If you have trees on your property in Minnesota, it would be in your best interest to make sure they’re well-tended. Healthy trees are beautiful to behold and provide your yard with some much-needed shade on hot summer days. Also, letting your trees get sick can be both dangerous and expensive. If disease or pests ravage a tree and weaken its integrity, branches will begin to follow and, eventually, the tree may collapse entirely, which can cause severe damage and injury. And if you need to have a tree removed before it falls, you can be landed with a hefty bill for the services.
One of the best ways to keep trees healthy and beautiful is to prune and trim them on a regular basis. In case you’re wondering what the difference is, pruning a tree involves removing diseased or dead branches to preserve tree health, while trimming involves removing newly-sprouted branches to help your tree grow into the shape you desire. One question that many Minnesotans ask is “can I trim, prune or remove trees during the winter?”
Benefits of Winter Tree Care
Many people mistakenly assume that it is dangerous to perform winter tree care because of the extremely cold temperatures in Minnesota. The truth is there are many benefits to trimming, pruning and removing trees during the winter months!
For starters, deciduous trees are much easier to assess in the winter because they lose the leaf cover which shields their branches during spring and summer. Signs of disease, pest infestation and storm damage which may have gone unnoticed during the warmer months will now become plainly visible. Because of this, winter tree pruning and trimming is actually easier than it is in spring.
One of the key benefits of winter tree pruning and trimming is that boring insects and diseases that plague trees are inactive when it is cold out. When you prune or trim a tree in spring, pests like emerald ash borers can easily infiltrate the tree through the cuts you made, and trees also become more susceptible to diseases. If you prune your trees in the middle of winter, they will have plenty of time to recover from these surface wounds before spring arrives and the pests return.
Winter tree pruning is also practical for safety reasons. When struck by winter winds and ladened by heavy snow, tree branches are much more likely to break off. In winter, you will be able to easily identify unstable branches and can prune them off before they have a chance to fall. This is also beneficial for your trees, since deciduous trees are dormant during the winter and won’t be stressed by the loss of a branch as they would in spring, summer or even fall.
Not only is winter tree care beneficial to trees, but tree removal is also much easier during the winter. When all of a tree’s leaves have fallen, they will be significantly lighter and easier to clear, which can save you both time and money. Because the ground is frozen during the winter, you won’t have to worry about muddy tracks being gouged into your yard by the heavy machinery used to remove trees. The frozen ground will also protect nearby trees and bushes from being uprooted when a tree is removed.
Winter Tree Pruning & Removal Services in the Twin Cities
There are many benefits of winter tree pruning, trimming and removal. If you want professional tree health care services in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro, you would be wise to seek the knowledge and abilities of certified arborists. Contact Pro-Tree Outdoor Services today for any winter tree removal, trimming or pruning services you may need in the greater Twin Cities area!
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