Talking Trees with Davey Tree

Winter Walkthrough - Prep Your Garden for Spring

February 04, 2021 The Davey Tree Expert Company Season 1 Episode 4
Talking Trees with Davey Tree
Winter Walkthrough - Prep Your Garden for Spring
Show Notes Transcript

Josh Fritz from Hartney Greymont, a Davey company, talks about what to look for in your landscape during the winter and how to determine what may need some attention once spring arrives.

In this episode we cover:

  • What to look for on the landscape (0:48)
  • Sounding a tree (1:28)
  • Identifying pruning problems (3:50)
  • Fire blight (4:39)
  • Bradford pear trees (5:26)
  • How Josh started his job (7:46)
  • The old way arborists climbed trees (9:41)
  • Stewartia trees (11:18)
  • Mushroom and fungi (14:03)
  • What Josh gets out of his job (15:53)

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

To learn more about dormant pruning, read our blog, Importance of Pruning: 5 Reasons to Prune During the Winter Season.
To learn more about Bradford pear trees and fire blight, read our blog, Why 'Bradford' Callery Pear Tree Leaves are Brown, Black or Falling Off.
To learn more about mushrooms growing at the base of your tree, read our blog, What to do about Mushrooms Growing at the Base of Trees.
 

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

Doug Oster: Welcome to the Davey Tree Expert Company’s podcast, Talking Trees. I'm your host Doug Oster. Each episode showcases one of Davey's certified arborists sharing advice with everyone about caring for your trees and landscapes. We'll talk about everything from introduced pests, seasonal tree care, deer damage, how to make your trees thrive, and much, much more.

Tune in every Thursday to learn more because here at the Talking Trees podcast, we know trees are the answer. Our guest today is Josh Fritz. He is a certified arborist and district manager for The Davey Tree Expert Company outside of Boston. Josh, how are you today?

Josh Fritz: I'm good. How are you?

Doug: All right. We're talking all about a winter walkthrough. Now when you do this, tell me some of the things that you're looking for on the landscape.

Josh: Basically, I'm looking for safety issues for the most part. Obviously, where the trees have their leaves there, it's hard to really identify a lot of the decay pockets or even just structures defects into the tree. When I go into the property, I'm looking obviously first at the base of the tree, looking for any voids or decay pockets down in the base of the tree. I'll actually sound the tree itself to see if there's any interior decay.

Doug: Wait a minute, what? Hold on. What do you mean by sound the tree? That's interesting.

Josh: Yes. What we use is basically it's almost like a rubbered hammer but what we'll do is we'll go down to around the tree 360 and just tap the tree with a hammer. You can get this distinct sound if there's decay pockets inside the tree.

Doug: All right, so go on what else are you looking for?

Josh: I'm also looking for just structural defects, any breaks cracks, and he hangers up there. Obviously, you can see more deadwood in the winter rather than you can in the spring, in the summer because there's so many leaves up there and that they hide them. Basically, I'm actually looking at the overall structure of the tree. Basically, when I'm walking through a property, I'm looking at the weight as well in the tree canopy.

Especially in the Northeast, we're prone to get in a lot of ice storms, and really heavy wet snow, especially coming off the ocean, those nor'easters. Specifically, what I'm doing is to actually do a lot of preventative storm damage pruning. I'm looking at the ends of the limbs to see if there’s outstretching. Basically, you look like, think of a diving board. As you go out, the weight just gets heavier and heavier at the end to the point where the diving board bends and then snaps.

Those are the things we're trying to prevent. We will actually reduce the branch length a little bit to take the weight out. By doing that you're actually going to improve the structure of that limb, and actually instead of going putting all this energy on the outside of the limp it's actually going to go horizontal or just more towards the girth of the tree so it can handle more weight. Those are the things I'm actually looking out there.

Doug: If I had something like old flowering crab, or even a dogwood or something, could you point out to me pruning issues right off the bat? I happen to have a very old flowering crab in the woods. I didn't even know it was there. I look at it and I just don't know what to do with it.

Josh: Yes, absolutely, especially if it hasn't been pruned in a while, you're going to have some crossing branches that are going to rub. Especially the type of crab apple, you could be prone to like a cedar apple rust or apple scab. We actually want to prune those in the winter so we're not going to be spreading those diseases from one tree to the next. Also, especially in the winter, you can actually see fireblight damage in the back on the tree in the winter.

