How Preventative Healthcare for Your Trees Can Save Them

Aaron Hoot from Davey's Dallas office talks about preventative tree healthcare, common problems that can be prevented and the importance of treating emerald ash borer on trees.

In this episode we cover:  

• Girdling roots (0:45)
• Proper planting practices (2:43))
• Looking for distress signals (4:25)
• Preventing emerald ash borer (6:13)
• How arborists conduct preventative checkups (10:35)
• Mistletoe pruning (17:57)
• How Aaron became an arborist (20:39)

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

To learn more about protecting your tree against emerald ash borer, read our blog, Protect Your Ash Trees: Spot the Early Signs of EAB.

To learn more about root girdling, read our blog, It Looks Like the Roots are Strangling My Tree.

To learn more about mistletoe in trees, read our blog, Mistletoe in 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 

Connect with Doug Oster at www.dougoster.com. 

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

Transcript

Doug Oster: 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 Aaron Hoot. He's a sales arborist in Dallas, for the Davey Tree Expert Company. Aaron, welcome to the show. You came up with a great topic. I'm interested in talking about this, how preventative health care for your trees can save them. Again, welcome to the show.

Aaron Hoot: Thank you, glad to be here.

Doug Oster: When you're thinking preventative, what's the first thing that comes to mind for you?

Aaron Hoot: Honestly, recently, planting correctly. I've run into a lot of situations where we've had customers where the tree wasn't planted correctly in the first place, and it's ten years down the road, and now it has a problem we can't fix, like girdling roots that are grown into each other, or other issues that have come from the stresses of being planted too deep, or planted with certain types of trees grown in different ways.

It's an unfortunate situation, because like I said, you can't do much about them in those situations. Some stuff you can treat, but you can't really fix a root-bound root system if it's too grown in.

Doug Oster: In that case, when you have a ten year old tree that wasn't planted right, does it basically just need to be removed? Is that in most cases?

Aaron Hoot: No, there's options, to a certain extent. You can do root excavation with an air spading tool to observe the root flare and the root ball. There are some roots that you can cut, that maybe are pressuring a larger root, but haven't necessarily grown into it where you wouldn't be able to cut that root without damaging the one that it's strangling. There's some options. It just really depends on how far gone it is.

It's also a situation where your weather can affect how bad it is, because a girdled root system will not be able to take up water as well as a tree with the correct root system. If you live down by me, where we have very harsh summers, the trees need more water during the summer, but they may not be able to take it up. A tree with a girdled root system in an area where it's not necessarily as starved for water will survive a bit longer.

Occasionally, it actually works out. Some trees can handle it, and they just stay small. Whereas some trees, you'll have a section connected to the girdled root die, and it can start a whole host of problems.

Doug Oster: I guess we should talk a little bit about proper planting. We talk a lot about it here on the podcast, but it's a great reminder. The root flare-- this is what I've learned from interviewing arborists, keep that root flare above grade, and you'll be okay. What are some other tips, though, for proper planting?

Aaron Hoot: One of the biggest ones is type of plant selection. I'm trying not to go too deep on this, but I'm not really a big fan of ball and burlap trees. I'm a bigger proponent, for sure, for container-grown, but also, when you use container-grown trees, you need to make sure when you pull it out of the container, that you cut the sides of the root ball so that roots that have begun to circle will not continue to circle.

Also, planting small trees. Many people want to start with something, "I didn't have a tree, now I've got a tree," but it's a lot harder to start out with a tree that's already larger. Especially because a lot of times, you do have to go to ball and burlap, and there's a lot more roots possibly already bound in a larger tree. 30-gallon, 15-gallon tree, it's going to have a lot better root system for spreading than one that's 45, 60-gallon, that maybe has been in a container too long, or has been cut out of the ground like a ball and burlap.

It's going to save you a little bit of money too. Yes, patience goes a long way. It's interesting because you can plant, say, a 15-gallon tree and a 45-gallon tree, and the 15-gallon tree has such less needs, as far as water and food goes, that it may actually surpass the 45-gallon by establishing quicker.

