Tree Trimming And Pruning In Burford, Ontario

Leaf Area Is The Thing You Are Managing

Every leaf on a tree costs water. On free-draining sand with low water-holding capacity, water is the scarce input for several weeks most summers.

A tree in that position is already rationing. It drops interior leaves, shortens its new growth, and colours early. What it cannot do is shed a proportion of its crown deliberately and keep the rest healthy.

Tree trimming and pruning can. Removing a share of the canopy reduces the demand on a root system that is not meeting it, and the tree puts what it has into what remains. That is a genuinely different reason to prune than the reasons that apply on heavier ground, and it changes how much we take and when.

Oak Wants Winter, And We Mean It

Oak is this ground's tree and oak wilt is its disease. The fungus moves between trees on beetles, and the beetles come to fresh wounds during spring and early summer.

So oak gets its tree trimming and pruning in the dormant season here, without exception. If you ring in May about an oak and it is not a safety issue, we will book you for winter and explain why rather than take the work.

Anything genuinely dangerous gets dealt with whenever we find it, wound dressing and all. But there is a real difference between a hazard and a tidy-up, and only one of them justifies cutting an oak in June.

The Collar Rule, And What Sand Does To Wounds

Every branch has a collar at its base, and that ring of tissue is the only part able to grow over a cut. Take it off flush and the tree cannot close the wound. Leave a stub and it dies back and rots inward instead.

There is a local wrinkle. Drought-stressed trees compartmentalise wounds more slowly, because sealing a cut costs the tree resources it is already short of. So on this ground the penalty for a bad cut is higher and lasts longer than it would on a well-watered site.

Which is an argument for fewer, better-placed cuts rather than a heavy annual tidy. Tree trimming and pruning here rewards restraint.

Lane Maples And Windbreak Rows

Rows of maples down a lane, and planted windbreak lines, are common out here and they age as a group rather than individually.

They were planted together, they are the same age, they have had the same water and the same wind, and they tend to develop the same faults at the same time. When one starts shedding limbs the others are usually a season or two behind.

That makes them worth assessing as a row. It also makes them worth thinning as a row, because taking out one tree from a windbreak leaves its neighbours suddenly exposed on a side they have never had to stand up on.

Young Trees On Loose Ground

A young tree planted in sand needs a different first decade than one planted in clay. It roots more easily and it dries out faster, and staking left on too long stops it developing the trunk taper that will hold it up later.

No other quarter-hour in this trade returns as much as tree trimming and pruning a ten-year-old: pull the rival leader, take out the fork that is going to trap bark, and walk away. On sand it matters more, because the anchorage is poorer and a badly structured crown has less margin.