Summer Checklist

As the weather outside begins to warm up we all begin spending a lot more time outdoors enjoying the sunshine and heat.  However this beautiful summer weather can bring challenges to your trees and shrubs.  Listed below are different tips to ensure that your trees make it through the summer healthy and strong.

Identify and remove hazardous trees from your property

Hazardous trees have the potential to be a major liability as well as being unpleasing to the eye.  Proper inspection of all the trees on your property is very important.  Watch for things like horizontal cracks, discoloured or lack of leaves, mushrooms on the trunk and large cavities.  All these point to a potentially dangerous tree and should be looked at by a professional.

Identify trees and shrubs for insects and disease

As the warm weather comes it tends to bring with it a host of unpleasant bugs and diseases.  Inspection of the canpoy and trunk of your trees throughout the summer is a great habit to get into.  Watch for partially eaten leaves, holes bored into the bark, leaf discoloration and declining (leafless) tips of branches and stems. Some insects and disease are very controllable and catching the symptoms early makes treating much easier.

Identify trees and shrubs for drought stresses

Our summers tend to be very hot with very little rain.  This posses a great challenge to your trees.  Some of the symptoms may be death from the top of the plant down and from the outside towards the inner.  Also leaves may appear yellowish, smaller and wilted.  In larger more mature trees an over abundance of fruit may point to drought stress.  When watering your trees be sure to give them a long soaking once a week.  Lighter, more frequent waterings tend to be sucked up by the surrounding turf and encourage shallow rooting.  Also on smaller trees mulching the area around the trunk out to the edge of the canopy helps reduce evaporation. 

Prune diseased, dying or undesirable branches

Pruning is one of the most effective ways to maintain a trees health.  Diseased and dying limbs should be removed to ensure safety and to stop the spread of infection throughout the rest of the tree.  Also pruning can be done to achieve certain visual effects.  County Arborists strongly suggests that pruning larger trees be done by those trained to do so as it is dangerous.  To read more click here.

Identify and install cables and/or braces in weak stems

Trees that have a very large and spreading canopy may have weakened unions where trunks and branches meet.  Identifying these early on is very important since the tree can deteriorate beyond the help of a cable or brace.  Watch for vertical splits in the trunk and very tight unions.  To read more click here.