Talking Trees with Davey Tree

Protect Your Trees from Extreme Heat

July 07, 2022 The Davey Tree Expert Company Season 2 Episode 25
Talking Trees with Davey Tree
Protect Your Trees from Extreme Heat
Show Notes Transcript

Adam Passo from Davey's Southwest Milwaukee office talks about how to care for your trees during summer heat waves.

In this episode we cover:

  • Tree watering (0:30)
  • How much should you water your trees? (2:44)
  • Rain (3:23)
  • Mulch (3:57)
  • Volcano mulching (5:14)
  • Planting during the summer? (7:52)
  • Watering bags (9:12)
  • Right tree, right place (9:55)
  • Trees Adam loves planting (11:36)
  • Deer resistance (13:31)
  • How Adam started his job (16:42)
  • Importance of certified arborists (18:29)

To find your local Davey office, check out our find a local office page to search by zip code.

To learn more about tree watering, read our Tree Watering blogs.
To learn more about mulching your trees, read our Tree Mulching blogs.
To learn more about protecting your trees from deer, watch our Talking Trees video on How to Protect Trees from Deer and Wildlife.
To learn more about the importance of hiring a certified arborist, watch our Talking Trees video on Why Hire a Certified Arborist.

Connect with Davey Tree on social media:
Twitter: @DaveyTree
Facebook: @DaveyTree
Instagram: @daveytree
YouTube: The Davey Tree Expert Company
LinkedIn: The Davey Tree Expert Company

Have topics you'd like us to cover on the podcast? Email us at podcasts@davey.com. We want to hear from you!

Doug: Welcome to the Davey Tree Expert Company's podcast, Talking Trees. I'm your host, Doug Oster. Each week, our expert arborists share advice on seasonal tree care, how to make your trees thrive, arborists' favorite trees, and much, much more. Tune in every Thursday to learn more, because here at the Talking Trees podcast, we know trees are the answer. I'm joined this week by Adam Passo. He's a district manager for the Davey Tree Expert Company in Southwest Milwaukee. What's going on in Southwest Milwaukee today, Adam?

Adam: Oh, we have ourselves a heat wave today. Man, it's hot and humid out there. It's rough.

Doug: That's the perfect weather for our topic today, which is trees and the heat. The first thing I think about, but you tell me, the first thing I think about with heat and trees is watering.

Adam: Yes, absolutely. That's important. Doesn't matter what stage of life your tree is in. If it's been recently planted, obviously that's crucial, but even some of our elderly trees are going to need some help if it gets really hot and dry. Up here in Milwaukee, we're experiencing a little bit of a drought, so adding a little bit of water, supplemental water, is going to be huge for the long-term health of that large tree.

Doug: What's the best way for a homeowner to do that?

Adam: Slow trickling of the water hose. If you have a soaker hose, that's ideal. That really slowly gets the water down into the root system of the tree. If it's surrounded by grass, those roots are extremely efficient. They're so tight and compact, so getting it down to that tree is important.

Doug: It can be hard to do if you've got, let's say, my situation. A vegetable garden, ornamental garden, trees, shrubs, it all needs water. When we get to the summer here, on my big giant trees, I'm not watering because I've got too many of them, but anything that has been planted in the last two years gets water. I just drag the hose out there and depending on the size of the hose, just let it run for a while and then I do my garden work and then I move the hose.

Adam: Yes. The big part about watering is you want to have those feeder roots. The roots that are out by the drip line are the most efficient at grabbing water. Close to the trunk, not really needed. Out a little bit from the trunk is where it's the best.

Doug: How do I know if that tree has the water it needs?

Adam: A general rule of thumb, every tree is a little bit different. Evergreens don't need quite as much water as a deciduous tree, say, but a general rule of thumb is an inch a week. If you have a pie plate out, and if that pie plate is dry, you're probably going to have to water a bit. When you're soaking, it's hard to judge how much you need, but giving each spot about 15 minutes soak, moving the hose, that's about all you need.

Doug: Do you feel any differently about the rain than normal people? Some of us gardeners, we're loving the rain, but normal people are like, "Oh boy, this is great weather, no rain, no rain," but if you're growing trees and growing tomatoes or whatever, or shrubs, you want the rain, brother.

Adam: You do. Yes. Isn't there a country song about rain and whiskey? [laughs] It's the same with trees. You got to have that rain, even though some people don't like it.

Doug: Take it easy on the whiskey. [laughs] What else should we talk about when we're thinking about our trees in the middle of summer here?

Adam: It goes hand in hand with water for the trees. You want to have some nice organic mulch to conserve, keep those cool roots. The sun beating down on the soil is going to evaporate that water really quickly. If you have a barrier of mulch, that top layer of mulch really dries out, but if you stick your finger in underneath the mulch, you get some nice moisture in there that you don't see. Mulch is huge and you don't want to have that ground-up pallets, the Enviro Mulch. It lasts longer with the color, but it's not great for your trees. You want to have like a ground-up, nice, barky mulch is the best.

