T’is the season to start your spring tree care! Maintaining your trees is no easy feat. Property owners need to prune, cut, water, fertilize, and stave away disease. Unfortunately, due to a lack of research or misinformation, many cottagers are unknowingly damaging their trees.
In 2023, 77 per cent of Canadian households reported having trees on their property. The interest in planting trees, especially within the past couple of years, is eminent amongst Canadians. To ensure their continued benefits, we ought to be taking care of them in the appropriate manner.
Here’s how: Ian Laidlaw, a district manager at Davey Tree Expert, has advice on the mistakes you might be making with your trees, and how to remedy them.
Where do you cut?
The number one mistake most property owners are unintentionally making are bad cuts on their trees. Based on the tree type, certain cuts are easier to accomplish, as it’s dependent on how the branches are growing. Nonetheless, there is a strategy to how you approach it.
“Usually, there’s a little ridge on the edge or at the base of a branch. That’s what you want to cut,” says Laidlaw. Leaving stubs behind can cause tree owners further issues down the line. The ideal cut is cutting as close to a lateral branch as you can, without cutting into that branch.
“Most homeowners will leave a one-foot or two-inch stub, and that hinders the tree from healing,” says Laidlaw. When you cut a branch out, it’s integral for the tree to be able to seal up. If you leave the stub, it takes the tree much longer to grow completely around that stub. We may be assuming the tree is healing, but in actuality, decay is setting into that tree. Bottom line: be wary of your cuts.
Fertilize, Fertilize, Fertilize!
“Many homeowners don’t realize that since trees are meant to grow in a forested area surrounded by other trees, they heavily rely on the dead leaves that come down,” says Laidlaw. Even at the cottage, your trees—depending on your property—may not be able to benefit from the fertilization that fallen leaves provide.
This means that it’s essential to fertilize them to replace nutrients they would otherwise have from fallen leaves. Laidlaw recommends purchasing spikes—pre-measured compressed plant food—preferably with help from a local arborist. “Spikes are more or less designed to leach into the ground. You essentially dig a small hole and push them into the soil around your tree at intervals. When you water down the spikes, they spread throughout the soil, fertilizing your trees,” says Laidlaw. Read the packaging instructions carefully; they can vary based on the brand you purchased.
Depending on the brand you purchase and the rainfall in your area, you may have to frequently purchase new spikes. This is why it is an advantage to get the help of local arborists, as they can provide longer-lasting spikes. “If it rains a couple times, the fertilizer from your spikes will dilute too much, rendering them useless, whereas arborists can get spikes that would sit in the ground for the full year,” says Laidlaw.
Overwatering or Underwatering?
Most folks are either severely underwatering their trees or severely overwatering them. In spring, it is more common for homeowners to overwater.
“It’s not often you have super dry springs,” says Laidlaw. “The ground is usually soaked by the melting ice. So there’s no reason to water your trees at this time of year,” he says. While it may seem obvious, being vigilant of the weather, especially rainfall, is extremely important to know how often you need to water your trees.
Underwatering, on the other hand, is more common in the middle of summer. “Ideally, you should be putting soaker hoses at the bases of your trees for five to ten minutes a night,” says Laidlaw. It may be difficult to visit your cottage that often, and the average cottager may not have the irrigation systems set-up to handle watering when they’re away. So, do the best you can: Laidlaw encourages cottagers to take every opportunity they can to make sure they’re giving an adequate amount of water.
When you underwater or overwater your tree, you place unnecessary stress on it. And the more stressed out a tree is, the more vulnerable it is to diseases and insects. “It’s kind of like a weak immune system. It depends on how susceptible we are to those kinds of attacks. And it’s usually not necessarily one thing, it’s a combination of a lack of water and heat stress that will do it,” says Laidlaw.
As property owners, these are small changes we can make to our tree care routine in order to keep our trees healthy. With the right TLC in spring, your trees can enjoy the summer and fall at the cottage. They’ll be less stressed—and so will you.
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