The Tree Care Industry Association says, “Tree pruning is the single best investment a property owner can make to ensure the survival and lengthen the lifespan of their trees.”
Tree trimming services are important for maintaining healthy surroundings. Trees serve extremely important roles in the natural environment and take many years to grow and develop. Once established, they provide shade, erosion protection, and habitat for birds and animals. Not only are trees an important part of beautifying your home or business, but the shade provided by trees can decrease air conditioning costs by 10% to 50%.
Having your trees trimmed or pruned on a regular basis – both young and mature – will prevent structural problems, ensure optimal structural growth, as well as maintain overall tree vitality.
Texas Tree Techs can determine what kind of pruning is necessary to maintain or improve the health, appearance and safety of your trees. These techniques include:
Hazard Reduction Pruning
Hazard Reduction Pruning (HRP) is recommended when the primary objective is to reduce the danger to a specific target caused by visibly defined hazards in a tree. For example, HRP may be the primary objective if a tree had many dead limbs over a park bench.
- Remove or prune laterals that interfere with buildings, roofs, windows, or obstruct streets or sidewalks.
- Remove deadwood
- Remove diseased or weak limbs that could pose a hazard in the future.
- Perform weight reduction by selective removal of branches as needed to create a better structure that lessens wind and storm damage.
- Repair storm damage
Maintenance Pruning
Maintenance Pruning (MP) is recommended when the primary objective is to maintain or improve tree health and structure, and includes hazard reduction pruning.
- Thinning or removal of unnecessary branches to better develop the tree growth
- Eliminating branches that rub each other
- Removing limbs that interfere with wires, building facades, gutters, roofs, chimneys, or windows, or that obstruct streets or sidewalks
- Removing dead or weak limbs that pose a hazard or may lead to decay
- Removing diseased or insect-infested limbs
- Creating better structure to lessen wind resistance and reduce the potential for storm damage
- Training young trees
- Removing limbs damaged by adverse weather conditions
- Removing branches, or thinning, to increase light penetration
- Improving the shape or silhouette of the tree
Benefits of Proper Tree Trimming and Pruning
As trees grow, they need direction. This may be in the form of pruning, thinning or shaping to remove dead wood. Pruning enhances the appearance and value of landscaping, but it’s importance goes way beyond looks.
Pruning can also help your tree by reducing damage from a storm, providing clearance from your home and can be used to train young trees early so possible structure problems can be avoided in the future.
Sometimes a tree has branch problems beyond what pruning can improve. A severe split in a tree’s large branch can cause the loss of that branch, which could affect the long term health of the tree. In these cases, our arborists assess the need for a cable or brace to support the structure of your tree, so that your tree remains structurally intact.
All structures including houses, garages, and fences should have at least 4 ft. of clearance from any part of the tree to avoid frictional damage and the transfer of pests. Termites, roaches, carpenter ants and rodents like squirrels, possums and raccoons love to enter the house thru your trees. It’s almost like they have their tongues stuck out as they do so.
You can begin the tree pruning, or tree trimming, process when your trees are approximately one year old. After this time, proper tree trimming can enhance the overall beauty, health, safety and value of your property.
Please don’t top trees!
Topping is perhaps the most harmful arboricultural practice known. Despite more than twenty-five years of articles and seminars explaining its harmful effects, topping remains a common practice throughout the country. Please be aware that topping:
- Greatly shortens the life of your trees. The large wounds allow disease and decay organisms an easy route of attack.
- It’s makes trees ugly and that can reduce your property value.
- Over time, it’s cheaper to prune and shape your trees than to top them!
Texas Tree Techs uses industry approved tree pruning techniques, so you can be assured that the proper tree cuts are made and will seal correctly, overall tree health will be optimized, and industry safety standards will be followed.