New Year's Resolutions for Your Landscape

Michael Sundberg from Davey's South Denver office talks about some New Year's resolutions you should put in place this year to help your trees and landscapes thrive in 2022.

In this episode we cover:

• New Year's resolutions (0:43)
• Watering (1:24)
• Mulching (6:46)
• Fertilization (13:10)
• How Michael started his job and why he loves it (16:34)
• Pruning (18:28)

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

To learn more about watering your trees, read our blogs on Watering.
To learn more about mulching, read our blogs on Mulching.
To learn more about fertilizing your trees, read our blog, What, When and Why: The Best Way to Fertilize Trees.
To learn more about Arbor Green Pro®, click here.
To learn more about pruning, read our blogs on Pruning.

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!

Transcript

[music]

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. I'm joined this week by Michael Sundberg, he's a district manager for the Davey Tree Expert Company in Southeast Denver. Good morning Michael, how are you?

Michael Sundberg: I'm doing great. How are you doing today?

Doug: I'm doing good but we got to talk about New Year's resolutions for the landscape. Do you do New Year's Resolutions for the year?

Michael: I do.

Doug: Oh, okay.

Michael: Yes, I do.

Doug: Let's start there. How are you going to make your life better after the New Year?

Michael: I'm probably going to cut back on some sweets after especially this holiday. A lot more time spent hanging out inside and lots of cookies and things. I think it's a good time to try to resolve to do that. A little less sweets, maybe a little more exercise.

Doug: All right. It sounds good. I could use the exercise, that's for sure. I'm not a sweets person but maybe I should cut down on all that savory stuff like cheese and dried meats, that kind of crazy stuff. How about the landscape? When you're thinking that, when you're thinking about your trees, what should change when we get to the New Year?

Michael: I think for me, just going right out the gates in January for a New Year's resolution, wintertime's always tough to feel like you have obligations and things to do in the yard. For us in Denver here, we have a really dry climate so doing winter watering is very important for us. I find myself getting hemmed in over wintertime because it's just cold and you don't really think about doing yard stuff.

In reality, I need to probably do a New Year's resolution of getting out in my own yard more frequently and watering things. That's a big first one for me is don't sleep over the winter and hibernate, and actually pay attention to things because the trees are still doing processes, so they still need some attention.

Doug: Tell me a little bit about your winter out there. In the East, once the ground freezes we stop watering. We haven't had the ground freeze yet out here which is very unusual, but we've been getting plenty of rain so the trees have been watered. What's going on on your side of the country?

Michael: We've had a really unusual off-season. We went into the fall after a really dry summer without any real fall moisture, so we actually went past our latest date we've ever had before snow fell by, I think, a couple of weeks which is an all-time record. We didn't have snow like we normally do in the fall. Typically, growing up you could count on it snowing on Halloween when you're trick or treating of course, just for bad luck of what day it snows. We didn't get our first snowfall till mid-December, I think.

We've had basically one measurable snow to this current day. We've had an insanely dry winter so far and maybe we'll just pay for it in the spring with lots of moisture. The trees are asking, "What's up?" Because we'd typically had lots of snow by now. The mountains are getting a good amount, our snowpack is about at 100%, but all the snow has been just saved for the mountains. By the time the storms got to Denver, it's just cloudy days and then it passes, and we're back to sunny, warm, and windy.

Doug: I don't think there's anything more frustrating for anybody that deals with plants, than not enough rain or moisture. The other side, with too much rain, yes, there are problems, there are diseases but boy, a drought is the worst thing. When you're thinking about watering trees, tell me exactly how you would do it. From the two-inch tree to the big tree, talk a little bit about that.

Michael: As far as a service that we provide at Davey, we will bring water to people's trees. We bring it on a truck, it pumps through a hose and we probe it into the ground. We're typically going around the dripline of the tree with that, to apply the moisture where the most absorbing roots are, going at where the canopy ends and going down to the ground, to check on a lineup where you're watering. That's us bringing water to the trees. Homeowners can bring water to their trees by just hooking up to their faucet. Most people's faucets are set up to where you can just put your hose on it, open it up, do your watering, disconnect your hose, avoid any freeze damage, and that kind of thing.

You're just trying to water your root zone, so with new trees, you're just watering the whole root ball area. That's basically from the trunk, out about three feet. If it's like those new two-inch trees, which are probably the most important for watering because they have the fewest routes to try to survive a drought. On established mature trees, you're still just trying to get the area wet underneath the canopy. Similar to what a rainstorm might bring. Just to simulate that and give the tree the feeling that it's been raining. [chuckles] I always tell people almost just water like you have grass and the trees will get some benefit from that.

