was also close to a school crossing with heavy foot traffic under it.
We pruned some weight off the tree and cleaned it up removing the dead and crossing branches.
This Red Mahogany Gum in Ocean Grove was quite large with very heavy limbs. We thinned out the canopy and pruned back a large split branch which was leaning over the house. Another happy tree and happy client!
Yes, we prune fruit trees!
Who doesn’t love nice juicy homegrown fruit??
The problem people have is they are scared to prune their fruit trees. They don’t know what to cut or what to look for and unfortunately the trees get out of control! The good news is that here at Tailored Tree Care we love to prune fruit trees.
Pruning fruit trees is great fun once you know how to do it. When we are on site we are more than happy to give our clients some handy tips if they want to tackle the trees themselves in the future.
When pruning fruit trees we take into account many different variables such as, old growth versus new growth, the right time to prune and the kind of tree we are pruning.