reduction pruning 4 large maples

Daniel

Daniel

Carpal tunnel level member
Location
Suburban Philadelphia (Wayne)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtteLBIJz-Q

nothing too exciting.. client was overwhelmed with the size of these trees. he was contemplating removal. I was able to convince him, that we could take them back far enough to make them work in his landscape. Some discussion with the client is included.

"Murphy's Tree Service demonstrates proper tree pruning on several very large deciduous trees. The trees pruned include 4 large silver maples and one large pin oak. These trees were growing so large as to crowd over the house and driveway, leaving the homeowner feeling overwhelmed by their size and the heavy shade that these large shade trees create. The use of a state of the art aerial lift, or bucket truck, allows us to quickly and efficiently make heading or reduction cuts to reduce the over all size of the trees, and make cuts to give clearance to the roof, driveway and understory trees. The 75' bucket truck is used to reach branch tips, that would be extremely difficult to reach by climbing. No large cuts are made on the trunks, because such cuts often result in the development of terminal decay."
 
I climber can prune much better than a bucket truck. Hands down, face on the mat, total submission
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You prtty much have to cut your way in opposed to cimbing in and and cutting out.
Mb my opinion is because I do not have a bucket but I have worked for many years out of a bucket. And most times I found myself leaving the bucket to make the appropriate cut.

Its alot like a landscaper with his shears making everthing look like a commercial landscape. Everything is sheared and looks like a ball or whatever shape. Naturalized pruning is difficult at best from the outside or periphery. There are advantages though like being able to step back and adjust more or less. But that is what groundies are for and aesthetics are always secondary afaiac.
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Best prunes are from climbers with good understanding of the fundamentals of young tree training and good knowledge of pruning response/timing and species habit etc.

Your prunes look like pruning. It would be better if they didn't look like pruning at all. Given a few weeks or more those cuts are all grown in anyways. So no real difference anyway.

I will give you an "A" for effort and big ol slap on the back for havin the cohones to put yourself out there.

Mucho respect and thanks for postin.

Cheers
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nice vid daniel but shouldnt you have pruned that oak in the late fall early winter ? help prevent oak wilt . i only prune oaks in very late fall or winter .

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No Oak wilt here in eastern PA.. though the pin oak clearly has an early case of BLS, which will be fatal.. He originally wanted to remove the silver maple in the backyard and keep the adjacent pin oak.. I told him the oak wouldn't make it more than another 10 years, so keep the maple..
 
Good job for a bucket truck. It sure is easier on the body than climbing out to all those tips. Very time efficient as well.

I enjoyed the dialogue, it's interesting to see how you had the homeowner feel like he's part of the project. Seemed like one happy client.

Did you squeeze that bucket into the backyard for those trees?
 
daniel .. really you do not have oak wilt there ? hard to believe . i live only about four hours from you and we have it here . in general i was taught that you should only prune oaks in late fall winter anyways . i like to prune trees in winter anyways for obvious reasons .
 
I have never seen or heard of a case of oak wilt. I'll make a call on that this week.. I pruned one elm out of season 20 years ago, elevating from the roof with a power pruner, and it woke up dead the next spring.. Since then I only prune elm in the dead of winter..

The people I know that do treat BLS say that results are iffy.. If there was some treatment that could be sold with a high degree of certainty, I would, especially on specimen trees. I suppose it would be good to at least give the homeowner a choice. any suggestions?

ANd yes, the bucket truck did the two backyard trees.... we flipped mats of the neighbor's driveway
 
I think the key is to pretreat all pin oaks that are out of the riparian zones and be aware of the first signs of bls. Ive seen several Pin Oaks with early stages of BLS that have been brought around. Soil bio improvement with an Iron content nutrient can help curb chlorosis. OTC can be injected for more advanced cases. If you must prune Oaks in the summer be sure to sterilize your tools.
 
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Your prunes look like pruning. It would be better if they didn't look like pruning at all. Given a few weeks or more those cuts are all grown in anyways. So no real difference anyway.


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For pruning for aesthetics I agree.. best to keep the trees looking natural so anyone driving by wouldn't even notice they had been pruned. I have a video shot last month of a row of plums that show just that. In this case, the client was thinking of cutting down ALL these trees.. The canopies were overwhelming him with their size and shade. In the time he had lived there, they had grown A LOT, as sliver maples will do..

In order to convince him to keep the trees, I had to show him that the trees could be reduced significantly. In order to get that much reduction, the trees had to "look like they'd been pruned".. Part of the point of this video is that sometimes the best thing you can do for a tree is to hit it a little harder than you "should", becasue that meets the homeowners needs.. otherwise the homeowner is going to have the trees removed, sooner or later..

As far as climbing vs bucket.. There's no comparison when you hit 50 LOL... Those were 5 big trees... all those cuts made out on the branch tips of those wide canopies by one man from the bucket. Lots of cuts out over the house and other trees. I forget exactly how long that job took, but definitely less than a day.. How many climbers in the world could get that done?
 
Dadio age is just a number, some dudes are fit all their lives and some have just never had it. Me I would rather be in a tree climbing than any bucket truck. Buckets are not my style, don't really like loads of heavy equipment knocking around but that is just my preference. Low overheads might equate to spending more time on that job, not having the bucket and all the other fancy equipment. However my understanding of economics is that, PROFIT= price of job- expenses. I know that keeping things simple can make neat profits on jobs and less stress. Life is all about perspectives, I am just a dude that loves balance and have lots of other interests outside of tree work. But I do love climbing so you can keep the bucket truck.
 
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtteLBIJz-Q

nothing too exciting..

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You got that right.


I'm interested in how your pruning actually stunts growth, and changes the basic physiological growth of the trees (meaning you have finally conquered phototropism).

Those trees look healthy enough to take the heavy pruning, and you definitely reduced the likelihood of individual limb failure with the reduction cuts.

Keep up the good work!

Hope the ankle is healing up nicely.

SZ
 
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We do have oak wilt and I wish people would start thinking more proactively on treatment of BLS.

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Oak Wilt and BLS are two different things, right? I wasn't aware that Oak Wilt was in PA.

SZ
 
Western PA for some time... never heard of a case or seen it around philly.. anyone else know the location of a confirmed case locally... I'll make a couple calls.. saw john B Ward pruning a big oak today.. they stay up on the news.. No way would they be pruning oaks if oak wilt was around here..
 
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no oak wilt in phili danny boy ??? here are some facts . just because you say you have never heard of it before does not mean that it does not exist in your area !!!!!!



http://na.fs.fed.us/pubs/detail.cfm?id=921



help save your native oaks prune them in the winter ....

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Are you gonna post a link to the map you're talking about?

becasue the map in that link, dated 2010, shows n oak wilt in the 5 county philly area.. What did I miss?
 
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