There is a practice i see all around our area called Topping a tree and it is not good. Alot of home owners will let a company do this because its cheap and they think it will save you money. In the long run it wont here is why. What is Topping? Topping is the indiscriminate cutting of tree branches to stubs or to lateral branches that are not large enough to assume the terminal role. Topping is often used to reduce the size of a tree. A homeowner may feel that a tree has become too large for his or her property, or that tall trees may pose an unacceptable risk. Topping, however, is not a viable method of height reduction and certainly does not reduce future risk. In fact, topping will increase risk in the long term. Topping Stresses Trees Topping can remove 50 to 100 percent of a tree’s leaf-bearing crown. Leaves are the food factories of a tree. Removing them can temporarily starve a tree and trigger various survival mechanisms. Dormant buds are activated, forcing the rapid growth of multiple shoots below each cut. The tree needs to put out a new crop of leaves as soon as possible. If a tree does not have the stored energy reserves to do so, it will be seriously weakened and may die. A stressed tree with large, open pruning wounds is more vulnerable to insect and disease infestations. The tree may lack sufficient energy to chemically defend the wounds against invasion, and some insects are actually attracted to the chemical signals trees release. This is why you hire a professional company to do things the right way. In order to avoid topping, newly planted trees should be properly pruned to develop a good branch structure as they grow. When a mature trees height must be reduced, an alternative to topping is drop-crotching.
Posted on: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 21:36:02 +0000
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