By understanding the basics of tree trimming, you might find it easy to handle such tasks yourself. Various tree trimming tips can help you modify your trees into desired shapes. With the right equipment and knowledge, it’s easy to prune your trees to maintain their health and appearance to get rid of hazardous dead branches and other issues.
Why Is Tree Trimming Important?
Even if the trees in your property don’t have dead branches or aren’t overgrown, it’s essential to trim them from time to time. Tree lopping can help promote healthy growth encourage flowering and blooming of trees. It’s also vital to prune trees to remove damaged branches that can pose a threat in case of high winds and storms. If you would like to trim your trees like a pro, here are some valuable tips:
Locate The Branch Collar Before Cutting
After deciding the limbs you want to get rid of, the next thing is to locate the branch’s collar. A branch collar is an area where it connects with the main tree. Sometimes it’s easier to find the collar in some trunks than it’s on others. To locate this area, look for a circle, a ridge, or where the bark is thicker.
Remember, it’s essential to cut the collar from the outside rather than the inside to ensure proper wound healing. Also, you should avoid damaging the branch collar; otherwise, it won’t form a good callus.
Start At The Top
Start from the top and work downwards to trim your trees like a professional. However, you should avoid removing more than a quarter of a tree’s crown within a single season and keep the main side branches less than a third smaller than the trunk’s diameter. Ensure to trim your trees from time to time to enhance their natural shape.
Use Sharp Tree Cutting Tools
Ensure to use sharp tree trimming tools and avoid cutting too close to the trunk. To trim larger than small ornamental trees that might require heavy equipment and ladders, consider seeking help from professionals or arborists.
If your tree appears top-heavy, leaning, or bottom-heavy, you might not have trimmed it correctly. Additionally, if you notice jagged cuts or cuts that take long to heal, it might be an indicator that you need to change your trimming tools or technique.
Don’t Trim Branches That Are Growing Upwards
When learning to trim a tree, you’re most likely to remove branches growing upwards. But if you want to prune your trees like a pro, ensure to avoid cutting such branches. If you prune branches growing upwards, they will leave wounds where water can settle, causing the tree to die as time goes by.
Remove All Suckers
Suckers are weedy, weak-looking growth at the base of the trunk. It’s important to understand that all suckers must be removed since they’ll never become desirable branches and only suck energy from the tree. Therefore, ensure to remove all suckers as they form to better the tree’s growth.
Keep Your Trees Healthy
Once you have trimmed your trees, it’s essential to keep them healthy for quick healing. It’s therefore vital to supply your trees with water for better growth. Also, it can help if you mulch the bases of your trees to help hold moisture while protecting the roots.
Additionally, make sure to inspect your trees’ trunks and branches from time to time for signs of insect damage or diseases. If you notice any problem with your trees, act immediately to remedy the issues before escalating.
Why Should You Learn How To Trim Trees Properly?
Proper trimming of trees can help them thrive into beautiful trees that are easier to maintain. Also, trimming trees can minimize accidents that might arise following fallen branches. Additionally, with proper knowledge of tree trimming, it’s most likely that you won’t hurt the tree since you’ll know where to start and how to go about the whole process.
If you’re looking forward to trimming your trees like a professional, but you’ve just started, start with a small tree and wait to see the result. Remember, practice makes perfect, and in due time, you’ll find yourself trimming trees like a pro.
Conclusion
While tree trimming varies from one species to another, it can be done at any time. However, you don’t just go by cutting branches without planning. If you aren’t informed on how to trim trees properly, you’ll end up cutting off branches the wrong way, damaging the tree that can later lead to rotting. Before embarking on the tree trimming process, consider helpful tips like the ones mentioned above for a pro touch.