Doug: How thick would you say is good for mulch?

Adam: 3 inches is perfect. It's going to decay over time. You don't necessarily have to do it every year, but 3 inches is the guideline. The first time, if you're putting it on bare ground, you may want to put 4 or 5 inches knowing that it's going to decay a little bit.

Doug: We do always have to mention the right way to mulch because we see so much volcano mulch everywhere. We know that's the wrong way to mulch. Talk about what it should look like, where that mulch should be in relation to the trunk of the tree.

Adam: Nice, thick mulch all around the root zone, but when it gets up to the trunk, it needs to taper down to nothing. You can have as much mulch as you want, but if it's touching the tree, you're going to cause some trunk rot, you're going to encourage roots to grow up and around the trunk and eventually, 10, 15 years down the road, you're going to start girdling your tree. You should just taper down to nothing.

Doug: I ask this question a lot. How do you think volcano mulch started?

Adam: [laughs] That's a good question. Landscapers want you to see that they put some mulch down, right? The guideline of a tree trunk makes sense that they're covering up that tree trunk to show you that they put down that mulch that they promised.

Doug: I know it's got to drive you crazy because it drives me nuts to drive by these places. I drove by some guys working out mulching with my daughter and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, they're volcano mulching." She's like, "Why don't you just get out and tell them?" I'm like, "No, I'm not getting out and telling them." I wish I could. I wish I could tell them, "Guys, it's a long way to do it. You're going to kill the tree."

Adam: Yes. Gently leading them to say, "That's not quite right," would be the best policy, but you don't want to ruffle any feathers.

Doug: How do you do it? How do you do it if you get in a conversation with somebody or is it just a education thing?

Adam: Yes.

Doug: What attitude do you take when you see that and you say, "That's wrong. We got to change that. Please don't do that?"

Adam: Homeowners is really easy. They seem to be really receptive knowing that they're not the experts, but landscapers, they're set in their ways. It's really difficult. You just have to come to them with a Gatorade, a peace offering. [laughs] Sometimes they'll be receptive. Sometimes they're really stuck in their way and they think that you're a jerk for even bringing it up, screwing up their name with their clients. That's happened and it's tough, but you got to do the right thing.

Doug: What else should we think about when we're thinking about this kind of heat? Now, will you guys still be able to plant during this period? I don't like planting during this period and I mean anything, but sometimes you have to. Sometimes a client wants something. As long as you keep water on it, can you plant this time of the year?

Adam: Yes. A lot of trees have to be dug this time of the year. They can be dug earlier, like evergreens before the candles start coming out, but right now they're digging a lot of evergreens because the candles have hardened off. You have to plant a lot of evergreens now and that's okay. As long as you're watering well, a lot more than an inch a week for sure or something like that, but soaker hoses are great. You just turn them on. I've left mine on overnight and you don't want to starve-- That tree is starting out with a lot less roots, so getting plenty of water so that it doesn't have to struggle for the first couple of months. You don't want to overwater. You don't want to have it sopping wet so that it can't get oxygen, but leaving it on overnight, letting it dry out for a couple of days, that's perfect.

Doug: Then I've seen those things that you put around a tree. They're like a bag or something. Is that something you guys use?

Adam: Yes. If it's a commercial property, absolutely. It's not great because it's right around the trunks. There are some that are donut-shaped and they're out farther, which is great. It's leading those new roots out away from the root ball, but there are those trunk gators that you just zip up and they're right there. For commercial properties, it's the only way that they're going to get water. Commercial managers are able to fill those bags up a couple of times a week and that's great for us.

Doug: I guess this time of the year is when we find out, right tree, right place, how important it was.

Adam: Oh, so important. We're all pretty familiar with cold hardiness, picking the right tree, and having it protected from winter west winds or something like that, but heat hardiness too is something we have to consider. Getting a plant from way up north, up at the cabin, bringing it down south, sometimes is not going to be the best policy. There's a lot of sandy-- you've got to consider the soil too. If it was grown in sand and you bring it down and it's going to be in clay, that's going to be an issue.

Doug: Some trees are just better off as understory trees. They shouldn't be out in that harsh sunlight, right?

Adam: Yes. There's a lot of those. I see a lot of trees baking in the sun that came from an understory.

Doug: I hate to see a dogwood with a bunch of hostas around it out in the blazing sun. They both will survive, but if they could talk, they'd be screaming at you.

Adam: That's when you start seeing the leaves curling along the margins, the edges of the leaf. We have balsam firs up here in Wisconsin and people love planting them. It's great to have a native tree because you don't have to worry about the insects, diseases, but they plant them out in the middle of a grassy area and they just struggle because that's not what they're used to.

Doug: I wanted to ask you, what other trees are you planting there that you love? Is there something that's not used as much as it should, or is there something that-- like you say, a native-like that? Talk about some of your favorites.

