The Town Crier

Tree Talk

Winter injury makes urgent care of shade trees in March.

Springtime cleanup of shade trees and evergreens may require a little extra chore this year because of the injurious effects of winter winds, cold and snow.

Dr. Philip L. Rusden of the Bartlett Tree Research Laboratories suggests first mending the trees:
Remove any hanging branches left by winds.
Notice dripping of sap from broken limbs of birches and maples. Repair these as well as split crotches.
Bark tears or ugly scars before heart rots take hold.
Adjust cables in trees and cable other weak limbs.
Tighten guy wires on trees transplanted last fall.
Pull erect and guy into place evergreens and birches that may have been bent out of shape by the weight of ice and snow.
Remove and burn all dead elms during March and prune out dead and dying limbs of living elms. This sanitation is essential in checking the spread of Dutch elm disease.
Examine evergreens, small and large.
Many azaleas and other low growing shrubs were shielded from bud injury.
Tree Talk, Cont.

this winter by heavy snows. Others are now exhibiting dead and broken limbs. These should be carefully pruned out. Keep watch on bark of broadleaf evergreens such as rhododendron. Parts damaged by winter cold may slough off. Tip dieback may occur later. All trees and shrubs should be amply fed this spring with a wellbalanced tree food to boost vigor and thus counteract a wide variety of winter injury, whether it be frozen roots, damaged buds or loss of
moisture to high winter winds.

While cleaning up the garden in March rake up and burn leaves hiding in corners. These leaves may harbor spores of fungus diseases that attack sycamore, oak, elm, willow, apple and other fruit trees this spring.