Doug Oster: That's great information. When you're thinking preventative, what's next on the list?

Aaron Hoot: One of the big things is really not to wait until you see something, to have someone look around. Distress signals and stress signals are often signs that damage has already been done, not that something is beginning. A lot of the main things you run into are fungal issues and insect issues, so wood borer damage. You won't notice, necessarily, until the branch has already died, that you may have a problem with that.

If you have an arborist come out, they're more trained to see the pinholes, the bore exit holes in the bark. Perhaps the bark is actually cleaving off or coming off the branch in a spot you might not notice. Just knowing, "Hey, something stressful just happened." You're redoing your driveway. You've got construction on your house. This tree is getting stressed, and stressed trees attract wood borers.

Preventatively treating, "Hey, this year, we need to do a trunk injection to prevent wood borers," because what's happening is stressing your tree out, and you'd rather be ahead of the ball on keeping the borers at bay than trying to fix any damaged tissue, because that's really a tough thing to do. Then possibly just treating because of the species. You've talked about emerald ash borer quite a bit, and it's made its way down to us.

The emerald ash borer beetle is not discerning about stressed trees. It just wants ash. We have a urban forest down here. I believe it's the largest in the country. It's the Trinity Forest. It's 40% ash trees. As soon as that beetle finds it, it's going to be everywhere. As much as we try to push it, we don't have a whole lot of customers preventatively treating.

Doug Oster: I always like to talk about this when something like that hits an arborist area. Obviously, you've seen this coming. What are you doing? How are you feeling about this? It already came through here, and it's devastating. We barely have any ashes left. Is that what's going to happen there, you think?

Aaron Hoot: It really depends. There is a proven treatment for deterring it. Trunk injections with the correct product, on a one or two-year rotation, has been proven to keep the damage from occurring, and keep the insect at bay. That is a true preventative case. Just knowing, "This is coming, it is here, I want my tree to be one that survives," and being willing to pay for preventative treatments.

Also, trying to source your firewood locally helps a lot. That's how it got down here, as a bunch of trees got shipped from where it already was, and the beetles were pupating inside of them.

Doug Oster: When you're in the field, do people know about the emerald ash borer? Are they worried about the emerald ash borer, or are they surprised when you tell them, "Hey, this thing's coming, or here, if you want to save this ash tree, you're going to have to do something about it?"

Aaron Hoot: It's a sliding scale. A lot less are even aware of it than I expected, because we've had press releases, we've had news releases. There was a front page on the Morning newspaper, on a Sunday, one day, and they mentioned it. I expected a flurry, on Monday, of calls about it, and didn't get as many. I really didn't get what I thought I would. I don't know, some people have a hard time hearing about something that they can't see any evidence of, because their tree's fine, and the trees down the street are fine.

It's harder for them to say, "Okay, well, I'll pay the $300 or $400 for the injection every year, every two years, to get it done." We had a lot of ash trees down here get impacted by the winter storm in 2021. A lot of them just really did not do well at all. A lot of tip-death trees, some of them had to be removed, some have been heavily pollarded in an attempt to save them, and it's mixed results.

That's a perfect example, that's an adverse situation that really does attract beetles in general, so that we had to discern, is this ash borer, or is this normal wood borers, and in either sense, I recommend treating, because there's borer present. I don't know, I've been surprised. There's not as big of a response in an effort to pre-treat, as I've expected.

Doug Oster: This is interesting, because we are dealing with spotted lanternfly at its peak. Compared to the emerald ash borer, as far as damage is concerned, it's not a big deal. This spotted lanternfly is getting so much attention because you can see them, just as you pointed out there. You can see them, they're everywhere, they're just a nuisance. When you think of the devastation an emerald ash borer does, that should be, like you said, the front page story, maybe a few times.

To tell people, like, "Hey you can't see it, but you're not going to have ash trees anymore."

