Summer is a time for enjoying warm weather with barbecues, pool parties, and beach trips, but for trees, summer can sometimes be a stressful time. It is important to properly maintain your beloved backyard trees during the dry and hot days of summer. The tree care experts at Blessing Tree Service have the knowledge for proper summer tree care.
Healthy Trees
- Watering and irrigation: Summer is a hot season so it is essential to make sure your trees are getting enough water. Trees need an average of one inch of water per week, although this varies by species. Young or newly planted trees, especially, may need more water than the rain provides during dry periods. You can determine if your trees are getting enough water by checking soil moisture or looking out for signs of drought stress like leaves wilting, yellowing, curling or browning. If you determine it is necessary to water your trees, remember that deeper and less-frequent applications of water promote better root growth than shallow, more-frequent irrigation. Watering your lawn does not provide adequate irrigation for trees because the water from your lawn sprinkler does not reach deep enough into the soil promoting weak surface-level tree roots.
- Mulching: Mulching is covering the ground around a tree with compost or other organic material. It’s important to their health. Mulching cuts down on competition from weeds and helps to stabilize soil temperatures and moisture levels. Conserving moisture levels with mulch is of course very important during the hot summer. If you already mulched your trees in the spring it may be time to mulch them again and if you did not mulch in the spring it is not too late. The correct method of mulching trees is using shredded hardwood mulch to build a donut-like shape around the tree. The mulch should be 3- to 5-inches deep, start a few inches from the base of the trunk, and extend out 1–2 feet. It is essential you do this without mounding mulch against the trunk of the tree. Mounding mulch against a tree’s trunk promotes infection and harmful insect infestation.
- Pruning: Pruning your trees is a must to improve their health and encourage strong growth. It is best to hire expert arborists from Blessing Tree Service to do this for you, especially for large trees, so that the health and safety of both humans and trees can be maximized. The best time to prune trees is during fall and winter when they are dormant, but during the summer it is beneficial to have an arborist check your trees for diseased, damaged, and dead branches that should be removed. Flowering trees like magnolias, flowering cherries, and lilacs should also be pruned during summer when they are done blooming.
- Investigate the health of your trees: Summer is a good time of the year to inspect the health of your trees because all of their leaves are in place making dead or damaged limbs more obvious. You should inspect your trees for any sign of damage from insects, disease, or rot. Most insects are harmless to trees but a few species can be very damaging. It is particularly important to check for insect damage throughout the summer because pests like spotted lanternflies, magnolia scales, bagworms, Japanese beetles, aphids, and spider mites are active during the summer months. Watch trees carefully for unusual changes and contact Blessing Tree Service if you believe your trees are in danger.
- Storm damage prevention: In New Jersey, summer brings numerous damaging storms, heavy wind events, and sometimes even hurricanes to threaten our trees and homes. To protect your home from falling trees and tree limbs you should consult with the expert arborists of Blessing Tree Service to assess the safety of your large trees. It may be necessary to cable or brace trees with weak limbs. Sometimes removing weak limbs is also necessary. Large dead trees are also a major hazard to the safety of your family and property especially during summer, so in some cases, entire trees need to be removed as a last resort.
Summer Tree Care
Healthy trees not only beautify the landscape but are also helpful to our environment. Basic summer tree care is not difficult, but with our busy lives, it may not get the attention your trees need. For all of your tree maintenance, protection, and removal needs this summer contact the expert arborists of Blessing Tree Service.