Doug: When we're deciding how much water to put on, is there a way to figure that out, as far as the size of the tree or anything like that, or you just soak it up the root zone and let it run for 15 minutes?

Michael: I try to look at it more of just keeping the top foot of your soil, top 18 inches maybe, moist. Because it's hard to give someone just direct numbers as far as, "We'll water this size of tree for this many minutes," because it just depends on the outflow of what kind of nozzle they have, or is it just a hose wide open, or what's their house pressure. It's tricky just to throw a time measurement on it. You're really just trying to target your top 18 inches to a foot of soil, to keep it moist, evenly dispersed.

You don't want to have runoff because then you're just wasting it. You don't want to have water going down your neighbor's property and into the street or something. That's how I look at how to describe how much water. In a perfect world, trees might be getting about 10 gallons of water per trunk inch diameter, but that'd be a lot of water to give it all at once in just one winter watering visit. You need Mother Nature to make up the deficit that's left after you've watered what you've watered. Unfortunately for Denver here, we've had a real tough go at having Mother Nature hold up her end of the deal.

Doug: Moving on with our New Year's resolution, I'm going to head you towards mulching, because after watering, that's the natural one to me. Something that a lot of people don't do and of course, on the Talking Trees podcase we talk a lot about the right way to mulch, and certainly the wrong way to mulch. It drives everybody who loves trees crazy when they see volcano mulch.

Michael: Yes. Please don't volcano mulch and pile it all at the trunk. You just want a few inches of mulch evenly dispersed. You don't want it mounded around your trunk and trap moisture there where the trunk tissue doesn't want to stay wet all the time like the roots might want to. Mulching, as far as a New Year's resolution is a really good one because a lot of yards either need mulch and currently don't have it. They might have just bare dirt going up to their trees or might have turf going up right up to the tree trunk where mowers are damaging it, or shrink trimmers are hitting the tree trunk, and you can put a mulch ring around to give yourself a little defense layer around them.

For people that do have mulch, a lot of people will fall by the wayside and then their mulch blows away, or it gets all matted down and actually can repel water if it's too compacted. You almost need to have a New Year's resolution of going in, at least fluffing the mulch you have, restoring it, maybe adding a new layer. Just paying attention to it, because it's always one of those jobs you feel really accomplished once you've put your mulch down, and then you feel like you never have to touch it again. In reality, there's still some attention to be paid to it, so that's a good resolution for sure.

Doug: Is there anything special to mulch with, or is bark mulch okay? What do you prefer?

Michael: I definitely like the more natural options with bark mulch, shredded wood chips, anything like that because you'll still get some good organic matter in there and microbes doing natural processes you would have. Similar to a forest floor because all that is just tree parts all getting recycled and mulched. That being said, any mulch is better than no mulch, so if somebody has turf going up to their tree, or bare soil going up to their tree, even rock mulch is good, or still getting good insulation layer between the roots and the top of the soil, so you get a benefit from that. It helps retain moisture.

Rock mulch can get hot, so you want to watch where you're putting it, not have it on a southwest corner where it starts to create a little heat island. Any kind of a mulch is good to at least protect the soil from drying out and insulate soil temperature swings as well. If you know you're not going to be very good at paying attention to your mulch, rock mulch is good because it is pretty much a one-and-done process.

Doug: A friend of mine did his whole backyard in rock mulch and I wonder when he does sell the house, anybody who wants to change there is going to have a challenge. Anybody who has ever dealt with getting to a property that has a rock mulch, I know it's effective and I know for him, he loves it. He's put a barrier underneath it, a breathable barrier

and he doesn't have to weed as much, but I'm thinking, "Boy, if somebody wants to change there, that's not going to be any fun."

Michael: Hauling rocks all day. That's always tough. With rock mulch or any kind of mulch too, you still want to make sure your trees are getting watered. You can't just say like, "They're mulch, they're fine." You still need to make sure you're getting some kind of a watering set up with the trees. If you went from all turf to all mulch or all rock, ripping out the turf sprinklers might be part of that process, but you need to find a way to have water still getting put down through an irrigation system because the trees have been used to that water their whole life.

Doug: I do have a couple of questions about mulch. I like the natural look of mulches, but I see those dyed mulches. Is there any downside to those or is it okay?

Michael: There's probably a bit of an environmental downside in the fact that it's painted. That's not just a different-colored tree that was cut down and chipped up. You can definitely get pretty cool landscape designs with those, but you're still putting down just a bunch of painted wood chips that'll fade and degrade and it all has to go somewhere into the ecosystem. It's not my favorite with the colored mulches. Sometimes the colored mulches, they'll use a lot of recycled wood pellets and things that were already like a treated lumber because they are cheap and they paint well, so you don't have a great wood source going into it either.

