About Tree Pruning
If you have landscape trees, it goes without saying that you need to prune them. Here’s everything you need to know about pruning trees.
If you have trees, you will have to deal with pruning. In fact, it’s generally considered the most common procedure for tree maintenance. Tree pruning, in its most basic sense, is removing stems and branches for the benefit of the tree.
It’s true that trees in the forests don’t need humans to take care of pruning, but with landscape trees it’s a different matter altogether. Your trees need more care so that they can maintain their attractiveness and structural integrity. This is why pruning is crucial.
You don’t want to make mistakes when you’re pruning your trees. A mistake can result in permanent damage to the tree, which could shortern its life. To prune your trees properly, you will need a better understanding of the process, so here are some answers to the more commonly asked questions:
Why Should You Prune Your Trees?
While pruning is a common practice for tree maintenance, you don’t just remove branches randomly. You need to have a very good reason for each action, since every cut you make can have a tremendous impact on how your tree will grow.
The most common reasons for pruning a tree include:
When Should You Prune Your Tree?
It’s imperative that you do your research properly when thinking about pruning your tree. Here are some tips that can help:
How Do You Prune a Tree?
There are several pruning techniques that may prove useful for tree maintenance.
Should You Prune Your Young Trees?
Some people think that because younger trees are smaller, they don’t need pruning. That’s not the case at all. Actually, pruning is crucial for proper tree development, so that you can have a great form and a robust structure. When you prune properly while the tree is still young, then when it matures it won’t need as much corrective pruning.
While the tree is still young, you need to establish the right structure of primary branches. These are the “scaffold branches” that will become the framework of the mature tree.
Here are some tips that you need to keep in mind:
How Do You Prune Palm Trees?
If you have palm trees that need pruning, here are our recommendations:
Should You Top Trees?
The answer is a resounding NO. You should never top your trees. This is in fact widely regarded as the pruning practice that can do the greatest damage to trees. For decades, experts have harped on just how bad this practice is, yet it still goes on. Don’t perpetuate the practice.
Tree topping is when you indiscriminately cut tree branches to just mere stubs, or to lateral branches that aren’t yet big enough for the terminal role. Many owners want to reduce the size of their tree for various reasons. You may think that a tall tree has become too risky, or that the tree has just simply become too large for your property. Those aren’t bad reasons to reduce the size of your tree. It’s just that topping is a bad way of accomplishing this goal.
What Should You Do Instead to Reduce the Size of the Tree?
There are alternative methods you can try which are much better than topping your tree.
Hopefully we’ve answered most of your questions. To get your trees professionally pruned, call us, Hawaii’s tree experts at (808) 518-4045 and receive a free estimate! Mahalo!