Aaron Hoot: Yes, I think a lot of it, down here, too, is-- people in the south, at least the Texas area, are not used to having these kinds of problems. They haven't been through Dutch Elm, they haven't been through ash borer as well. They're not quite as educated towards the need as some people, they haven't been through-- the more you experience something, the more ready you are to expect it and look ahead towards it.

A lot of it down here is just oaks, native oaks, and they do great, aside from a few issues that came to some eyes, there's nothing that's really been a true red alarm situation, where it's wiped them all out. We have oak wilt, and it's worse in some areas than others, and in the areas it's been bad, it's very well known, and very well responded to, people take precaution. In other areas, even just a couple hours away, in a different metroplex, it's not that worried about. Another good example of one that should be pretreated for.

Doug Oster: When I'm thinking preventative, I'm thinking about having my Davey arborists come, which they come, in my situation, twice a year, just because I am in this declining oak forest, which I talk about almost every episode. Talk a little bit about that, about why it's important to have somebody that knows what they're doing come out and take a look at the property, and an arborist will come for free, which is a great thing, and has a code of ethics, so it's not somebody trying to-- We talk about this all the time, too.

A lot of guys are going to come to your property, and they're going to get a job out of it, no matter what. That's not how this works.

Aaron Hoot: Yes, I love telling people no. It always takes them aback, and then they realize I'm actually there for the trees, because they said, "Oh no, you don't need to trim." Your tree looks great. I don't want to mess with it. The reason to have one of us come out is because we have a trained eye, and we're also aware of what else has happened nearby. If there is an insect issue nearby, the population's growing, it may be something that you might need to know about, but you wouldn't know, because it's not someone who it's happening to.

We've been through a lot. Our office is about a mile from the epicenter of crape myrtle bark scale, so if you have me out, and you have a crape myrtle, I'm going to see it. I'm going to know about it. I'm going to know how to fix it. We're trained to see what you don't see. As an arborist, it's almost unsafe driving around, because it's hard not to look at trees. I was talking about this with my wife the other day. She's also in the tree industry.

She works for a nonprofit that repopulates urban areas with trees to fight the heat island effect. I asked her, I was like, "It's weird to think of what it's like to not look at the world from the view of trees." We walk our son around the block, and I'm looking at everybody's trees, and that's not how most people operate. Most people aren't immediately able to see, "Oh, that tree has this problem, I wonder if it's showing yet," or, "Why did that tree die that way?"

Most people are just, "Oh, it's a tree," or they might know an oak from an elm. Just like having an expert in anything deal with your situation, having an arborist out, especially a Davey arborist, is going to give you a very informed approach and look at your property, and hopefully see something before it becomes a big problem.

Doug Oster: I would love to be in the backseat when you and your wife are driving around, looking at volcano mulch, and at guys up on ladders, with a chainsaw, and a tree that's half-dead. That must be an interesting conversation with you two.

Aaron Hoot: Oh, yes. It's tough. Just the other day, a couple of houses in my neighborhood got hit by people just overly structurally pruning, and lion's tailing live oaks, and then not painting their cuts. It's tough. You want to help everybody, but you can't get to everybody.

Doug Oster: Yes. If it's in your neighborhood, you're getting there afterwards, and you see this, do you say something, or do you want to keep quiet? What do you do?

Aaron Hoot: Honestly, I'm trying to figure out the best approach to that. If it's someone I've talked to before, and I know, I'll catch them outside the next time and I'll say, "Hey, I noticed you had your trees worked on, and there's some things that could have been done differently, and I'd like you to give me the opportunity to at least talk to you about it before you make a decision next time. Whether you use me or not, I'd love the opportunity to help you make an informed decision."

I'm new to the neighborhood, so it's interesting trying to get that in there. I don't want to put a sign in my yard that says, "Hey, I'm your arborist, I'm right here, here's my number, come knock on my door," but I also hate seeing structural pruning done that can't be come back from or it's going to take years to come back from. Cuts not painted, just drives me nuts.