Doug: That's good to know. As I said, I love the natural look, and whenever I see that dyed mulch, I scratch my head. For those reasons, thinking that, now, have you ever seen anybody use the rubber mulch?

Michael: I have, yes. That's been popular, especially people that have kids, they like how the rubber mulch is kid-friendly. It's a good way to have some purpose out of recycling tires and have some final home for those other than a landfill, but you don't get any of the microbial benefits. It'll still physically act as a mulch to retain moisture, but it also gets hot because it's just black rubber, so you might lose some of your benefits of retaining moisture by having the soil cook from rubber tires being laid on there. It's not as beneficial as other forms of mulch. It's better than no mulch, but it's good for playgrounds, but maybe not the best choice for trees.

Doug: I agree, and when I do see it or talk to homeowners, I'm always trying to-- I know they want the, "One time I'll mulch and I won't have to mulch again," but oh, the negatives that you just put out there, especially when you think forest floor, that's what the mulch is. That's your forest floor and as it decomposes, you're adding more mulch and this is feeding the tree and this is a good thing where you're not going to get that out of the rubber mulch. You heard it here first, fluff your mulch, right?

Michael: Yes, definitely. Pay attention to it. It gets all stuck together and matted and doesn't do as well of a job as fresh mulch or mulch that has some air in it, so fluffing is great.

Doug: As the new year approaches, what's next on your list?

Michael: I'd say next on the list, if people aren't doing it already, is consider doing fertilization for your trees. It's like we're always looking at New Year's resolutions to exercise or eat better. Trees can't really exercise, but they could eat better. If you're looking at something you could do pretty easily, it would be doing fertilization with your trees, with a nice slow-release product. Davey makes our own Arbor Green PRO, which is a 12-month feeding for a tree. It's a nice one-and-done deal. You can resolve to have the trees fed and they'll eat all year, but with all the right nutrients they want at the rate of breakdown that they want to have out of their food.

Doug: Of the first three things we've talked about here, I think that fertilization is definitely the thing that people don't think enough about for their trees and how important it is. I know that when you guys apply that Arbor Green, you have a special way to do it, right? To get it down to the root zone.

Michael: Yes. Same principle as watering. We have it all in a truck and mixed up and pump it through some pumps under pressure. It goes into the soil at that root depth where your roots are in, targeting that top foot. It goes right where the roots need it. It's a nice painless thing to do where it's a one-time deal. You don't have to go out and-- just like with the mulch, you're not going out and fluffing, you're fertilizing. You're just literally fertilizing and you're done with it for the year. It's an easy one-time deal to help your trees out.

Doug: If I was to go out myself and do it and just say I had a bag of something, a good organic granular fertilizer, that's what I like. As I talk to arborists all the time, I tell them, "I'm in the woods." A lot of acidic loving plants, and so holly-tone for me is something I love and I can just apply that. Looking at the rates on the bag. That's okay for something like a Dogwood or a Holly or something like that, that's okay to do?

Michael: Yes. It's just like if you're fertilizing your grass, your trees will get benefit from that too, so don't neglect grass either if you have fertilization going down for those. If you've got a good organic product, that probably means it's going to be a slow release, and so following the instructions on the bag would be the best way to know how much to put down. You can easily overdo it and it's worse than not doing it at all if you burn plants, but slow release is always safer for that too, and that just you're paying attention to it then, so you're fertilizing things and that's a good successful New Year's resolution.

Doug: You brought up a great point, "Don't overdo it." We always see people think, "Okay, one pound of fertilizer means green, does two pounds mean super green?" No. The plant can only take so much fertilizer.

Michael: It's a natural thing to think like, "Wow, this looked really great after I put it down. What if I put more?" You can cross over into too much really quickly where plants are just getting burned instead because it's just too much salt, basically. That's similar to how dog spots happen in lawns. It was some fertilizing and then it became too much really quick, and nobody likes the look of that.

Doug: Tell me a little bit about how you got into this and why this job's right for you.

Michael: When I was going to school, I wanted to go into a career or industry that was outdoors. I think I had a few too many indoor jobs that burnt me out and I wanted to be outside. So I went into environmental horticulture up at Colorado State University. Right out of school, I did some golf course work because I was interested in sports turf and I like sports in general, but ultimately, went the tree direction with Davey for the past nine years now. It's been wonderful. I like looking at trees every day.

