Storm Pruning - Getting Your Tree Ready for Storm Season.

The Importance of Getting Your Trees Pruned Before Storm Season

Storms like we have in St. Petersburg and the Tampa bay area bring heavy rain or wind can be really bad news for your trees. Depending on how you have pruned and maintained your trees in the past, the trees could be subject to a lot of structural damage that might result in a tree falling over or splitting at a weak union and breaking. Usually, there is a lot of sentimental value attached to a tree and one would feel pained to see their tree damaged in any way.

Uprooted trees or broken branches can also pose other serious problems such as injury, loss of life and property damage. Safety concerns such as broken branches falling on adjacent power lines or on roadways are possible and it is definitely something that needs to be avoided at all costs. There have also been instances of fatalities where large branches or whole trees have collapsed on houses or people, crushing them under their sheer weight.

Most of these problems can be avoided by proper tree trimming or tree pruning as it is commonly referred to, is the process by which the tree is trimmed or sized down in such a manner that their health is not affected. In fact, certain types of tree trimming actually promote a tree to grow stronger and healthier than before.

If a tree is neglected without any tree trimming whatsoever, it will grow wildly resulting in several defects such as a canopy that is too dense, branches that rub against each other, diseased or weakened branches and so on. This crowded situation can lead to a much heavier tree after days of rainfall as the branches soak up the moisture and take on weight.

Tree trimming addresses various issues as listed below.

Tree cleaning

This is where weak branches, branches affected by previous storms and diseased branches are removed from the tree, thus improving its overall strength and health of the tree.

Structural pruning

This is especially important for a tree that is young. Structural pruning will allow it to grow in the most desired way possible and it is particularly important if the tree is close to a man made structure.

Tree thinning

This is important in areas that are subject to strong gusts of winds. Every tree has a wind sail. In other words, trees will be flexible enough to resist winds to a certain point after which they will break or fall over. Tree trimming will reduce a tree?s wind sail and make it less susceptible to strong winds, while also allowing it to grow healthily.

Tree raising

This is where trees are pruned in such way that they provide clearance for streets or sidewalks. This is also done to allow more sunlight to enter a yard or a building. Also called canopy raising.

Crown reductions

This is the most common form of preparing a tree for a storm as it will strategically reduce the amount of canopy exposure that a tree has. Topping a tree or removing more than 25 to 30 percent of the structure is not allowed in some counties and it is definitely not healthy for the tree.

As you can see from the article above, tree trimming is something that will need specific knowledge and expertise to be carried out efficiently. A tree can be pruned only at certain times of the year and very specific techniques need to be applied to allow the tree to grow healthily and heal itself correctly after is has been pruned.

It is best that you hire or contract a professional tree trimming company that can carry out the services for you, thus allowing you to have peace of mind about the health of your tree and address all the safety issues that concern it.