The limbs will be blackened and almost look like somebody took a match to them. That's an actual bacteria that's actually carried by bees, believe it or not. They inoculate the tree early in the spring when they're pollinating the tree, and it'll actually travel down the stem. It could actually not only kill the limb, but it actually could kill the tree over time. Those are the things we like to do in the winter to try to avoid pruning need to disease limbs to try to avoid the spread of those diseases.

Doug: Well, now that I have you talking about winter and looking up at trees, I always like to bring up Bradford Pears.

Josh: Oh Jesus.

Doug: Yes. I know the arborists have an opinion about Bradford Pears but they are prone to cracking. Is this a time of the year where you can look at a tree and say, "Oh, that's a weak crotch or something like that?"

Josh: Absolutely. Especially those Bradford Pears they got an included bark throughout the canopy of the tree. Those really V-tight crutches they’re just very weak. What those limbs are actually doing they're actually competing with each other. They're not actually fusing themselves together in the canopy. I lived in North Carolina for 10 years, so every subdivision has those Bradford Pears. As soon as you get ice, they split apart.

The good thing about pears is they can handle a severe pruning. If you can really be diligent about pruning those Bradford Pears or any pear in general, every year or every other year, you should be okay as far as ice storms and whatnot. The trees should be fine because obviously the reason why they had those Bradford Pears, they look great. First thing in the spring they get into the white blooms and they're very fragrant for one thing. That's why people love them, but it's a love-hate let's put it this way. [chuckles] [crosstalk] because if you have those issues-

Josh: Talk a little bit about we do drive up to a subdivision for the first time and you see those Bradford Pears. A regular person that drives by Bradford Pears, especially when it's blooming they say, "Oh, what a beautiful tree. I should put that in my landscape." I don't think any arborist is going to say that.

Josh: No, no. Actually, we’re getting ready to get a chainsaw to cut them all down. Believe it or not there, you can't even plant a Bradford Pear in Georgia anymore because they’re so invasive. That's another issue with them.

Doug: Oh, what was it about working with trees that interested you? How did you get into this?

Josh: Well, I got this story. I have a great uncle, he's 102, still alive. He was an actual arborist so when he was climbing he was climbing with Minella rope and he climbed the tree and put a basically a bullet on a bike. That was his saddle so old-school climbing. When I was a kid, I used to watch him doing his tree work and especially around his property out in Western Mass. His thought about work is, "If you're not excited to go to work every morning, then why do it? You got to really find something that you're passionate in."

Just watching him through the window doing his thing, it looked like so much fun. Obviously, people look at arborists and they say, "Oh, well, you're not going to make any money." When I went to college, I actually wanted to be a meteorologist, believe it or not. Calculus and I just didn't agree and that saying that my great uncle used to tell me, that really haunted me so I just actually said, "Do you know what? I'm just going to go for it."

It was probably the best thing I ever did was to go to an agricultural school, I got into the tree business and I found this great company down Heartland Graymont now that we’re partly Davey that actually helped me to learn more about the industry and gave me a lot of opportunities to grow. That's pretty much my story.

Doug: Talk about that old style of climbing. I didn't understand what you were saying there. That's an inside business thing but what was your great uncle doing to climb the tree?

Josh: Basically back in the late '30s, early '40s, the way arborists used to climb, they just had a minella rope and they just throw it up into the tree and put it around the crotch. Basically, what they would do, they free climb that rope to the top of the tree, 80 feet, not tied in. Safety was not as important as it is now.

He climbed up to the top of the tree, free climb, and then at the top of the tree, what he'd do is he'd actually, basically use the rope to make himself a saddle. He'll just basically use a knot called the Bowen, and it will have a little loop on it. He'll loop himself through that and then basically put the rope between his two legs there, and that was his saddle and tie in a friction knot. That was how he climbed. It was pretty interesting.

Doug: I'm assuming you do it a little differently.

Josh: Oh, yes. Obviously, with OSHA and NC standards that we have out there, it's a lot safer than it was back in the early days.

