Landscape Maintenance Tips: Pruning Dormant Trees
7 Feb 2019 Landscape Services
Properly pruning dormant trees can be a great way to encourage healthy plant growth on your property. At Jovak Landscape and Design, they understand that properly pruning trees in the wintertime can seem like a daunting task to some homeowners. That is why they have put together some simple landscape maintenance tips for pruning dormant trees.
Why Should You Prune Dormant Trees?
Winter is often the best time to cut away dead or overgrown branches to encourage healthy plant growth because most plants are dormant at this time of year. During the winter, branches will also be bare, allowing you to clearly see the architecture of the tree, so you do not accidentally cut away anything important. Pruning dormant trees in late February or early March can help trees grow thicker foliage and more flowers, as well as help them create better defences against insects and disease.
Trees that Should Be Pruned in the Winter
Pruning dormant trees in the wintertime can help provide trees with extra energy and resources that would otherwise be used by overgrown or dead sections of the plant, leading to more foliage and better plant growth in the spring. Some of the trees that should be pruned in the winter include:
- Amelanchiers
- Bald cypress
- Bradford and Collory pears
- Cherries
- Crabapples
- Japanese maples
- Juniper
- Oaks
- Plums
- Poplar
- Redbuds
- Spruce
- Sumacs
Trees to Avoid Pruning in the Winter
Pruning certain trees in the winter can cause them to ooze sticky sap that can cause a real mess on your lawn or nearby cars. While this is not dangerous for the trees, it is better to avoid pruning them during the wintertime. Some of the trees that should not be pruned during the winter include:
- Birches
- Dogwoods
- Elms
- Maples
- Walnuts
How to Prune Dormant Trees
When pruning dormant trees, make sure to only remove sections that are dead, diseased, dying, or damaged using a sharp pocket knife or hedge shears, as these sections can cause more stress to the tree when left attached. It is also important to ensure that you follow the natural lines of the branches, making a clean cut where the base of the branch meets the truck in order to allow the tree to properly heal the pruned sections. Trees can also be pruned along the head by simply cutting off part of a branch to create an ultimately stronger branch and to encourage a larger number of smaller offshoots to grow.
If you would like to learn more landscape maintenance tips for pruning dormant trees, or if you are interested in their landscape maintenance services, please contact Jovak Landscape and Design at 604-835-2850 or by filling out a contact form on their website. You can also stay up to date with the latest landscape design news by following them on Facebook.
