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There is nothing more scenic than large, healthy trees on your property. But as much as you love your trees, you also need to maintain them. Many homeowners neglect tree pruning because they feel it is too hard and too time consuming.
Here at Harmony Tree Services, we provide detailed tree pruning and landscaping services. Still, we want to teach homeowners who want to do it on their own how to properly prune a tree in order to avoid damaging them.
1. Decide when and what to prune
The obvious first step is to decide what you want to prune. Do not try and prune every tree on your property in one day. Tree pruning takes time and you want to make sure you do it well. Cutting the wrong parts of your tree can hurt your trees, and as you know, replacing or removing them is no easy task.
As a general rule, pruning in the winter will lead to a lot of growth come summer, while summer pruning will slow growth for that season, but will help you shape and control how your tree grows.
2. Assess and start pruning your tree
The next step is to assess your tree. Take a look at its major branches, determine which ones make up its skeleton, and look for damaged branches that need to be removed.
Damaged branches should always be the first to go. If they are dead or damaged, carefully remove them with your pruning shears. Damaged branches could be slowing the growth of your tree by blocking healthier ones from coming in.
Thin out areas where branches overlap, to increase light exposure and air flow. Trees need both of these things to promote healthy growth.
3. Target problem areas
Some of the most important branches to target are the ones that are obstructing a power line, telephone pole, or other structures. Pruning these branches won’t hurt your tree – and they will help you solve a major source of annoyance. That’s a win-win.
4. Prune branches to shape your tree
The entire purpose of pruning is to shape the tree you are working on. You don’t climb up on a ladder and start cutting branches off for no reason. Make sure you have a plan for how you want to shape your tree and execute it.
5. Less is more
One of the biggest mistakes people make when it comes to tree pruning is over-pruning. While some pruning is good for your tree, cutting too many branches isn’t good. Trees grow branches in order to protect themselves from fungus and insects.
We mentioned it above, but you should always focus on damaged branches first, over cosmetic ones. While it is important to solve annoyances, damaged branches usually block healthier ones from growing in. If you want to keep your trees healthy, remove these first.
As a general rule, never prune more than 25% of the trees branches.
6. Dispose of your branches properly
Depending on where you live, you may be able to burn your branches in a fireplace. If you can, this is one of the easiest ways to go about it. Leave the branches out to try for a few days and quickly burn them in a fire.
If you live in a major city and cannot do this, you’ll probably need to hire a landscaping service to help you with this.
Need help with your tree pruning?
Does the idea of pruning your own trees seem too hard? Don’t sweat it, that’s quite normal. If you want to get your trees pruned with the stress of doing it yourself, give Harmony Tree Services a call. We have been helping our clients in Allentown and surrounding areas by providing a wide variety of landscaping services for many years because we are good at what we do.
Give us a call today and we’ll help you figure out the best plan of action when it comes to tree pruning and other tree services.