Doug: We talked about Bradford pears as a tree not to plant. Since you spent so much time out there and these different landscapes, different properties, and with trees, is there something that you see that is underused out there that you wish people would plant as far as trees are concerned?

Josh: That's a great question. I'm a big fan of stewartias and actually sell a lot of them. It was one of those plants that I call,1 not a staple plant, but it's just a featured plant that you put in your garden. A lot of us in the industry, we call it the Four Season Tree, for instance, the bark itself exfoliates. Right now in the winter, the bark is orange to gray and it exfoliates, so it flex a little bit. With a blanket of fresh snow, you get the nice contrast and it just looks very beautiful. It's got a nice little, almost like an oval-shaped structure.

You can put it in a lot of different areas. Doesn't like a lot of afternoon sun, but just little tight areas on your property. You can do it in the city, or even in just a rural garden. It's just a nice staple tree that, everybody should have. As far as disease and insects, they don't have a lot of issues. They don't grow very tall, they get up to maybe 20 feet, and they bloom camelia-shaped flowers in the month of July. They got a vibrant, bright red to orange fall color. That's one tree I just highly recommend.

Doug: I'm so glad you said that because I put one in about two years ago.

[laughter]

Doug: Do you know how cold of a climate you can go with stewartia, zone five sounds about right or?

Josh: That's a great question. On your hardiness, it says zone five, but we have a nursery that we deal with up in New Hampshire close to the Lakes District. It's pretty cold out there and they field grow them. They can handle a zone four if they're protected.

Doug: Let's get back to that winter walkthrough. I know I want a certified arborist to do this job. If I do happen to be walking out in my woods, and I'll give you a good example because I'm actually ignoring it. I saw a big oak tree and at the end of the season, had some fungal things mushroom, not mushrooms, but I don't know what you would call, big fungus at the bottom. Now when I look at that tree, I see it's not solid on the bottom. That's a problem, right?

Josh: Yes. That could be amarilla root rot. It's really important to have an arborist take a look at those mushrooms. Different mushrooms mean different problems. Some of those mushrooms are saprophytic, so it's only on the outside of the tree, but some of them are very aggressive. It's really important to have an arborist take a look at those for you.

Doug: Here's another one for you. You didn't know this was going to be question and answer, did you?

Josh: Of course, right. I love talking shop.

Doug: This is how I get my free tree advice. I look up at an oak and I see a crotch filled with chicken of the woods mushroom.

Josh: Oh, get that out of there.

[laughter]

Josh: That's an aggressive mushroom. It really is.

Doug: It looks like the guys from Davey Tree are going to be coming back to my property. I have them here once a year because I live on four acres in the woods, and as always something falling or I'm seeing something like that. Now you've confirmed it for me, things I already knew that I should have my arborist from the Davey Tree Expert company come out here. Talk a little bit about what you get out of your job.

Josh: I love, like I said, talking shop with people, a lot of people that are really interested in their landscape and want to know more about their trees on the property, I love that. I like solving problems too. Obviously, every tree has a story and you can go up to their property and Mrs. Jones has this dogwood that doesn't look right. Her daughter, she got that during an Arbor Day that she got this little dogwood. It's been on the property for over 20 years. I'd hate to lose that tree, so what can you do for it?

Those are the type of problems I like to solve because it's personal. Every tree has a story and every property, people have a personal attachment to their trees. That's why I love to help.

Doug: I'm going to end with a question, I think I already know the answer to. When you go to work, do you feel like your great uncle did when he went to work?

Josh: Absolutely. There's some tough days that you wake up and he's like, "Oh, I'm really tired," but as soon as I open up the office every morning, I was like, it's definitely worth it, I enjoy every day. I was just going to say, I've been doing this for almost 23, 24 years and I love that every time. Like I said, is the best decision I ever made to get in arboriculture.

[music]

Doug: Josh, thanks for all the great information and stories. I sure appreciate it.

Josh: Not a problem, anytime.

Doug: Tune in every Thursday to the Talking Trees podcasts from the Davey Tree Expert company. I'm your host, Doug Oster. Next week, we're talking sugar maples, droughts cracking, and even a little bit about woodworking. Remember, on the Talking Trees podcast, we know, that trees are the answer.

[music]

[00:18:15] [END OF AUDIO]