247 Trees vs. Storms

Show Transcript

GB 247 TRANSCRIPT Trees Vs Storms 
 

[00:00:00]

Farmer Fred:

Garden Basics with Farmer Fred is brought to you by Smart Pots, the original lightweight, long lasting fabric plant container. It's made in the USA. Visit SmartPots.com slash Fred for more information and a special discount, that's SmartPots.com/Fred.

Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. If you're just a beginning gardener or you want good gardening information, you've come to the right spot.

Winter storms are ravaging the country. Heavy winds, rain, and snow are toppling trees from coast to coast, crushing cars, homes and power lines. Why are so many trees falling? It could be due to the lack of care by the homeowners. Or the city. Or whoever owns the trees. Today, we have tips for discovering some of the structural weaknesses that can lead to toppling trees, and how you can help prevent disaster from striking. It’s Trees versus Storms.

We’re podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilon Jungle in Suburban Purgatory. It’s the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, brought to you today by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. Let’s go!

We're very fortunate where we are here in Northern California that we get destructive rain and windstorms maybe once. A generation residents who have been in the area a while are comparing the recent New Year's Eve deluge to storms back in January of. 97 and February of 86. And in those two massive storms, atmospheric rivers, closed, flooded roads, shut down major freeways in the area and there were power outages due to downed trees. 
 

And we had a lot of rain three to six inches or more. On New Year's Eve there's more coming. We are again under a heavy wind warning and a. Flooding warning, and this can happen any place in the country where winds can reach 50, 60 miles an hour or more, causing trees to start falling in saturated soils, toppling homes, and power lines. 
 

But if you're one of the lucky few who had minimum of home and yard damage, as well as consistent electrical power, don't become too complacent because before a storm or after a storm, You need to check your trees. Pam Bone is here to help us check our trees. Sacramento County Master Gardener, the original Sacramento County Master Gardener, and a former urban forester, she knows her trees. 
 

And Pam. I often wonder when trees fall in a storm, is it something that we knew would happen? I'm wondering how many trees could have been prevented from falling if people had bothered to. And see if there was anything wrong with the trees that was visible. What percentage of trees do you think are cruising for a bruising? 

 

[00:02:55]

Pam Bone:

Basically a storm like we just had, and the one that's expected unfortunately, will uncover a lot of problems that you really probably didn't even know existed at all. But a little inspection, taking the time to look at your trees, even just annually, if that's all you did. 
 

And then before and after storms go out and double check. So maybe there are 10 to 15% of those trees that you couldn't predict at all what was going to happen. They were just going to fall because of the saturated soil conditions and the roots just couldn't hold. But there are many other defects and other things that happened to trees that you could have probably predicted or at least helped to predict ahead of time. 
 

So, coming up with the percentage is a little hard, a little difficult, with a storm like we just had. And the one that's expected soon may not be able to be predicted, but many others are.  
 

[00:03:53]

Farmer Fred:

What is the difference between healthy trees or a hazardous tree? Healthy trees versus unhealthy trees? An unhealthy tree could be sound and not hazardous.  
 

[00:04:09]

Pam Bone:

That's exactly right. People don't understand what “healthy” means. The vigor of the tree, how well it's growing, how is it producing leaves and the root system is healthy and everything about just growing and being vigorous and whatever. But is it rotten inside? Does it have splits? Is there decay? Is there something going on inside that may compromise the safety of the tree? And that doesn't always equate with the health of the tree. A tree can really look quite healthy and be growing quite vigorously, but yet be unsound as you were just saying. 
 

And so there's the thing that you have to look at. Perhaps there are unsafe conditions that you can visually see, as well, with branches, twigs, and limbs and the root system that perhaps you might be able to detect. 
 

[00:05:05]

Farmer Fred:

If people all of a sudden have the urge to go out and check their trees and there's a storm brewing, or they're in the middle of the storm, don't do it then. Do it after the storm or before a storm and probably do it from the ground. Don't climb the tree or use a ladder to improve your viewing perspective. 
 

[00:05:24]

Pam Bone:

A lot of commercial tree trimming that's done improperly is done not by commercial arborists, but by commercial landscapers. And they are not allowed by their licensing if they're just doing landscape gardening, to climb trees. And so they prune from the ground, which is very safe. 
 

But because they can't reach the top of the tree, they often prune improperly. Homeowners often do the same thing. If they can't get up there, they just whack away at the top of the tree. And unfortunately, it's one of the worst things that you can do for a tree to go in and top it. And in fact, many of these unsound trees that we're seeing are the results of what we did years ago when we went up and topped the trees. 
 

