Good evening! We hope you had a great weekend. It’s hard to believe that we’re less than 2 weeks until Christmas. Today we are going to continue our tree pruning topics with an explanation of some of the more common tree pruning methods and what they involve.
Tree Pruning Methods 1 – Crown Thinning
When you’re thinning your tree’s crown, it means that you’re thinning it so that you are removing specific branches that the tree’s overall density is reduced. When someone prunes a tree, this is the one type that is often done. It helps with increasing air circulation and sunlight penetration. It also can reduce the stress on some of the limbs from ice, gravity, or wind.
Since the goal’s not to change the tree’s shape or size, this type of thinning ought to be consistent on the tree. It’s important to only remove 10-20% of the branches from the canopy’s edge. A large tree will benefit from having the ends of limbs from 1-4” in diameter. Fruit trees and smaller ornamental trees you can thin by removing the smaller branches from ¼-½” in thickness. When you are trimming a tree to thin its crown, it should look as if it wasn’t pruned.
Tree Pruning Methods 2 – Crown Raising
This form of pruning raises the tree limbs’ bottom edges so that it’s clear for a view, buildings or traffic. This method of pruning needs to be done gradually over a while. Removing a lot of lower branches at the same time can make your tree weak. Just remove a couple of limbs under 4” when you prune each year. it’s a good idea to take a break and look at your tree’s overall balance. Deciduous trees’ live crowns ought to make up 60% of your tree. If your tree’s trunk starts going over 40%, your tree might become weakened. The majority of conifers can be balanced with a ratio of 50/50 and stay healthy and strong.
Tree Pruning Methods 3 – Crown Reduction
This method of pruning is generally used on more mature, older trees. This method can help with strengthening your tree and encouraging new growth. This removes tree branches back to growing lateral branches. Once the spring’s growing season starts, the lateral branch becomes part of that new crown of the tree.
Tree Pruning Methods 4 – Crown Cleaning
This pruning method removes broken, dead, and diseased branches when you are trimming your branches. This can be done anytime, and it should be done when you are doing a crown reduction, raising, and thinning. Cleaning your tree’s crown will strengthen the tree overall and will help with preventing damage in the future both to the property around and the tree. It also will help with keeping your landscape safe.
If you are going to prune your trees, you are likely going to use one of these four common tree pruning methods. But if you don’t want to take a risk, why not contact us to do it for you? Contact us here and we’ll be glad to give you a quote. You can also contact us on Facebook.
