imagineero
Addicted to ArboristSite
I'm just wondering how many guys are pruning perpendicular to the limb vs parallel to the trunk. In most cases they're pretty close to the same thing, but sometimes you get branches that are growing at maybe a 45 degree angle towards the sky. This leaves you with a choice of pruning parallel to the limb and having a small stub but a smaller wound, or pruning parallel to the trunk and having a bigger wound but a neater prune.
When I was pruning large stands of pines the standard approach was always perp to the collar. This meant that with upwards pointing branches you did get a bigger wound. It wasnt such a big deal because the trees were pruned about 65% every 6-7 years to encourage aggressive growth for furniture grade timber. The branches were generally small, 2~3” is about as big as they ever got.
I'm pruning some much bigger trees these days, sometimes the branches get up around the 12~14” size which when pruned parallel to the tree gives quite a large wound. I almost feel that I ought to be going perpendicular, it seems neater even with the small stub but I'm wondering how this will look in years to come and what the outcome is for the trees health. I read the study thats floating around here about flush cutting vs cutting outside the collar, I've always been a cutting outside the collar man, but the long term view of the study has me thinking more about the long term effects of my pruning. What are you guys doing?
Shaun
When I was pruning large stands of pines the standard approach was always perp to the collar. This meant that with upwards pointing branches you did get a bigger wound. It wasnt such a big deal because the trees were pruned about 65% every 6-7 years to encourage aggressive growth for furniture grade timber. The branches were generally small, 2~3” is about as big as they ever got.
I'm pruning some much bigger trees these days, sometimes the branches get up around the 12~14” size which when pruned parallel to the tree gives quite a large wound. I almost feel that I ought to be going perpendicular, it seems neater even with the small stub but I'm wondering how this will look in years to come and what the outcome is for the trees health. I read the study thats floating around here about flush cutting vs cutting outside the collar, I've always been a cutting outside the collar man, but the long term view of the study has me thinking more about the long term effects of my pruning. What are you guys doing?
Shaun
