Google crazy technology of 2018……………. Holy moly rock and rolly! Robots are starting to look a lot like folks and folks a lot like robots!!!!!! If I can sleep in my car while it drives me to cryotherapy, all the while my robot vacuum cleans up my cryptocurrency, my tree company had better know the latest in tree care. So, in this blog I would like to shed light on a couple of common misconceptions in the care and planting of trees.
First and foremost, the planting of trees; Every newly planted tree does not need to be staked and tied off. In fact, whenever possible do not stake your newly planted tree. As a tree grows it adapts to its surroundings. The prevailing winds blow across it and as it sways an actual biochemical change happens within the newly forming wood making the tree better suited for the site. The newly formed wood is called flexion wood because it grows as it is flexing. If you leave the tree staked up as it grows, the over support of the ropes will give it no chance to adapt to its new surroundings. As an overprotective father the correlation is all too real.
Never, ever top your tree!!! This subject has been beat to death so I assume it is general knowledge but just the other day I saw a truck advertising tree topping, and I still see from time to time trees that have been topped. Topping a tree is to reduce the size of a tree, making cuts on the limbs of the tree without care for leaving a proper amount of foliage. Trees do not grow limbs like the hair on our heads or if you’re my buddy Roger, back! If you cut off twenty years of growth on a tree in one day it is not going to grow back at the same rate or fashion at all. The tree relies on the canopy it lost to support the rest of its structure. So, the tree goes into hyper drive growing branches at many times the rate of natural growth, so it can get the foliage back to photosynthesize and provide nutrition to the rest of the tree. This new growth is weak and soft because it could not naturally grow along with the rest of the tree. By making your tree much smaller by topping it, in a matter of five years you actually made it bigger and less stable.
Much like today’s robots you should keep an eye on your trees. They are much smarter than you think and will react in their best interest not yours. I’m going to unplug my Roomba and un-stake my trees as soon as I hit save on this.