Young trees should be inspected and trimmed every 1-5 years. Mature trees may benefit from a yearly inspection with perhaps a five- to 10-year cycle of trimming and pruning. Fruit trees may need to be trimmed annually. Hire a qualified arborist to trim trees.
Overgrown trees can pose a serious risk to your property and your family. Dead or damaged branches can fall and cause damage to your home or car or even injure someone. In addition, overgrown trees can block sunlight and views and can even damage foundations or driveways.
The General Pruning Timeline for Healthy Trees
But in general, most arborists will suggest the following: Mature Trees—Should be pruned or trimmed every 3-5 years. Juvenile Trees—Should be pruned or trimmed every 2-3 years.
Municipalities and homeowners often remove the lower limbs for pedestrian and vehicular clearance or to let the sun shine in for grass to grow. Mature trees, especially evergreens, benefit when healthy lower branches are left intact. Removing large limbs can increase the risk of decay.
An improper cut like a flush cut (cutting too close to the trunk) or a stub cut (cutting too far from the trunk) can cause irreversible damage to a tree. A flush cut removes the branch collar and leaves a large wound in the side of the tree that won't heal properly.
Not using the proper techniques can damage the health of your tree and can even lead to disease or premature death. In general, don't cut too close to the trunk. These cuts are too big and can delay the sealing of the wound. Don't cut too far from the surface of the trunk, either.
Generally, the best time to prune or trim trees and shrubs is during the winter months. From November through March, most trees are dormant which makes it the ideal time for the following reasons: Trees are less susceptible to insects or disease.
If your tree has a less severe problem, one of the best times to remove trees is during the dormant season, between late winter and early spring. Here's why. Dormant trees are leafless and lighter, so it's much easier for a certified arborist to cut and handle the branches.
Tree pruning involves the removal of live branches, as well as dead, diseased, and damaged branches for the health of the tree, while tree trimming only involves the removal of branches that interfere in some way.
Cut too much and you'll risk nutritional deficiencies or branches that are too weak to tolerate the wind or fend off diseases or insect invasions. Over pruning and topping can permanently disfigure your trees, or even kill them. Further, a tree's foliage is important for protecting it against excessive sun exposure.
Helps Control Disease
Some trees, like oaks, should only be pruned during the dormant season because they are especially susceptible to oak wilt disease, which is known to spread extremely fast in the spring and summer.
Late summer or early fall pruning causes vigorous re-growth of tissue, which in some cases may not harden off by the time winter arrives, leading to possible cold damage to the new growth.
Summer is an excellent time for restorative pruning. You can correct problems that have resulted from over-pruning or poor pruning. You can also clean up damage from winter and spring storms. Proper pruning will begin to restore most plants' natural shape.
After a tree is topped, it grows back rapidly in an attempt to replace its missing leaves. Leaves are needed to manufacture food for the tree. Without new leaves, the tree will die. The new branches that sprout up below the cuts will continue to grow quickly until they reach the same size it was before it was topped.
The answer is: do not trim your trees in the fall! Trimmed trees may look neater to you, but dead or diseased trees are not very neat at all, and that's what you are risking by cutting back trees that are slipping into dormancy. Pruning trees stimulates them to produce new growth – it's meant to.
Dormant Pruning Avoids Spreading Disease
During winter, the bacteria, fungi, parasites, and insects that cause and/or spread disease are either dead or dormant. As a result, diseases are less likely to be transmitted by winter pruning.
To find the proper place to cut a branch, look for the branch collarthat grows from the stem tissue at the underside of the base of the branch (Fig. 6A). On the upper surface, there is usually a branch bark ridge that runs (more or less) parallel to the branch angle, along the stem of the tree.
Don't shear the branches of spring flowering shrubs (Forsythia, Lilac, New Mexico Privet, Spirea, Flowering Quince, and others). These shrubs produce flowers on last year's wood, so removing old growth will reduce or prevent flowering. These plants should be pruned immediately after they are done blooming.
Pruning Methods
Side pruning involves pruning branches growing toward power lines on one side of the tree only. Any tree with a base located 15 feet or more away from the center line of BrightRidge conductors will be side pruned. “L” pruning is practiced when tree limbs cannot be pruned to a suitable lateral.
Without leaves, the cut tree cannot produce food for the growth of its roots. However, the roots might have enough nutrients left to allow the growth of sprouts from the roots or from the leftover stump. If a sprout develops enough leaves, it can eventually grow back into a tree.
If a tree repeatedly loses too much of its canopy at one time, it can become weak or even die from the stress. That's why you shouldn't trim more than 25% of a tree's canopy at one time. Cutting the branch collar can also be a nasty error.
A tree wound sealer is a commercially available product that is applied to the cut section of a recently pruned tree or shrub. In many ways, the idea of applying a tree wound dressing makes sense to a gardener, as a kind of Band-Aid for the plant.