Decay can set in, branches have grown back and they’re not in the correct position. They're weakly attached. They come down in storms. So a lot of bad pruning is what is leading to a lot of decay and problems with the tree safety.  
 

[00:06:28]

Farmer Fred:

Yeah. And not using the right tools as well, but we'll get into that a little bit later. Let's talk about some of the most visible hazards that a homeowner can check on their trees to see if it is a threat to falling, or not. And there are several.  
 

[00:06:44]

Pam Bone:

One of the first things to do, and I saw this just the other day with the New Year’s Eve storm, is the number of leaning trees. All of a sudden, you have a tree that has never leaned before. 
 

Now there are a lot of trees out there that have a natural lean to them, and people do get worried, but they've been growing that way. The wood is formed against those stresses and makes the tree very strong and it’s unlikely that that tree is probably going to fall. But what if it's a tree that all of a sudden has a lean that you've never seen before, or the lean has changed? Then you need to start inspecting. 
Maybe take a little mental calculation in your head about how many degrees it is off of the normal lean that it had. Or if it was straight before, how much is it now leaning? Maybe the ground is looking a little strange. Is it heaving? Are there, especially when this happens, if the soil's not real wet, sometimes you can see dry cracks in the ground, or if the soil is wet or if it's in a lawn area, you may see roots that you didn't see before because they're pulling up a little bit. 
 

Or there's a mound, it might look like a mole mound. You have to look for those kinds of things. So leaning trees are a factor. And the tree that I saw the other day, sure enough, was leaning and it leaned a little too far and went down on a power line in my neighborhood. Thankfully, it didn't take out the power line completely, and it was restored and the tree was removed before we lost power. 
 

[00:08:12]

Farmer Fred:

One thing about leaning trees that people can monitor because everybody carries a camera now on their phone, is to take a picture of the tree as it is currently leaning, but have something in the background that is, completely vertical, like the corner of a building or a fence post or something like that. 
 

Have them both in the same picture and then take the pictures maybe every three months or four months and see if that lean increases. If that lean is radically more different than that upright corner of the house or that fence post, take action. 
 

[00:08:45]

Pam Bone: What I would say is that if it was never leaning before, and all of a sudden it leans after a storm, that's probably an indication some roots have gotten pulled up. Roots that may have been decayed or just an extremely wet soil and the roots just couldn't hold . You probably should have somebody inspect the tree immediately. Have them come out and take a look at that tree and look at the root system and everything else. 
 

Now, if it's a tree that was leaning beforehand, and now you think maybe it's leaning a little bit more, yes, that's the one that you maybe can monitor and see what's going on. And you may not even have to do it that often if we're not having big storms. But you should still look at your trees, I think at least annually. 
 

[00:09:28]

Farmer Fred:

Oh, exactly. And you mentioned to have somebody come out. Let's define “somebody”, because here in suburban purgatory where I live, I see a lot of people hiring workers who have no business working on trees. And it's very obvious that they're just winging it, so to speak. And so when you want to call a tree expert, you want to call somebody who is a certified arborist, who's insured, bonded, and has been in business awhile. And it might even be with an arborist who belongs to the International Society of Arboriculture.  
 

[00:09:59]

Pam Bone:

I was just gonna say, Fred, in fact, if they call themselves certified, that is a specific designation by the ISA, the International Society of Arboriculture. It shows that they have taken an exam, that they have met certain standards, that they are licensed and bonded, which is a requirement to still continue your certification that they have taken continuing education classes. You're not necessarily guaranteed that somebody's not gonna come out and do something that they're not supposed to do, like top a tree, but if they're a certified arborist most of the time, that ensures that you're going to get somebody that at least knows the standard of care, the good standard of care. 
 

[00:10:39]

Farmer Fred:

I'll mention a website and I'll be mentioning it again. Trees are good Dot org. treesaregood.org. That is the home for the International Society of Arboriculture. And you can find an arborist near you who meets the ISA standards and is not just an arborist. You can find consulting arborists, as well, who you can hire to come out and basically do a survey of all the trees on your property to tell you what problems you might have. 
 

[00:11:06]

Pam Bone:

And Consulting Arborist is another designation by another organization. .And so again, this is somebody that has additional training, has met certain standards, and that if somebody just calls themselves an arborist, it doesn't necessarily mean that they are certified or a consulting arborist. And so you need to ask, and they can say that they are licensed and bonded. But “licensed” might mean they have a business license. 
 

