Affordable Tree Service

Does Caring for Your Trees Matter?

If you don't water your lawn or weed your flower beds, your property will look terrible and your plants will die, but aren't trees pretty self-sufficient? Most established trees don't need additional water or even fertilizer. It can be incredibly easy to forget about the signature Maple in your front yard or the smattering of Oaks behind your garage. However, providing good care for your trees is extremely important. Affordable tree service isn’t hard to find, and it is so essential. Here are a few reasons to make the effort to give your trees the excellent care that they deserve.

Prevent Damage to Your Property

Perhaps the most immediate reason to care for your trees is the damage that trees could do to your property. A tree or major branch falling on your house or car can instantly do tens of thousands of dollars in damage. Proper tree care is very affordable by comparison.

Kinnucan Tree Experts - affordable tree services are provided by Kinnucan Tree Experts - man climbing a tree ready to trim.

It is the nature of trees to fall and to drop branches, so if you do not commit to tree care, chances are good that at some point one of the trees will fall or drop a big branch. It is especially likely for trees to fall over or drop branches in high winds such as those associated with winter storms, but extended rain or drought may also cause a tree to fall or drop branches. You may not be able to predict when a tree or branch is a risk to your property, which is where tree services can come in handy.

Preserve Light

Dappled light falling through tree branches is lovely. There are few landscapes more attractive than stately trees dotting a grassy lawn. This kind of filtered light is wonderful for your garden and lawn as well. Unfortunately, left to their own devices, trees may quickly go from providing dappled shade to blanketing your yard with shadow. Unless dense inner branches are pruned, trees will become too thick for light to fall through, making your yard dark and killing your grass and flowers.

Healthy Trees are Beautiful Trees

A beautiful tree can be the signature piece of your home, providing your property with a sense of dignity and beauty. However, healthy, beautiful trees don't just happen. Careful and deliberate decisions must be made about which branches to leave, which to prune, and which to cable in order to direct the growth pattern of a tree into the most attractive form.

Without pruning, trees grow branches that obscure one another, run into each other, or grow straight up or down. When these branches out-compete one another, they become weaker and may die, resulting in fallen branches and in a messy and unattractive interior. Furthermore, a dense interior encourages the spread of insects and disease from one branch to another, which means that the whole tree can get sick faster from any given infestation. Performing regular tree services is much easier than dealing with a sick tree. Look to Kinnucan Tree Experts and Landscape Company for affordable tree service.

What Do Trees Need? Affordable Tree Service.

Now that you have a sense of how important it is to take good care of your trees, you may be wondering what exactly you need to do. You can do some regular tree care yourself, but you may find that it is wiser to go to a professional for some things. Here are a few of the things you will need to provide in order to have happy healthy trees.

Trimming

Trimming is one of the most frequently performed aspects of tree care. The goal is to remove any limbs that are dead, weak, or sick, in order to encourage general health of the tree. By removing weak limbs before they grow you can save the tree from investing unnecessary effort into limbs that do not provide benefit to the tree. This is very important when pruning young trees. Careful decisions as a tree develops can save you from much more work when the tree gets older and even prevent the need for eventual tree removal.

Trimming may be done throughout the year to reduce overall branch density and increase the light and air within the tree. This is especially important for trees that grow vigorously or tend to have a dense growth habit. Regular trimming throughout the year can prevent trees from becoming so dense that they get diseases between dormant pruning.

Trimming can reduce the overall size of a tree. This is necessary when a tree is going to interfere with utility lines or when you want to keep fruiting trees low enough to harvest and maintain. This type of trimming should be done by pruning back the highest branches to secondary branches, rather than removing the tips of branches. When the overall size of the tree is controlled in this way, it will maintain integrity and appear attractive.

Dormant Pruning

In the winter most trees become dormant. You may think that this is when tree care stops, but in fact, the opposite is true. When a tree is dormant pruning will do much less damage and cause the tree less stress. For this reason, most major pruning should be done in the winter when trees are dormant.

Dormant pruning is generally more aggressive than regular trimming. Large branches may be cut at the trunk to thin a tree and encourage vigorous spring growth. Trees are often thinned when dormant. This is when branches are eliminated for the goal of opening up the canopy of the tree and allowing light and air to circulate throughout the branches. As much as a third of a tree may be removed during dormant pruning.

If you have trees on your property that are severely overgrown, dormant pruning is a good way to get them back to size and healthy. This is one of the most affordable tree services for the impact it creates. Dormant pruning can rejuvenate an old tree that is no longer in full leaf, flowering or producing fruit.

