Over the course of the winter you might grow accustomed to seeing leafless trees in your yard, but when spring and summer roll around and your tree still looks like this:
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.. it’s pretty clear that you have a problem on your hands.
Even when you don’t have a half-dead tree posing an obvious and immediate hazard like the one above, there are still good reasons to regularly clean the deadwood out of your trees. Aside from the fact that accumulated deadwood is unsightly and could easily break off and fall, its presence is also affecting the future growth of your tree. Dead branches take up space in the interior of the tree and block out airflow and sunlight, forcing the live branches to reach outward.
We receive a lot of calls from clients whose trees are growing “out of control,” and much of the time it’s because they have gone too long without pruning and the branches have to reach farther and farther out for resources. With certain kinds of trees like plums, hawthorns, and cherries, a long-neglected tree often turns out to be mostly old tangled deadwood, and by the time we clear it out the remaining branches are extra long, sparse and spindly — and they’re also more fragile than branches that were able to keep a tighter structure, since they needed to devote all their energy to growing long instead of strong.
So if you are like many of our clients who prefer their trees to maintain a manageable size, giving them a routine cleaning is a simple and effective first step. When you call to schedule a pruning, deadwood removal is the most basic service we provide, along with many other pruning techniques to address your tree’s individual needs. Whether you’re looking to spruce up your spruce or make your cherry look a little more cherry, our arborists will be happy to help.