It doesn't necessarily mean that they're certified. The other thing is some people just call themselves tree trimmers and you don't know what their qualifications are. You need to ask a lot of questions. Sometimes you get individuals that really don't know what they're doing and they take advantage of the situation after a big storm, after some sort of event where, we have a lot of problems with the tree, so you need to ask questions. 
 

And yes, there is probably no doubt that a certified arborist is probably going to be a bit more expensive. Usually it's because they are properly licensed and bonded and they keep their workman's compensation up to date, but, don't you want that? If they're out trimming a very large tree or climbing a large tree and they have an accident and they fall on your roof, or the tree falls on your roof, you know that they're covered and that you're not now going to be liable. 
 

[00:12:25]

Farmer Fred:

Yeah, that's a very good point too. Especially tree trimmers who take off too big a branch and it falls on your neighbor's house. Guess who's paying? You the homeowner, if they're not licensed, bonded, and insured. 
 

[00:12:35]

Pam Bone:

And so I will often tell people that. Make sure that the person at least has their licensing, obviously their business license, but they also have their workman's comp and they're up to date in insurance. There are some homeowners that say, I just can't afford a certified arborist. But you do wanna make sure that you're not gonna be liable for something and make sure you're hiring somebody that's legally licensed as a licensed contractor to do tree work, if it is over $300 or $500 worth of tree work. Something like that.  
 

[00:13:06]

Farmer Fred: People tend to forget that mature healthy trees add a lot of value to a landscape. Think about that. If you ever plan on selling your home, if your trees are in good shape and good form, it is going to increase the sales price of your  home.
 

[00:13:21]

Pam Bone:

Oh, no doubt at all. And a tree that's improperly cared for. A tree that is, for instance, that is getting too tall. People get really worried about that and the big storms are coming and they're gonna blow over. So, they go and have their trees topped or headed back, which is heading. That is a cut that we do make on small trees and fruit trees. But a large heading cut is called topping. Many people would call that “tree butchery” on large trees. And that can lead to a very unsafe, unsound tree that allows decay to come in, allows the tree to produce extra limbs that all crowd out each other, and they split out in a storm. 
They almost act like a sail, because they're so dense. It is such a severe problem that many of the trees, I can predict right now, If we go look at these trees that have fallen, they all have some sort of defect, many of which have been caused by improper pruning.  
 

[00:14:17]

Farmer Fred:

Yes. In fact let's get back to how homeowners can identify a tree that could be a potential hazard. 
 

A lot of healthy trees that I see are hazardous trees because they have what the industry calls “co-dominant leaders”. They have multiple trunks.  
 

[00:14:33]

Pam Bone:

That starts often times in the nursery. It also happens when we don't prune properly. But many trees are subject to that just naturally. They tend to do that, we have a lot of ash trees that love to put out co-dominant leaders, and that just means something that almost looks like a slingshot, two of them coming out together, like a V-shape. That is a tenuous connection. It's not a safe connection. Bark gets embedded in there and the tree limbs can't attach properly. So what happens is that there's a lot of pressure, torque, or whatever that's placed on that tree limb. As the tree limb gets heavier and larger, a big wind or something comes by and the tree limb splits out. 
 

In fact, it's a funny thing. When you used to do your radio show, I was on my way to being a guest on your show. And I knew of a tree at the end of my street that I kept saying, “that limbs gonna split out, that limbs gonna split out.” Because it had at least four co-dominant limbs coming out of one area on an ash tree. 
 

And I know that those are unsafe and unsound. They can't attach properly. And someday it's gonna get so heavy. And a big wind came up that morning. And I'm driving down the street and there's the tree, with a huge limb right on top of the fellow's car in the  street. Luckily no house was hit. Luckily no people were injured. But the car was. And I actually called my husband real quick and said, go grab my Nikon camera and go get a good picture of that. 
 

I've been talking about this tree for years, and we talked about it that day on your program.  
 

[00:16:24]

Farmer Fred:

I think all of us in the business on our daily routes see a similar tree and when you look at it, yeah, this one's cruising for a bruising for sure. And eventually it could happen during a storm. It could happen on what appears to be a calm summer day. A big branch falls.  
 

[00:16:29]

Pam Bone:

That's true. Now, the calm summer day ones can be a little bit different. They're a little bit more unpredictable. They could be natural limbs that we haven't done improper pruning on, and certain trees are subject to a summer branch drop that we still don't quite understand totally what's happening. So that's a little different than this whole storm damage stuff.  
 

