fuzzy trees

So I am not misunderstood, I am NOT pointing this at anyone in particular. And I am no better an arborist than anyone else.

I believe a good arborist develops a systematic method of looking at all trees they are asked to work on. They take no short-cuts and view the whole picture. As explained in the first post, there were some dead limbs in the crown, this would lead me to believe that there could be some abiotic/biotic issues, OR even root disturbance. The crown otherwise was normal looking.

Where was the 'lil decay, was it at a crotch, on a limb, or was it at the root flare?

Is this an old tree?

These are the arborist 101 questions that separates the good arborists from the great ones. Dr, Kim Coder said " the best thing you can do for a tree is give it space". he gave no answer why, but left us to think on our own. Most took it as a challenge to use their grey-matter.

All in all the question first posted is impossible to answer with any certainty.
 
Re sprouts, remove 1/3, reduce 1/3, leave 1/3. Repeat every year or 3 until it looks like a tree.

Compromise, as said above.

Reading Gilman makes pruning much easier.
 
Guy beat me to the management plan...

After a thorough Q&A with the client, as complete a diagnosis as I'm capable and decide to reduce the fuzz...this isn't done all of the time though.

Instead of having clusters of 10-15 tiny sprouts that continually grow and die, looking shaby, I would thin them and try to develop a few real branches. By doing this the energy is focused and shunted to vigorously growing tissue instead of dividing the same amount of energy. This has been a successful way to have a tree with the same, or more, foliage where it 'wants' it and leaving a tree that is a bit more eye appealing.

In other words...there is never enough food for 15 and all starve. Cull the herd to a proper carrying capacity and let 5 live.
 
Hollenreich said it best I believe. Selectively remove the sucker growth. The suckers that are growing straight up or into other limbs, remove those and sort the rest for damage. Once the canopy begins to provide adequate shade again, the # of sprouts will reduce and than you can selectively remove alot more. But since I cannot see the tree, I cant say for sure. Just my two cents.

Derrick Hulsey
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This is timely, I may start another thread but 'bing's example sounds a lot like some ash trees I looked at yesterday... and I'm not so sure how to approach the problems. The customer just acquired the property and loves trees, doesn't want consider removal. Duke Energy is going to wail on them for years to come, you can see the results of a recent clearance crew... not good, flush cuts... lots of inter-nodals from the previous pass plus they were severely topped as you can see.

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So my immediate thought was the remove a third, reduce a third, leave a third plan... but these are mature ash trees under stress. The yard will get a light change in grade soon and he's been advised about the complications of soil compaction.

I'm tempted to do nothing but an aesthetic cleanup. I don't want to remove foliage at this point because I think the trees are in damage control mode and need all the food they can store. Any opinions?
 
Do this:

I'm tempted to do nothing but an aesthetic cleanup. I don't want to remove foliage at this point because I think the trees are in damage control mode and need all the food they can store.
 
Chip the key is to manage the root damage to minimize it.

what the heck is a slight grad change?

re branches, it looks like the same program we used on Janet's pecans with Jake and rfwood--reduce and remove branches to restore crown.
 
I'd be looking at some planting to begin a replacement program as well.

And, how much of a grade change and with what? Go back to their love of the trees and desire to keep them to focus their plan on best practices.
 
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