Doug Oster: I tell this story all the time, but when my son moved into his house, some hack guy in a pickup truck had been working there every year on maple trees, telling these poor people that lived there before him, "Oh, we need to do this every year." The trees were just-- it's just topping, they're just topping them over and over again. Yes, I'm sitting there, and the trees hadn't leafed out yet, and they just moved in. I started on a rant, which I could see you doing, just like mine.

My daughter-in-law was almost in tears, because she goes, "We just moved in." I said, "Listen, the tree's going to be okay, but it breaks my heart to see this work done." Then, as they lived there over the next couple of years, I'm walking the grandkids around and I'm seeing the guy has been working through the entire neighborhood and destroying these maple trees. That's why I've talked a little bit about just being a fly on the wall, with you and your wife, would be interesting to hear.

Aaron Hoot: Yes. Yes. It's a real problem. It's a real problem. There's a lot of people in our industry, like most industries, there's a sliding scale of knowledge and care about doing what's right versus just trying to make money. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, but I think some of the people that strip water sprouts and lions tail trees, knows that they're going to have to do it again in three months, if that customer is accustomed to thinking that's correct.

I think there is a little bit of business generation to it as well, where they're trying to make more money, more business for themselves, by training people that water sprouts are bad, you need to have clean branches, and I need to come do that immediately every time they pop out. It's unfortunate. It's hard, especially when it's been done for so long by the same person in one area, and you have to try to untrain an entire population and try to show them what's correct and what's better for your trees.

Just to let trees be, a lot of the time. I always tell people, "I bet you the most beautiful tree you've ever seen is standing by itself in the middle of a field, and that nobody's touched it for a hundred years." Beautiful shape, perfect color. That's because you don't need to mess with them all the time. Really, the urban setting a lot of us live in is what's caused us to have to deal with trees a lot, is that it's stressful for trees in an urban setting, but trees are incredibly capable of dealing with just about anything on their own.

A lot of times, all we have to do is help usher those processes to perform correctly. We bring it back to preventative health in the form of either fertilization or treating with phosphonates to boost resistance or to help seal trunk wounds, making the right decision of which one to do, when, whether to do either, whether to do anything on a tree that's recovering from herbicide damage, because it needs to flush itself out, or it can't be flushed out.

Doug Oster: Is there more that we need to talk about when it comes to preventative things for trees?

Aaron Hoot: Oh, there's always more that can be talked about. Another big one is mistletoe pruning in the winter. I don't know how many cedar elms and hackberries I'll have up there, but I know those are the favorite trees for the birds that spread mistletoe here. It's a yearly thing. When there's no leaves on the trees, look up, and if you see green, you've got mistletoe. Mistletoe needs to be removed early so that it doesn't get into the trunk of the tree, because you can't kill it.

All you can do is remove the branch it's on. If it gets into the trunk of the tree, that's the tree. You can't remove the trunk. Catching it when it's on the small branches in the outer edge of the tree, and removing that seed source for the birds that will then eat the berry, hang out in the tree, and then deposit the berry again, grows another bunch of mistletoe. It's good to get it done when you can see it, because it's really hard to do effectively during the rest of the year.

Keeping the entire plant out of your tree is important, because otherwise, it spreads, and eventually, it'll kill the branches it's on.

Doug Oster: I don't know the plant. Explain to me what it does. It sounds like an invasive vine of some type.

Aaron Hoot: Mistletoe? From Christmas?

Doug Oster: Yes, yes. Right.

Aaron Hoot: Mistletoe is a parasitic plant. If you can imagine how a tree is rooted into the ground, that's how mistletoe is rooted into a tree. Its roots will go-- I believe it's up to 12 inches in either direction from the point of the plant, and 12 inches deep. It just sits there, stealing. It steals water and it steals sugars and carbohydrates as they pass by when the tree does its normal processes.

