Winter tree care is much more than merely seeing if you have a problem with your tree or a few dead branches. There are many other vital steps you need to take to ensure that your tree will thrive during the colder months of the year and that you won’t have any unwanted issues down the road. Providing proper winter tree care for the trees in your yard is a significant tree care maintenance effort designed to keep and preserve your trees and your landscape’s future.
The first step you should take to ensure proper winter tree care is to make sure that you are prepared for the upcoming cold. You want to be ready for the winter and have adequate equipment to handle the cold weather if it should occur. An excellent first step is to prepare your yard and property by taking down all the trees in your yard.
Next, it is time to begin digging the trenches where you are going to bury your tree. This should take about two weeks after your last snowfall. By the time you are digging, your trees should have grown into the ground and are now ready for their winter tree care routine. One of the most important things to remember is that you will need to cut the stump down before you bury it. This will allow for adequate space between the tree and your new stump so that any roots that might grow there won’t damage your existing trees or interfere with the snow pile you placed down below.
After the soil is dug around your tree, start filling the holes with snow. While you fill the trenches, make sure you leave enough room for the tree’s trunk to grow freely. If your tree has a solid trunk, it can grow in several inches or more into the snow. This is very beneficial for the tree because it prevents the tree from freezing while digging the soil. When the snow melts, you will notice that the tree’s root ball is more extensive, and the roots are not frozen.
By this time, you will probably need to remove some of the existing roots that are on the root ball but do not cut them down completely. The root ball is what is going to help to provide the tree with the nutrients that it needs to survive the winter. After the snow melts, the snow will go on top of the root ball, and you should make sure it does not remain on top for an extended period.
One final step you should take when implementing winter tree care is making sure that you check the soil around the tree and remove any grass clippings from the ground before it freezes. Any snow that has been left in the ground will cause the ground to be slushy, and the roots of your tree will be exposed and susceptible to frostbite and rot if you leave them unprotected for long periods.
For serious cases where a tree needs to be removed, call the tree removal Madison, WI trusts for quality, affordable tree care. Tree removal can be necessary in many situations where the tree is dead, seriously distressed, a hazard to property structures, or just an overall nuisance in your landscape. For these, and other situations, removing the tree may be your best option.