To Prune or Not to Prune

Of couse, the correct answer is - prune.  A better question, however would be "How and when should I prune?"  Last week we pruned many of our trees as they were in desperate need of some TLC (truncation, lopping and cutting).  I hacked at a few of them the previous year with little understanding of the dos and don'ts of tree pruning.  As is often the case, H directed me this time and I did most of the manual labor (she's smart and I'm - well . . . ).  Anyway, she's recently switched on to the correct way to prune trees.  She told me which branches to eliminate and where to make the cut on each errant branch.  As it turns out, both aspects of pruning are important if you want a healthy, well-shaped tree.  The punchline is that a good tree pruning is like a good haircut - you should not necessarily be able to tell that it took place but it should look good afterwards.

It is also an issue of redirecting the resources that the tree uses for growth by getting rid of undesirable branches.  Pretty clever I'd say. 

If you want to pick H's brain about this or any future topic, post an inquiry and she will be glad to expound or answer specific questions. 

Now if only I could get our grass to green up.  B