Eventually, it mutates, the roots mutate the tissue in the area, and eventually, it steals enough nutrients for that branch to die. Then either fall off, or just decline. It's transferred by birds, bird will eat the berry and then go sit somewhere and deposit the berry, if you will. Then it grows there as well. A lot of people have tried to deal with it. I personally, in my plant healthcare background, have tried to deal with it, but there's not much that can handle it.

If you can't cut it out of the tree, you have to scrape it, and it'll grow back, most of the time. Once it's in the trunk of your tree, there's not a lot you can do, because you can't cut that section out. It's definitely one that you want to be on the ball with in the winter, when you can see it.

Doug Oster: Listeners can't see this, but when Aaron was trying to explain to me mistletoe, he was holding something over his head. [laughs] Hey, Aaron, how'd you get into this? Why is this job right for you?

Aaron Hoot: I got here a lot later than I should have. That's for sure. I went to college for journalism, actually, and studied journalism and philosophy. That led me towards not doing it, because it's an interesting state of the world right now, in journalism, integrity, and all of that. I grew up in the country, on the side, I did tree work. I did just with a little mom-and-pop, one-person company, two-person company. Then my cousin is a wetland restoration expert in the Houston area.

He actually removes invasive species of plants and repopulates with native plants to help the ecosystems of waterways return to correct while they're degrading. I went to school in San Marcus, Texas, which has a spring-fed river that is federally protected because it has an endangered species of aquatic rice that only grows there. We were able to get funding from the city to do the same work there.

Living there, I was able to be the main contractor there, actually change the environment of these rivers, and watch all these elephant ears that are being removed, allow the banks to expand 30 feet back out to what they're actually supposed to be, because the silt beds have been created, and take out hundreds of invasive trees, of ligustrum, chinaberry, and all that, in areas where the other plants are being shaded out, build berms to rebuild the banks of the river, and help the river stop collapsing.

That really got me into a mindset of not just doing tree work, but that there was more to it. Then, actually, I looked into being at Davey. I met my wife, we got married, and she wanted to move back up to where her family was. I said, "Well, if I can find a good job, I'm fine with that." I got on Indeed and found out there was a company like Davey, and I had no idea there was a tree company that had a conscience, and benefits. I was like, "Well, that's a career right there."

I applied and I got the job here. I've been with Davey about five years, and worked my way up from trimming, into plant healthcare, and now I'm a sales arborist. I just really liked that I'm allowed to do what's right for the trees. You're talking about not just go out there and try to get a sale. I'm allowed to tell people no. I'm encouraged to educate people on what's right for their trees and what to look for.

I love it when I've mentioned something to a customer and they say, "Okay," and then I get a text message from them a year later, and like, "Oh, is this what you were talking about? I saw some, and hoping it's not," because I probably told them about a bad fungus, but I love that they're engaged, they're reaching out, and keeping up with me. I have people that I see once a year, people I see every few years.

I have people I see five times a year because they're hyper-aware, because they've actually gotten themselves into that cosm of knowing and thinking about trees on a broader or a grander level, and a more minute level, at the same time.

Doug Oster: Aaron, I want to thank you for suggesting this topic, and I really enjoyed talking to you. Thanks for being on the show, and I got a feeling we'll talk again.

Aaron Hoot: I'd like that, for sure. There's definitely a lot more topics I can get more in-depth on. Didn't want to scare anyone the first time.

Doug Oster: All right. Thanks so much, Aaron.

Aaron Hoot: Yes, sir. Thank you.

Doug Oster: Tune in every Thursday to the Talking Trees podcast, from the Davey Tree Expert Company. I'm your host, Doug Oster. Do me a big favor, subscribe to the podcast so that you'll never miss a show. If you've got an idea for an episode, maybe a comment, send us an email at podcasts@davey.com. That's P-O-D-C-A-S-T-S@D-A-V-E-Y.com. As always, we'd like to remind you on the Talking Trees podcast, trees are the answer.

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