structure pruning crossing branches

[david miller]

I know when you remove one of the branches you will have two wounds one at the thinning cut and one at the excursion. on older more established tree is it better to leave.{ these wounds will they ever infuse,} IE the cross section. this point is at constant movement from wind growth. or do you look at is it worth removing one of two dominant branches. the problems should have been fixed when the trees where young. but down here we have lot of live oaks that are almost 80 yrs old with main scaffold branches that have never been corrected. even taking alot of weight off the top you might only get 1or2 inches of clearence. example there might be 8 to 10 inches of diameter at crossing

 

[beastmaster]

On a mature tree with a big crossing branches its better to leave them, as Del_Corbin said. That is why proper pruning and management of young trees is important.
I have a few times on an ornamental tree where removing a crossing branch would ruin the shape of the tree, remove the bark where its rubbing to the cambien(sp?) and bolt it together in hopes it would fuse, done the same thing with out removing bark and bolt a block of wood between them. This was on Olives in front of homes on younger trees. I'm not recommending this as a solution in general.
You have to weigh what will do the most harm to the tree, a crossing branch or a big cut that won't heal.

 

[TreeFrogTC]

You could remove the branch entirely over a few years ie. reccommend pruning doses or at least keep the limb reduced to encourage the stronger one to take over, are you referring to crossing scaffold branches or co-dominant stems/leaders? By reccomending pruning doses you get the benefit of not harming the tree as much and repeat business.

 

[david miller]

yea most of the trees I come across are scaffold branches well established. has anyone here ever done work for a company call earth advisor they go onto a job and make a list of what each tree needs. .IE structure pruning, crown thinning and so on. what you get a GPS plotted map of every tree on the job somtime 200 to 300 tree and palm and a list of corrective action of each tree, the reason I ask it has to do with the post

 

[TreeFrogTC]

Havent done any work with that company but it looks like they are integrating GIS and GPS software which is something I thought of doing but it would involve buying a new pc and 3kworth of software and a full time person to operate it. Its nice to dream about though wouldnt it be great if you could just open google maps or (arc map) and have a dot everywhere you have a job to do or done and when you click on the dot all of the info for what needs doing or what was done comes up. Is this company you speak of a tree service or just a gps data service? At this time I would rather spend on more equipment or save the coin for something bigger i'd rather pay a guy to be behind a chipper or saw then behind a desk.

 

[david miller]

they dont do tree work, there more like tree managenent or advisor company it pretty neat they have a backpack GPS unit and they walk to every tree, plot it, name it and see what corrective action is needed yes there ISA certified, the map shows little dots that represent trees. on the list it has the scientific name, common name, and what need done. sometime it can be just one cut I.E a stub that need removed or it can be some type of pruning, down hear there alot of gated community with alot of money in there landscape

 

[david miller]

forgot the reason I ask, sometime they have these type of structure pruning, I think to my self that a large branch to be removing but i get paid to cut not think

 

[TreeFrogTC]

So do you buy the list off of the company or subcontract through them it sounds kind of lame if all you do is what they tell you and not have any input on whats being done, havent you noticed that different perspective of the tree structure you get from being in the tree canopy vs a visual asessment from the ground.

Speaking of tree structure does anyone here deal with multiple leaders on evergreens such as spruce, for the past 4 years or so we have been trying to subbordinate the weaker stems to encourage overall dominance in a single leader and in cases where included bark at stem unions is significant we have installed bracing cables in combination with subbordination pruning. Has anyone been doing this for longer to speak of the results, I have yet to see the growth response in the ones we pruned a few years ago. I am certain that the reduced stems might need a little more to keep them stunted in order to keep the selected main leader in dominance over the other previously reduced stems.