EASTON, Pa. — Nature can prune a tree in a handful of different ways, Rob Christopher said Wednesday evening — through storms, disease or when the tree itself stops sending nutrients to certain branches.
But residents with trees in their yards can also take matters into their own hands.
- Easton's arborist, Rob Christopher, held a free tree pruning class Wednesday in the city's microforest
- Topics included what tools to use and why pruning can be important
- After back-to-back rainstorms in the Lehigh Valley, trees may need a prune following recent growth spurts
“If we can help it along,” said Christopher, the city arborist and conservation manager, “It will flourish.”
Christopher on Wednesday evening held a free basic tree care and proper pruning course at Easton’s microforest. A skill developed over many years, he explained what tools are needed, how to clean and sanitize them, in addition to why it’s important to prune trees and the methods needed to guard against unnecessarily wounding a tree.
“A lot of trees don’t like to be pruned, so you got to go light."Rob Christopher, Easton's arborist and conservation manager
“A lot of trees don’t like to be pruned, so you got to go light,” Christopher said while lobbing off a couple branches from a northern catalpa. When pruning, only a maximum 25% to 30% of the tree should be cut, he added. “They need that percentage in the canopy so they can photosynthesize.”
While proper pruning is essential for any tree owner, it’s especially important this year to manage growth. After a long stretch of dry weather followed by back-to-back heavy rainstorms in the Lehigh Valley, many shrubs and trees experienced rapid growth spurts.
Plus, there’s beech leaf disease — a new and deadly threat targeting American beech trees across the Valley.
Why prune? How?
There are several reasons why a person might choose to prune a tree, from clearing dead, diseased or dying branches, to training young trees or for aesthetic reasons, Christopher said. While it depends on the tree species, many can be pruned all year round.
Cuts should be made just above the branch collar, the area that connects the branch to the rest of the tree, he said. Branches that are growing back towards the trunk, or overlapping can be pruned.
“If there’s too much congestion and it’s a tree that’s been genetically designed where the whole crown gets way too heavy, you want to go in to many inches or feet up the trunk and take some of the main limbs down so it’ll be balanced and it doesn’t become like a windsail,” Christopher said.
Bradford pears, popular in the early 1980s in housing developments, have this issue.
“The wind could not get through them, penetrate them, at all, and they kept the leaves all the way up until almost Christmas,” he said. “So, if you got a snowstorm and that weight got on there, or ice, whole branches would just break and pop right out of the socket of the main trunk.”
As easy as 1-2-3
For longer or bigger branches, it’s important to avoid bark tears, Christopher said. That occurs when the weight of a partially cut branch causes tears along the trunk, wounding the tree.
Instead, residents can use a “1-2-3” cut, he said.
“You want to come out at least a foot,” Christopher said, cutting twice further down the branch to lob off the majority of the limb. “So when it starts to fold, it won’t snap and pull down.”
Once the weight is off, a cut can be made above the collar and overtime a callous will form.
To prune the limb, Christopher used a folding hand saw. For smaller shrubs, he used a hand-pruner. At the end of the class, he demonstrated how to clean and sharpen the tools. In order to avoid spreading any disease, he used rubbing alcohol to sanitize the blade.
Although nature can do some of the work, pruning is the skill of learning how to best help trees and shrubs thrive.
“The trees know what’s sort of keeping it back,” Christopher said. “You’re just helping promote it to be healthier by removing these things on your own instead of waiting for nature to do it.”
