The goals of trimming are simple: maintaining a tree’s aesthetics and managing its size. Pruning has a somewhat different purpose: improving a tree’s health by removing its dead and unhealthy parts.
Tree pruning is essential to warding off pests that can worsen a tree’s appearance and ultimately kill it (or make it more likely to suddenly release a branch, which is dangerous for reasons we don’t have to explain). But why does the judicious removal of branches and stems protect a tree against infestation and disease? There are a few reasons. Let’s take a look!
Pruning Removes Insect Shelter
Trees provide habitat to all kinds of lovely creatures. We’d hate to imagine what Washington state would look like without the trees that support wild populations of Steller’s jays, downy woodpeckers and northern flickers.
Naturally, trees also provide habitat to the same wildlife that kills them. Insects like the winter moth and bronze birch borer both gravitate toward trees with dense branches and foliage that provide hiding spots and protection against sunlight. By thinning these sources of shelter out, you are giving undesirable insects less places to take cover.
Pruning Removes Insect Sustenance
Dead and dying branches don’t just supply insects with a food source. They also collect rainwater and dew, which creates the damp habitat many insect species can’t flourish without. In short, by pruning, you’re depriving insects of the moisture they need to survive and reproduce.
Insects aren’t the only lifeforms that thrive in moist conditions. The fungi species which cause shoestring root rot, laminated root rot, Dothistroma needle blight, and other diseases that harm trees all require moisture to complete their life cycles. By lessening a tree’s capacity for moisture retention via pruning, you are depriving these fungi of sustenance as well.
Pruning Enhances a Tree’s Immune System
A tree receives finite quantities of sunlight, water and soil nutrients. Pruning has multiple benefits in that regard. It allows more sunlight to access the tree’s healthy leaves. It gives the tree more resources with which to grow roots, which stabilize the tree in addition to increasing the amount of water available to it. Pruning also enables the tree to invest more of its available energy toward fighting off disease. In that sense, pruning actively fortifies a tree’s immune system.
That’s right! Trees have immune systems, and pruning isn’t the only way to strengthen them. Adequate watering, regular fertilization and supplemental composting are all great ways to bolster any tree’s resistance to pests.
Ward Off Pests With American Tree Trimmers
Pruning is an excellent way to enhance any tree’s health. The act of pruning may not be especially good for your own health, however, as it requires climbing and ladder work which could end disastrously. Furthermore, knowing which parts of the tree to prune away requires experience – not to mention tools which you may not already own.
All of this is to say that you may be better off hiring a professional to prune your trees. If that’s the case – and if you own or manage property in Lower Yakima Valley, Benton or Franklin Counties in WA – then we welcome you to contact American Tree Trimmers (Please link to home page) today to request an on-site consultation and estimate. Our pruning services will make your trees far less vulnerable to pests!