[00:16:49]

Farmer Fred:

Now let's talk a little bit about some other problems that trees may have that you do want to take care of so it doesn't fall, and that has to do with decay or cavities. And it's usually like a big hole in the trunk or maybe mushrooms around the base. 
 

[00:17:06]

Pam Bone:

Yes actually cavities are indication of fungi they've gotten inside the tree. And they are rotting away inside the wood, the inner wood. That can be caused by many things. It could be an entry to the trunk, it could be entry to the roots. It could be an improper pruning wound that is left open surfaces for fungi that are all around us. 
 

They're the wood rot. Fungi are just sitting there, waiting to rot a tree, and they just need an opening to the inside of that tree, and it could be an animal chewing on the bark of the tree. You can do it by pruning a limb and leaving a very large open area that the fungi will come in on. Certain decay and certain cavities are worse than others. 
 

It is dependent really often on location of the wound. So if you see a very large cavity down near the base, that could be an area that could be structurally unsound because it could be in some of the root system, and the roots could be decayed as well. And the tree then can topple from the base. 
 

The other thing that could be a real hazard is if you've got a large limb and you have a cavity at the base of that limb, That's an area where oftentimes the wood is very unsound and will split out. So it depends on the location of the decay, how extensive it is. You have to determine that by looking. And again, refer to the professional if you're not sure what you're doing. When you inspect 
your trees, you are looking for things that seem out of line yourself, but maybe you don't understand completely, and that's when you need to hire a professional to determine if it really is a problem or not.  
 

[00:18:48]

Farmer Fred:

As grandma used to say, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”. If you have the good intention of filling one of those tree cavities with concrete or a sealing foam or something like that, don't do it. 
 

[00:19:03]

Pam Bone:

For sure, because you and I both, Fred, have seen so many trees that were filled in the good old days when they thought that this was a way of arresting or stopping decay. They thought that this was going to be the cure to any cavity or decay you saw. We found out, over the many years of a lot of research done, especially by a gentleman who's no longer with us, Dr. Alex Shigo.
 

If you ever wanna read some fascinating information about trees, he's the one to read. He used to tell people to go out and touch trees, to really get to know them, to understand them. And that trees are not people, they decay differently than people. It's not like your tooth is decayed and you can fill it with a filling and you've routed out the decay with your drill, and now you've filled it and everything's fine with your tooth. 
 

It's not that way with a tree. When you go out and you start routing out that decay, you're actually destroying walls that the tree has built up to prevent decay from going into other parts of the tree and into the vital portions of the tree. So what you're doing is by filling with anything at all, especially caustic materials, like putting cement in a tree, unfortunately you're causing much more damage to the tree than if you just left it. 
 

Get a turkey baster if you're worried that water's collecting in there and mosquitoes might breed, but leave it alone. The Sate Capitol grounds in Sacramento is a magnificent arboretum. And there are many trees that had that back in the day, they used to be filled with this cement. And it hardens into this impenetrable material, of course, which is concrete. 
 

And there's decay just working under the surface, getting worse and worse. And years later, these trees were falling and still are all over the place. No, you do not want to fill trees with anything at all.

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Farmer Fred:

Let's get back to our conversation with Sacramento County Master Gardener and tree expert, Pam Bone. We're talking about trees versus storms. In the wintertime, storms are hard on trees. They fall, branches break, power lines go down when a broken branch falls on them. Maybe that tree wouldn't be having that problem if there was some pre-storm diagnosis going on, something that homeowners can look for as far as structural weaknesses in trees. Maybe you're gonna prune out one of those problems. 
Do you know how to properly prune? One good method to know when it comes to trimming off big branches, is called the three Cut pruning method, and Pam Bone will explain what that is.

Farmer Fred:
That brings us to a scenic bypass that I think is very important ,and that is the proper way to cut a big branch. If you're doing your own pruning of a tree, you need to know the proper way to remove a branch that is thicker than your thumb. The way you cut it can have a big result as far as whether it's a successful cut or not.  And it's called the three cut pruning method. And that third cut is something that we were just talking about. Really, the tree can heal itself if you give it a chance. Explain the three cut method. Basically what happens is we're always telling people that you want to save the branch collar, which is a swollen, wrinkled area near the base of the limb, which is great. 
 