Tree Removals

Tree removal is not one of the most affordable tree services so it is best to try everything you can to keep the tree before opting for removal. That said, sometimes tree removal is necessary.

A tree may be planted too near a house, road, powerline, or outbuilding. Trees can interfere with buildings as they grow because of the root mass or branch spread. Some trees cannot tolerate the degree of pruning that would be required to keep them away from the obstacle, and are better removed.

Sometimes, a tree may become old, sick, or injured. A sick tree attracts insects and disease and is at risk of falling or dropping branches at any time. If a tree in your yard isn't as vigorous as it used to be and isn't responding well to regular pruning, trimming, and care, it may be best to consider tree removal before the situation gets worse. If your tree has suffered damage from storms or lightning and does not appear to be recovering, it may be necessary to remove it.

Some trees need to be removed for the health of other trees. Forests that have been thinned, with some trees being removed and others left, have bigger trees overall. The same is true in your yard. When trees need to compete with one another for resources, they grow more slowly and tend to grow more erratically into leggy and less attractive specimens. You may be amazed by how rapidly your trees will grow and thicken, and how much tree care like pruning is reduced once trees don't have to compete.

Cabling

You probably know about pruning and trimming trees, and of course, tree removal is always a solution to a problem, but cabling is a less well-known affordable tree service. Cabling can be a very effective way to control the growth of trees and manage problems. Using cables, a professional tree company can mitigate the risk of limbs falling or growing incorrectly without having to cut them off. Cabling may be necessary to help branches hold the weight of winter snow or handle strong winds.

Cabling can prevent weak branches from falling. A desired branch may be cabled until it has grown strong enough to withstand wind and snow. Branches that grow over areas that would be especially damaged by a fall, such as your roof, carport, or patio, may be cabled for safety. Cables can not only prevent these branches from falling but also help direct their growth desirably.

Cabling can also preserve a weak or damaged tree that may not otherwise survive. If a tree has been damaged by storm winds, lightning, or improper care, careful cabling may keep the tree upright and in place until it has had time to heal and re-establish its roots.

Usually, a cable runs between two limbs, although other times cables may be attached to a secure anchoring point. The cable is drilled through the relevant branches and a pulley system used to create the correct tension in the cable between the points. When done correctly, cabling will do no damage to any of the branches that are affected.

Stump Removal & Grinding

A tree can add wonderful beauty and function to your yard, but when it has fallen or needed to be cut down, the stump that is left is anything but attractive or functional. Left to its own devices, a stump will either try to regrow or begin to rot. Either way, it isn't a desirable thing in your yard. Stumps that regrow generally do so in a bushy and unattractive fashion. Stumps that begin to rot attract insects and disease.

For these reasons, if you have had a tree fall down or needed to have it cut, you are likely to want stump removal services. There are two options for stump removal: removing and grinding.

Stump removal is exactly what it says. The stump is physically pulled from the ground. This requires considerable force and powerful machines with high power. While many roots will break off, you do have a fair chance of pulling up some of the major roots as well as the stump. When stumps are removed in this way, there is almost no chance of the tree growing back. You will, however, be left with quite a hole in your yard.

In stump grinding, the stump is ground away without removing the roots. This is the more affordable tree service of the two options. Machinery is used to mechanically grind the stump, leaving sawdust where the stump once was. Grinding can go from inches above the soil level to as far as a foot underground. Very few trees will survive this process, although it can occur that a tree may try to grow back from a ground stump. The finished result is generally nondescript. You may hardly notice that stump removal has occurred.

Storm Damage Emergencies

Severe weather can wreak havoc on trees. High winds and saturated soil can cause roots to fail. Wind can break off branches or split trunks. Winter storms can cause an accumulation of snow and ice that breaks branches or trunks under the weight. It is wise to always have trees pruned and cabled prior to storm seasons, but even well pruned and cared for trees might be damaged in a storm.

If your property has undergone a severe storm, it may be a good idea to have an arborist examine your trees, even if the damage is not immediately obvious. A branch may be injured or split high up where you may not see it. Over time, it will continue to weaken until it drops.

If you have clearly damaged trees, it is essential to have an arborist examine them and provide the necessary care or tree removal. Leaving trees with injured branches makes it difficult for the tree to heal and is an invitation for disease and insects. Careful decisions must be made about which branches must be pruned and which can be cabled or left to heal by themselves. In some cases, an arborist may decide that a tree is unlikely to recover, making tree removal necessary.