Every day at the office is a new experience because I'm going out to somebody else's property I've never seen and get to diagnose problems or look at trees that are in great shape or trees that need help and find out how we can help those out.

Doug: I often ask arborists this because I love to hear about it. Tell me a little bit about that feeling of being able to go out to a property and assess a problem when people are really worried about their beloved tree and be able to tell them, "Guess what, if we do this and this and this, we're going to be good"?

Michael: That's a great feeling when you show up to a tree that somebody called in about and they were concerned because they're seeing something and the problem that they're seeing may have a pretty easy solution. It's nice when you can just say like, "Wow, I could see why you were panicked. This does look really bad just from the naked eye, but with these different remedies, your tree's going to be in great shape and you're not losing it." Because nobody wants to lose something they've been growing for 20, 30, 40 years, so when they see a problem, it's easy to go into panic mode.

It's really nice to be able to say, "We got your back, we got some things that can help, and then you'll see the results as all those treatments work and everything."

Doug: Oh, that's wonderful. Michael, how about one more New Year's resolution for our tree lovers out there?

Michael: I'd say pruning is one that comes up as something that gets overlooked for longer than it should. If you had the New Year's resolution to pay attention to your trees, especially after the leaves are out, you can see what's alive and what's dead, because that's the basic way a homeowner can see a dead branch with an untrained eye and just to actually go and pay attention and see, "Okay, it looks like I do have a lot of dead branches or broken branches that may have been there for longer than I can remember."

A lot of people end up going way too many years past a normal pruning cycle for their tree species. It's honestly more work and more costly that way too because then there's a lot more work to do in the tree and it's more expensive then. If people are paying attention to their pruning needs and seeing what their trees are doing. A lot of people will have a tree scraping up on the side of their house and not realize it. If they never pay attention to that and take a look at their trees for pruning, it's like, "Oh yes, you've got some clearance issues here because this is actually damaging your siding, you need to get this branch pruned off and get the deadwood out," and those kind of things.

That's a great one because once people prune, they always feel like, "Okay, I've pruned, I'm good for a while." Then that while turns into far too many years and it'd be good to resolve to take a look at it if it's been a while.

Doug: I always tell people, I recommend having an expert do the pruning. Especially, if you're getting into a bigger tree, have a professional to do it. I always say pruning is art and science. Not everybody agrees with that, but I, just think it's almost impossible to learn how to do it unless you've really spent time with an expert to show you how to do it. I don't care how many books you look at. When you see the real tree, it's so important to do it right. Because when it's done wrong and trust me. We both have seen, what happens when it goes wrong, it is ugly.

Michael: It's one of those things where when it's done wrong, it's oftentimes a permanent problem for the tree. It's not just going out and like, "I'll cut here, cut here and the tree grows back." It creates a whole domino effect of problems if it's done by somebody that's not a professional. That's just for the tree biology side of things. The aesthetic side of things too. That's where the person that's pruned a ton of trees has the eye for it and they're more of the artist doing where science meets art.

Then, lastly would just be safety. There's tons of videos on YouTube of people doing it wrong and having all kinds of injuries and, things like that when they climb up a ladder and just swing around a saw and think it's just more about get to branch and cut branch. There's way more things involved than that to be safe. The professionals can do it safely and then nobody gets hurt getting your tree pruned especially the homeowner. [laugh]

Doug: Exactly. Just one more reminder that an expert from Davey Tree will come out for free and take a look at what needs to be done and tell you what it's going to cost you to get this done. When you talk about pruning, just what Michael just said there, a professional is going to make a big difference in how that tree looks and performs in the future. Michael, that was all good stuff. Looks like you're going to have to stop eating so much candy and it looks like I'm going to finally have to start working out, but that's okay, right? [chuckles]

Michael: Yes. We'll be in it together, so that's fine. We can do it.

Doug: All right, thanks again. Those are great New Year's resolutions for our tree lovers, and I'm sure we'll talk again. Thanks so much.

Michael: Perfect. Thanks for having me.

Doug: Believe it or not, tree lovers, the Talking Trees podcast is celebrating our one-year anniversary next week with a special show, compiling some of our favorite stories from guests as to why they do what they do for a living. Plus, you'll have a chance to win a pair of headphones. Tune in every Thursday to the Talking Trees podcast from the Davey Tree Expert Company. I'm your host, Doug Oster. Do me a favor, subscribe to the podcast. I hope you're having as much fun listening as I am hosting the show. As always, we like to remind you on the Talking Trees podcast, trees are the answer.

[music]

[00:23:22] [END OF AUDIO]