[00:24:36]

Pam Bone: But what if you've got a really large limb and you all of a sudden go to the base of the tree to prune at that collar, and this limb is going to split out as you start to cut? And then it's going to rip the bark down the trunk of the tree or down the other branch it's attached to. And you don't want that, because that's going to leave a big wound. 
 

So the three cut method is where you do the upper and the lower cuts. So you actually go out ways, go out a foot or so from the trunk of the tree, and you're gonna reduce the load on the branch. By cutting it out further so that it won't split. So you do an undercut and an overcut and it'll just drop off out further and it won't split. And then you come back with your short little stub, don't leave too long a stub. 
 

[00:25:27] Farmer Fred: When you cut back the branch collar as our friend Steve Zien likes to say, there should be enough left on the tree to almost hang a hat on. 
 

[00:25:34]

Pam Bone:

Actually with a large limb it'd be a big hat.. Because you probably are gonna be out about at least a foot or so with a large limb like that. And the other thing I wanna say, again, if you are pruning a limb, needing the three cut method, look at how big that limb really is. Can you handle that right? Because that limb is going to drop, a large portion of that limb is gonna come off the tree. And even if you're not damaging the tree, you might damage what's under it , unless you've got somebody that knows how to lower those limbs, knows how to properly prune them back before you cut. I just think big branch tree pruning is best left to the professionals. 
 

[00:26:15]

Farmer Fred:

Exactly. And we'll say that many times because it's true. And in the long run it will save you money, especially if you got injured doing something like that.

A bit more detail about the three cut pruning method. When you go out a foot from where you want to remove it, do the undercut first, going up about one third of the thickness of the branch. And then go out another few inches, and you're gonna make the overcut. You're gonna go completely through the branch. And when that branch falls, the stripping is going to stop where you made that undercut. And then with that one shorter branch you have left, that's maybe only a foot or so long, you can make that cut outside the branch collar. 
 

[00:26:55]

Pam Bone:

And there are a lot of really good illustrations that people should take a look and look at what a three cut pruning method does look like. And look at the branch collars. Whether you have fruit trees or landscape trees, this branch collar is shutting the door to decay getting into the tree. And it's important whether it's a little tree, a small tree, small branch, or a large branch. 
 

And so get to know your branch collar. That is a really critical, vital area that help prevent decay, which is going to help prevent damage during storms.  
 

[00:27:30]

Farmer Fred:

And that brings us to trunk and branch cracks that you need to inspect. And these cracks could be vertical, they could be horizontal, it could have been caused by any number of things. And what you're looking for is, how deep is that crack?  
 

[00:27:45]

Pam Bone:

All cracks that go deeply go beyond the bark. I get a lot of people call Cooperative extension office and ask questions about, “oh, my tree looks terrible. It's got cracks all over it.” They don't realize it's a really old apple tree or a really old landscape tree that has fissures and cracks in the bark. 
 

Perfectly normal. That's how they look. And some trees are really quite interesting with how deep and how unique some of those fissures are. But if the crack actually goes into the trunk, then you know that there is something structurally going wrong with that tree. All cracks that go into the branches or into the trunk are caused by wounds. 
 

At some point, a wound was made. This is what's going on with the tree. The tree will wall off or compartmentalize, that little area of decay that might have ensued when you made even a small pruning cut sometimes, or a larger pruning cut later on in life. The tree is weak in that area. 
 

Unfortunately, when a tree has to marshal all of its defenses to  put these walls up to help prevent decay from going throughout all the tree. It makes it a weaker area for the tree to have strength. And so later, as the tree is swaying in the wind as we have heat and cold, then we get these cracks that form, and you can trace that crack back. 
 

You can probably look and find out it's got a narrow branch crotch area. We were talking earlier about the co-dominant stems. That's a weak area and that's where you can get a split. You can split where you made a large pruning cut and a lot of new growth came out of the same spot, or there was a wound there and that wound may have closed. 
 

You can't see it anymore and you go looking for it. If you see a wound and you see a split, it's obvious that split originated from that wound. But sometimes you go look and you say all I can see is the result of it. You'll see these little kind of raised areas where it calloused over and closed, and that area is prone to splitting later. 
 

And then what happens when it splits? It then creates a decay problem again inside. Or it creates a dangerous area where the tree just can't hold itself together. And one way that you can listen for splits. In fact, I went out to my front a Few years back and I could hear my neighbor's tree creaking. And when you hear a tree creaking, it's not like a rocker, rockers creak. Trees shouldn't. 
 

It was a split and I went and I said, this split is gonna get larger and that tree is probably going to break in half because the split was right down through a bunch of co-domin