Adam: Natives are always the best way to go. We bring in all these beautiful trees from Asia or Europe and they're great for a while and then the invasive insects, diseases come in. Sticking with sugar maples, white pines are great. There's not a whole lot of evergreens that do well in the Midwest. Finding red cedars and-- Oh man, I could go on and on about great ones.

Doug: Talk about the red cedar because I don't know anything about that red cedar.

Adam: Eastern red cedar is native around our lakes in Wisconsin. If you look back at some of the early, early satellite images around lakes, it's just groves and groves of red cedars. They're amazing to see. They're all removed because they're not necessarily the prettiest tree, but they're native. There is a new disease. It's not new, but there's a disease that works off of crab apples and hawthorns back and forth between cedars, so you get this glob of orange jelly that comes off of the red cedar, but it's not really that damaging. I just try and encourage the people to show their children and teach because it's a great plant. It's native. It can take our hardiness zone and the deer don't eat it.

Doug: Again, I was going to go right there to the deer next. First off, natives are one way to beat the heat, that's for sure. They're used to the climate that they're growing in, but talk about making your choices when planting trees, depending on where you're at, is deer resistance. It's becoming a bigger and a bigger thing here out east. As I was telling you before we came on, they broke into my vegetable garden, but my lilacs, you name it, they're after it.

Adam: There's a lot that I would have maybe four or five years ago planted, never even considering that deer would eat them and now they're eating them. It's getting to be at a point where I'm just throwing my hands up. I have no idea what they'll not eat and eat. Sugar maples, they eat those. White pines, I always thought that they would leave those alone. They eat the heck out of those. Red cedar is one of the few, and I've even seen them eat those. Green giants, the Thuja placata, tend to be deer resistant, but the first couple of years I've seen them just annihilate them. If they get well established, they'll stay away from them, but until then you got to really protect them with burlap. You can use fencing. There's liquid products that you can spray, but they're pretty tedious and smelly.

Doug: You have to keep doing it. That's my problem. I'll spray and then you'll forget about it or you'll get a couple of days of good rain and the one day you don't spray--

Adam: There it goes, man.

Doug: Those little button bucks are walking around feeding on whatever. It's these young deer too. They're trying everything. One funny thing, though, I noticed in my garden today was that the Virginia creeper, which is a weed that is coming up through my Pachysandra, the deer have been eating that, so they've been weeding for me. There's pluses and minuses, I guess, to having the deer, but mostly minuses for me.

Adam: What I've found, because I've been sprayed by it accidentally, but there's motion detector sprinkler systems that work fantastic. They really keep the deer away.

Doug: I trialed one once and I always tell people about that. Be sure when you set it up, don't set it up where your wife walks the dogs.

Adam: Yes, exactly. Did you find that it worked great?

Doug: It worked great, but it almost got me divorced. Tell me a little bit about how you got into this job.

Adam: I've always been drawn to trees. I climbed them a lot as a kid and went to national parks with my family. I fell into it, I guess, in college. I started going to college for forestry, decided that wasn't really for me because I was going to be stuck out in the middle of the woods with nobody around, alone. Decided that dealing with people and trees was the best of both worlds. It has been great, fantastic. People are great, sometimes they're difficult, but you take the good with the bad.

Doug: Talk a little bit about that, about interacting with people out of those properties. I always like to ask arborists that feeling when you go there and we're all worried about our beloved trees and the arborist sometimes can swoop in and say, "I can fix this, don't sweat it."

Adam: It's feeling like the hero, knowing exactly what needs to be done, letting them know, "This is not an issue at all. No action is required," so you don't look like you're a money-hungry dude trying to sell snake oil. It's nice to be able to let them know exactly what they need and exactly what they should avoid investing in because it's all about money you don't want to throw good money at bad.

Doug: Before I let you go, I want to expand on that a little bit about the importance of having a certified arborist come as opposed to a chuck in a truck. I talk about this a lot and you've touched on it, but this is really important, to have somebody that's not trying to just sell you a service. "It's got to be cut down. It's got to be cut down." They just want work. Talk a little bit about that.

Adam: A lot of times these people are doing more harm than good. If they're trying to sell plant health care, sometimes they're selling something that's going to make something else flare up. Mite problems is a good example where they're just spraying chemicals to spray chemicals and it looks great to the client that's paying a bunch of money, but you're actually damaging your biodiversity in your property, and all of a sudden you have bigger problems and then you're going back to the certified arborist anyway. You might as well have a certified arborist out in the beginning. In the long run, you're going to save a lot more and be a lot happier with your plants.

Doug: Adam, that's a good place to leave it. I appreciate your time and your information. That was good stuff and a lot of fun. Thanks so much.

Adam: Thanks much. Nice to meet you.

Doug: I hope you're getting the rain you need this summer. I've been watering my trees, that's for sure. Now, tune in every Thursday to the Talking Trees podcast from the Davie Tree Expert Company. I'm your host, Doug Oster. Do me a big favor, subscribe to the podcast. We're always covering important topics but in fun ways. As always, we'd like to remind you on the Talking Trees podcast, trees are the answer.

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