It’s crucial to have your trees trimmed regularly if you expect to keep them healthy and happy. But because it’s challenging to know what each tree needs, we can end up doing unintentional harm by cutting them back incorrectly. Don’t worry—there are techniques for correcting badly pruned trees, and we’d like to share them with you.
Corrections for Over-Pruning
It’s not uncommon for people to over-prune their trees. After all, we’re often told that dead-heading and cutting plants back is one of the best ways to keep them healthy. And while you might think constant pruning is helping your trees thrive, in many cases, it’s forcing a decline in their health.
When you over-prune your trees, you’re contributing to stunted and unhealthy growth patterns. And the only real solution to this problem is time and a bit of extra nurturing on your part.
Take a break from pruning and keep a close eye on the growth of your tree as it heals. As an extra measure, you can also use specially formulated fertilizer to give your tall, green friend a hefty health boost. Then, once it’s time to cut it back, please call a professional arborist. They understand how to prune trees correctly to ensure that they stay healthy.
Corrections for Not Pruning Enough
This technique for correcting badly pruned trees should be obvious: prune your trees. We understand that doing this yourself can be intimidating, as you don’t want to do anything that might hurt your trees. But refusing to have them trimmed back at all can also be harmful to a tree’s health.
When trees are not maintained adequately, it leads to overgrowth, which will eventually lead to a slew of branches competing to be dominant, keeping the tree from getting the proper nutrients it needs to survive. When the time comes to have your green beauties trimmed back, remember that SID Mourning Trees is just a phone call away. We’ll provide you with qualified arborists who offer the best in Austin, Texas, tree pruning services.
Corrections for Bad Cuts
Of course, the ultimate in lousy pruning is making the wrong cuts. Specifically, performing a harmful technique known as topping, wherein the pruner reduces the size of a tree’s primary leader or its most foundational offshoot of branches.
Topping trees creates significant issues, such as the development of various water sprouts or new vertical branches that are trying to replace the ones that were removed. Eventually, these new branches will compete for dominance, and in the process, they’ll start to compromise the structure and health of your tree.
To fix this issue, you must choose a new leader and offer it as much support as possible. For deciduous trees, you’ll want to select a strong new branch to replace the leader and cut back any competition so that your tree can start to heal properly. Again, we highly recommend hiring a professional to perform this service to ensure that it’s done as effectively as possible.
Even though it might be unintentional, pruning trees incorrectly can do a lot more harm than good. So, you must have information about how to fix the problem when this happens. And, hopefully, scanning this quick guide has provided some vital techniques that can help you correct your pruning, should you ever need to.