Perks of Winter Pruning
skip to main navigation skip to secondary navigationWinter is a great time to tend to your trees
Anybody who had tree limbs come crashing down in last week's wind and snow learned the hard way that when it comes to tree care, a little preventive maintenance goes a long way.
And right now — during the dead of winter — is a great time to tend to your trees. First, all the leaves are down from your deciduous trees, so it's easier to see the overall shape and structure of the tree, and then determine what work needs to be done.
"You can see the entire branch structure when the leaves are not there," says Michael Almstead, vice president of Almstead Tree and Shrub Care Co. in New Rochelle. "This allows you to identify any weak connections or inferior crossing branches — and you can definitely identify any dead wood in winter."
You can also see branches and tree canopies that are too full and need to be thinned to avoid storm-related wind damage when the trees leaf out again.
"It's a good time to thin out the branches to reduce the wind sail of a tree," Almstead says. "You want to get the wind to go through the canopy of a tree instead of bringing it down."
No foliage also means lighter branches and an easier, less messy cleanup. Cheaper, too, because you're paying for much less material to be chipped or hauled away.
In fact, you may get a price break on the whole job in winter. Landscaping companies are eager to hold onto their crews all year and keep them busy in typically slow winters. Almstead says that his company's prices average about 10 percent less in winter.
-- Bill Cary, Journal News
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