Tree Talk
For information on proper pruning techniques, trees in general or certified arborists, go to: * International Society of Arborculture: isa-arbor.com; criteria for becoming a certified arborist. * American National Standards Institute: ansi.org; search for A300 standards on tree care. * Tennessee Urban Forestry Council: tufc.com; trees that grow in Tennessee. * Georgia Urban Forest Council: gufc.com; trees that grow in Georgia. * Alabama Urban Forestry Association: aufa.com; trees that grow in Alabama.
Cost of a certified arborist
You'll generally pay between $50 and $100 per hour, Nessle says. But buyer beware, he says. Except for Maryland and New Jersey, no state licenses arborists or requires them to complete any kind of educational component.
Pruning class
* What: Arborist Jonathan Nessle
* When: 6-9 p.m. Monday, April 13; 9 a.m.-noon, Tuesday, April 14.
* Where: Hamilton County Extension Office, 6183 Adamson Circle (off Bonny Oaks Drive)
* Information: 855-6113 or https://extension.tennessee.edu/hamilton/Pages/default.aspx
It's a misconception that Jon Nessle has heard for years: If you prune your flowering trees in the winter, they won't have any blooms when warm weather returns.
Nonsense, says Nessle, a certified arborist in Chattanooga. Whether you're trimming dogwoods, cherries, crepe myrtles, whatever, you just have to follow a few rules to help the tree and save the blooms, he says.
"If you follow proper procedures, you're not going to cut off all the blooms," he says.
The first day of spring is approaching on March 20, but the recent spate of snow and freezing weather has prevented many folks from getting out in their yards to prepare them for warmer temperatures. Still, there's only so much you can do at this point. Donald Coker, owner of Deep Springs Nurseries in Dalton, Ga., calls this time of year the "blahs."
"You want to do something but you can't," he says.
It's still too early to replace the mulch on your flower beds; removing it now might freeze any hostas or bulb shoots poking their green noses out of the soil, says David Manser, owner of Ponds and Plants in Dayton, Tenn. You can put pre-emergent weed killer on your lawn, but it won't kick in until the temperature warms up, he says, and rains between now and then could wash it away.
But Nessle, Coker and Manser all agree that now is a good time to look at your trees and see if they need any help.
Soft-wooded varieties such as Leyland cyprus, Japanese maple and any "weeping" type are especially susceptible to heavy pads of snow and ice, Manser says, so they may have gotten twisted or deformed by recent weather. If there is any snow left on them, shake it off so it doesn't permanently disfigure the branches, he says.
And now is a good time to prune -- but carefully, says Nessle, a certified arborist for 20 years. If you do it right, you won't have to prune your trees every year, maybe only a couple of times in the tree's life. And, while most trees will live through even a severe pruning, he says, "when you cause wounds on trees year after year, they spend their resources trying to close the wound" instead of robustly growing and getting more beautiful.
While he has lots of advice about pruning, he has one hard-and-fast rule for all varieties of tree: "Never, never, never top a tree." Doing so can seriously damage it in both the long and short run, he says. The tree won't have enough leaves to successfully feed itself; new branches that sprout up are weak; and topping makes the tree susceptible to disease and rot.
And it's just plain ugly.
Different strokes
Ornamental and shade trees aren't pruned in exactly the same manner, Nessle says. When it comes to ornamental or flowering trees, he recommends:
* Start by trimming off dead wood; it's not doing any good for the tree or the look of your yard.
* If the tree has branches hanging low to the ground, making mowing a chore or crowding over a sidewalk or driveway, prune them back.
* Third -- and most importantly -- never trim off more than 25 percent of the living branches at any one time. Step back every so often and eyeball what you've done to make sure you're not cutting too much, he says.
"If you look at what you've cut and think, 'That's a lot of branches,' then don't prune anymore," he says.
Follow these steps, and you'll still get plenty of blooms, he says.
Things are a bit different when dealing with big shade trees such as oak, hickory, maple or sycamore, he says. Poorly handled trimming weakens the tree in several ways.
"If a tree is healthy and happy, but you think it's too big and somebody comes and (prunes) it incorrectly, you can make it a true hazard in a very short time," he says.
Yes, new branches will grow from the trimmed parts, he says, but they won't be solidly connected to the trunk like the ones that grew naturally as the tree aged. When a stronger-than-normal wind comes along, these branches are the ones most likely to break off.
And never cut off more than 10 to 15 percent -- "maximum" -- of a shade tree's branches, Nessle says.
One problem he often sees is homeowners who are worried because a large branch is hanging over their house like the sword of Damocles. If a tree is healthy, there's little chance that branch is going to tear off and come ripping through your ceiling, he says, even during a windstorm. But to ease your mind, have a certified arborist come out and inspect the tree, he says.
If there is a branch that's actually touching your house, then yes, you should remove it so it doesn't scrape your paint, scratch your siding or damage your roof, he says. "Prune the lower parts that touch the house, get it off the house."
But overall, "it's good to have a large tree over your house," he says. "Your home will be 15 percent cooler and you'll save 15 percent on your power bill."
With some shade trees, pruning companies perform "lion tailing," cutting off smaller branches in the tree's interior to thin it out, but leaving the top of the foliage intact so the tree still has a nice-looking silhouette. The trimmed branches are bare for most of their length but have a bushy end of leaves, hence the reference to a lion's tail.
The problem with lion tailing is that "the end of the branch acts as a sail to catch the wind," he says, causing it to sway more wildly in windstorms. And, because the smaller branches that have been cut off were the ones providing nutrients and tensile strength to the big branch, it's now more susceptible to snap off.
But "the biggest mistake" he sees is taking a chain saw and whacking off a large limb. "I'm talking one that's as big around as a human torso and is attached to a giant trunk," he says. "You're creating a wound that takes 20 or 30 years to heal -- if it ever heals."
Just like an open wound in our skin, a wound in a tree allows contaminants in, especially fungi that can eat away at the heartwood at its core, he says.
And for those who want to trim off big, healthy branches from fear that they'll break off in a tornado, it's a wasted effort, Nessle says. Pretty much any branch can be broken off in a tornado.
"There's no way to plan for a tornado," he says. "If a tornado hits it, it doesn't matter if you've trimmed it."
Contact Shawn Ryan at sryan@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6327.