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Home | Mikl’s Articles | Articles: Pruning

Articles: Pruning

The Pruning and Care of Young Trees

Of all our plants, trees take the longest to develop and so it is not only heart-breaking, but a significant set-back to a landscape when a tree that is 10-20 years old is destroyed in a storm. Many of these disasters could be prevented with proper pruning early in a tree’s life. Besides preventing disasters, pruning trees properly when young will help them to develop more beautifully, make them stronger, less expensive to maintain as they get older and keep them healthier.

A young tree, like any young being, is vulnerable and needs some extra care. And trees are often a costly investment, both for the plant and for the planting. So since few arborists will come out for the fifteen minute job of pruning a young tree, and since few lawn crews are trained in proper pruning, it is good for home-owners to understand the basics of pruning in order to get their trees off to a good start.[Read More]

Pruning Article for Boulder Home and Garden

For many people, pruning is the maintenance job they most fear and dread. And it is good to be wary, because a tree that is badly pruned can dominate a landscape with its ugliness for years, can be more prone to breakage and disease, and can have a much shorter life.

Tree and shrub pruning have four basic aspects: the practical or aesthetic interests of the owners, the biology of how trees “heal”, the physics of what makes a branch strong or weak, and the art of how to create beautiful forms.[Read More]

Spring Pruning The Right Way

Pruning is one of the most misunderstood aspects of gardening. Those of us who are more gentle and sensitive may not want to cut into a living tree or shrub at all, leaving the pruning to nature. Others who identify with aggressive measures see control as the goal and prune as if they were beating back the jungle. However all externally applied concepts should be relinquished in preference to an approach which begins with the needs and repair systems of the plants themselves. What’s wrong with the let-it-be approach? Nothing if you don’t mind the tree/shrub having half as long to live and finding broken branches hanging and fallen after big storms. Dead branches in particular should not be left too long because they are entries into the tree for decay and diseases; the bark, like our skin, is a protective organ. And what is wrong with hacking back a shrub or tree that is overgrown? Nothing if you don’t mind the tree/shrub living half as long because the stress caused by this approach weakens the plant and makes it vulnerable to decay, diseases and insect damage; nothing is wrong if you don’t mind the forest of sucker growth that follows overpruning; no problem, if you don’t mind your wife being mad at you for years every time she looks at its tortured form.[Read More]

When to Prune Trees

I have been an arborist for 35 years and spent a lot of my life studying trees and so I have these comments on When to Prune Trees:

  1. Yes, wounds close more quickly when pruned in spring
  2. Yes, for certain pest problems like Dutch Elm disease, it is important not to prune when the beetles are flying and best not to prune fireblight in the early spring.
  3. And trees without leaves do have a clearer view of the branching, but climbing into the branches gives a far better view and pruning with the leaves on helps determine thinning density as well as judging weight on a branch.
  4. Alex Shigo, often called the Father of Modern Arboriculture, wrote that pruning can be done anytime unless a tree is stressed, in which case it is better not to prune when a tree is putting on leaves or dropping leaves.
  5. Summer is a good time to prune fruit and other trees when you are trying make or keep them smaller.
  6. Fall is the best time to prune for fireblight, after the leaves have started turning color and before the leaves fall off. This is the time when you won’t spread the fireblight on your tools, so you don’t have to disinfect after every cut.
  7. Cytospera canker disease should be pruned out in dry weather, which usually is not spring.
  8. The most important factor is not the timing; it is the accuracy of making a pruning cut that neither cuts off the branch collar, nor leaves a stub. Then wounds will close most quickly.
  9. I asked Dr. Shigo if it is harmful to prune Maple and Birch in early spring when they bleed. He told me it is not harmful. And it seems to me that it doesn’t bleed for more than a few days.