Feb 25, 2021
For many trees, it’s coming up on pruning time. Generally speaking, springtime is when many trees are best served by undergoing some care—though scheduling is key, especially for flowering trees and shrubs.
If your yard or woodlot in West Chester. Kenneth Square, Chester, 19026 Drexel Hill, Upper Darby, Haverford, Radnor, Springfield, Yeadon, Broomall, Ardmore, Villanova, 19342 Glen Mills, 19063 Media, 19081 Swarthmore, 19015 Brookhaven/Upland, 19073 Newtown TWP—or any other community in Delaware County, Pennsylvania— needs some pruning and trimming then Strobert Tree Services, Inc. is ready to get to work.
And if you have any leftover stumps that you’ve gotten tired of looking at over this COVID winter, we can take care of that with our stump grinding service. We use specialized equipment to make an eyesore—though it should be noted that termites and carpenter ants are much fonder of them—disappear quickly and without tearing up the surrounding ground.
A significant advantage to early spring pruning is that, since leaves haven’t obstructed the ability to see the tree’s underlying form, cuts can be made with more precision. A tree can be better “shaped” for both aesthetic and safety reasons. Dead or weakened branches can be culled, signs of disease discovered, and—especially for large trees—any limbs that pose a hazard to surrounding property can be judiciously eliminated which, in effect, will leave not only a healthier tree but also a safer one.
Flowering trees and shrubs that should be pruned in the early spring include flowering dogwoods and cherries, redbuds, and honeysuckles. These species often don’t set flowering buds until they get active in the spring and so it’s important to work on them while they’re still dormant.
It’s important to prune other flowering trees and shrubs as soon as possible after they’ve flowered because this gives them time to recover over the summer before they bud later in the season. This is part of lignification, a complex process that plants go through to prepare for winter by undergoing strengthening on the cellular level. Pruning in the late spring or early spring is best for species that bud in the fall, like azaleas, forsythias, lilacs, magnolias, and rhododendrons.
For trees and shrubs that don’t flower the timing isn’t quite as crucial. But pruning is important for all trees and shrubs. And if you have a woodland, pruning and trimming can open up the canopy, bringing in more sunshine to the entire ecosystem and ultimately enhancing the health of most plants that are a part of it. And in the case of older trees, pruning can revitalize them as removed weaker limbs will make way for new growth.
And, as we mentioned above, if there’s going to be a significant amount of debris produced by pruning and trimming your trees, it might also be a great time to get rid of any old stumps. As opposed to stump removal, which involves some serious digging with a backhoe, stump grinding uses specialized equipment that bores down into a stump and basically pulverizes it from above. We get rid of it down to a few inches below ground level, then the area can be covered by soil and reseeded with grass or as a flowerbed. You can also get a nice pile of mulch out of the deal if you’d like—or we can haul it away for you.
So remember, if you’re ready to take care of your trees this spring in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, then keep Strobert Tree Services in mind.
