Marjorie Peronto: Hi.
My name is Marjorie Peronto with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension.
I'm standing in front of a small landscape tree on the University of Maine campus.
This tree has never been pruned, and it needs some attention to keep it healthy.
Thoughtful pruning will extend the life of your trees and accentuate their natural beauty.
The best time to prune a deciduous tree, that is one that drops its leaves in the fall,
is in the late winter or early spring.
In Maine that would be March, early April.
By doing it then, it's just before the tree is starting to grow but you have an unobstructed
view of the branches.
It's much easier for you to see what should be removed, and the pruning wounds that you
create will heal quickly as the tree starts to grow.
You need three tools to prune a small true like this properly.
You need a pair of hand pruners that are made for pruning branches about the size of a pencil
and smaller.
You need a pair of loppers to extend your reach and prune branches that are slightly
larger, up to an inch and a half in diameter.
Then, you'll need a pruning saw for the larger branches that you may have to remove.
I am going to selectively remove some branches to open up this tree's canopy so that even
when it's fully leafed out, air can freely circulate through.
This will reduce the possibility of diseases developing on the foliage, it will improve
the flowering and fruiting of this tree, and, it will extend the life of this tree.
The first thing that you need to do is stand back and look at your tree from all angles.
Determine what its natural growth habit is and what are its most ornamental features,
and then, decide how you can best accentuate those features.
This is a Hawthorne and behind all of the twiggy growth, it has a lovely pagoda‑like
layered branching habit and some really nice silvery bark.
With some simple steps, I can reveal those features and make it much prettier and also
make it healthier.
For a small tree like this, it's great if you can start with the branches at the top
where the pruning will have the most benefit.
Once you decongest the top of the canopy, you have to remove less as you work your way
down.
Look carefully through the crown for the three D's, the dead, damaged, and diseased wood,
and remove these branches at their point of origin or cut them back to a healthy side
shoot.
If you see crossing or rubbing branches, remove one to prevent them from further wounding
each other.
Look for branches that are growing straight up into the center of the canopy.
These are also called water sprouts.
They tend to clutter up the crown of the tree and are candidates for removal.
Also, look for branches that are growing inward or across the center of the tree.
Those may be removed as well.
Lastly, if you have branches that are growing out of bounds, those are candidates for being
shortened or removed.
The important thing is to stop after every cut.
Step back, look at the tree, take your time.
Say to yourself before you remove a branch, "I am making this cut because," and then complete
the sentence.
That will help you to keep from overdoing it.
Sometimes, I find I get so immersed in the task that I don't step back, and then I wind
up removing a lot more than I originally intended to.
It's really better to take it slow, continue to look at the tree from all angles, and make
your decisions one by one.
When you are removing an entire branch, that's called a thinning cut and that opens up the
canopy, which is what we're trying to achieve right now, you want to look for a ring of
wrinkled bark where the branch joins the trunk or where it joins another branch, and make
your cut just outside this area.
This area is called the branch collar.
You want to leave that intact to promote the fastest healing of the wound.
If in some cases, you find yourself wanting to remove a part of a branch and not the whole
thing, don't leave a stub.
Always cut it back to above a healthy side shoot or an outward facing bud.
And then the tree will be able to send its new growth in the right direction.
We no longer recommend painting tree wounds with that tree paint.
We have found that actually that tends to slow the healing process.
Some tree species will tolerate heavy pruning better than others.
Before diving in, do some research about the trees that are growing in your landscape and
how they respond to pruning.
When you're finished, as you can see with this tree that I've already pruned, the branches
that remain should accentuate the natural beauty and habit of that plant, and the canopy
should be open enough to see blue sky through it.
Keep in mind that the approach that I just showed you can be used on many different species
of landscape trees.
Here, I am in front of a crabapple that is one of a pair, and it's very much in need
of pruning.
I pruned the other one so that you could see what it could look like when you're all finished.