crown reduction

[DDM]

Originally posted by BigJohn
What happened to the fence and all the shrubs in that picture? Did yall wipe them out?

Hmmmm If so and you Grabbed your husky and jumped in your Chevy. Your a Hack! LMAO

 

[Guy Meilleur]

Originally posted by BigJohn
I don't see much reduction but I'm not one to judge reduction. I just can't bring myself to make heading cuts it just feels wrong. I'm not sponsored by ansi so I'm not representing. I do what works.

No one is "sponsored" by ANSI, but many people read the Pruning standards to get guidance on how to prune. Reduction cuts are made to a lateral large enough to be the new branch end (apical dominance), and heading cuts are not.

However, heading cuts CAN work on mature trees in certain situations.It all calls for some guesswork, and putting experience to work; many times it's hard to tell if a bud or a lateral can dominate. But it's not hard to tell that by reading and following ANSI pruning standards you will do a better job in the tree, be worth more $ to your employer, and talk about pruning in the same language as others.

Mike, thanks for putting the pictures sidebyside; yes there was thinning along with reduction. It's impossible to tell what % of each, and in fact many cuts are both.

Nick, I've seen the presentation of that leaf-weight data, and am totally unimpressed. The Germans with their Statics work are way more relevant.

blue, I think you did well, but you may have been able to make deeper cuts on bigger wood (the need depending on the strength loss due to the cavity). To me, it's not important how a tree looks when you're done with it so much as how it will look and move in a few years.

 

[blue]

mm,
nice one in putting the pics side by side.

looking at them i can see where people got the wrong ides about the tree being thinned.most of the leaf was on the end of the branches we reduced back thus givving the immpression of it having been heavily thinned.

 

[alanarbor]

I've seen large targeted reduction cuts made to reduce the weight on a defective limb, or in some cases to prevent the failure of an entire stem. It's not a common practice, but it has a place, when one is trying to manage the structure of a large, declining, tree with lots of decay, that the client or ourselves don't want to remove. Everything has an end to it's life, and we need to manage the decline of an old tree, just as we manage the growth of a juvenile tree, which btw if it was done well, would eliminate a lot of unneccessary crown raising done later.

There is however a lot of unneeded crown reduction going on due to perceived hazards and liabilities. I wish I could say it was all about trees, and nothing but trees, but unfortuantely, we are the managers of the tree/human interface. If we can manage the second one better, we'll be able to do right by the first.