A few years ago, I asked a realtor friend what he thought was the best real-estate investment. His response was “the property you bought five years ago.”
Unfortunately, the same is true regarding the best way to care for trees in the kind of catastrophic weather events we are seeing more of. The best remedy for the threat of weather damage is what you’ve done over the past few years. There are no magic bullets to protect our trees, and there is no way to avoid the damage that weather events can cause. The best we can do is to keep up maintenance and improve our efforts to maintain healthy trees. There may be no magic, but we can minimize the potential for damage.
Two kinds of catastrophes can happen from winds or lightning. “Widow maker” branches can fall from a tree and block roads, or they can strike something (or someone) below. Strong winds can also cause whole trees to topple.
Trees should be inspected regularly during the year, in all seasons. Look at your trees carefully to stay on top of their condition. Look at the ground around your tree as well as at the tree itself. Also, look at the way branches grow out of the leader (main trunk). If the junction between a branch and the leader looks like it’s not strong, check with an arborist for the best remedy.
Pruning is something that should be a consideration in tree maintenance. An easy way to remember what to look for is “dead, dying, diseased, crossed or for training”, or “DDDCT”. So, you should be looking primarily for signs of disease or weakness and damage. “Crossed” means if a branch of the tree is crossing (not necessarily touching, but close) another branch. “Training” is structural pruning to maintain the proper crown shape and to remove branches that are people-height over roads and walkways. While you may be thinking that pruning (by a professional, the only kind of pruning I can recommend) is expensive, at least by being pro-active you might be able to “prune by payments,” rather than the sudden, unexpected cost of removing a larger branch or tree that has become a hazard due to weather.
Most of us have heard that the roots of a tree pretty much reflect the size and shape of the crown of the tree. While we’d like the roots to look like the image on the left, more often we get roots like the image on the right. Because the roots of most trees are shallow (between 6 and 24 inches below the ground surface), maintaining the roots in good health is of vital importance for keeping trees upright.
One of the ways to maintain healthy roots is proper mulching. Volcano mulching (on the left, below) creates an environment where bacterial and fungal growth can cause the roots to weaken, and the mound of mulch over the root flare can cause roots to girdle the trunk and cut off nutrients to the rest of the tree. So, mulching ought to be like the image on the right.
A lot of this article might seem like “where have I heard this before?” But really, the only way to minimize tree damage from weather extremes is to keep your trees as healthy as possible before the storms.
Neil Silins
Brandon Tree Warden
Brandontreewarden@gmail.com
