Episode 1678: Seg 1 of S10E36 Fall tree care, The Gardening with Joey and Holly radio Show

0:00Well, Holly, before we get in the program, it's time for this week's joke of the week. Okay. Why did the farmer decide to start growing carrots, beets, onions, and potatoes after a handful of years? It's a long lead up to this. Because he wanted to get back to his roots. Ah. I made that up. Ah. This week's Garden Joke is brought to you by rescue.com. American made rescue products. Keep your family home and you are protected from pests such as wasps. Hornets Yellow Jackets, flies ants, and more learnmoretrescue.com. It's r-e-s-c-u-e.com. So fall tree care. Many of us are going to experience fall at some duration of the next couple of weeks. If not a month or so based on where you're located. So what is there, what things are there to do? Now, if you are in the Milwaukee area where our show originates, David J. Franks, there's a great article on their website about tree care checklist and how to keep those trees healthy this fall. For everybody else, you can certainly go to that website.

1:01But it's conformative to your location, whether you're in northern California, southern Georgia, Massachusetts, or Minneapolis. There's a little alteration for each one of these types of particular activities and when to protect it. So we want to talk about soil care. Right. So one thing about tree care is doing it in the fall. Oftentimes, we'll help prevent issues during winter. Or if there are issues, then worsening because of snow or ice or dry weather. So just keep that in mind that it's good to consider your trees. Because some people think about it like in the late winter or early fall, but the early spring, but doing the fall can be helpful as well. So soil care, when trees grow on the forest, the soil beneath them is rich and full of nutrients. But typically in your home landscape, it's not the case. So you can- Because you're not the decaying matter in your backyard. Right. So you can give your trees some fertilization. Now, you want to get the right kind of fertilizer, a slow release

2:02fertilizer in the fall, slow release fertilizer, mimics nature's slow decomposition, as I just spoke about in the woods. The leaves falling down, which in city and urban areas, what's the first thing if you got a tree in the leaves fall? You got to clean the leaves up. We don't want to leave them on the grass because it kills the grass and the whole thing. It looks there. I want a lot of work and leaf floors and anything. But anyway, so you want to slow release fertilizer in the proper application rates on the back of the bag. That's why they're there. And you want to apply it at the proper time in your location. You want to fresh up the mulch if you do have mulch around your trees. Now, application of mulch is important. As you do it wrong, you're going to kill the tree. Right. So when- Or damage it severely. When you're mulching, you want to make sure that, first of all, organic mulch does quite a bit to help your tree thrive. For one, it adds organic matter to the soil around the tree. It can serve soil moisture.

3:04It helps maintain soil temperatures. And it gives soil resistance against erosion and compaction. So organic mulch can be made up of ground up leaves, weed-free straw, or even wood chips. But if you use wood chips, make sure that are not the ones that have been dyed. So you want to make sure you're covering the ground around the base of the tree with one to two inches of mulch each fall. But you don't want to- you want over mulch. You don't want to pile it too high around the trunk so it looks like a volcano. You want to keep it about two to three inches away from the trunk of your tree. When you do that volcano method, it can't- volcano- volcanic method, you can risk rotting the bark around the trunk of the tree. Now, what is a non-organic type of mulch? Well, that would be rock or gravel, good for dry yards or pathways. Plastic sheets like a weed block that type of thing keeps water and in and the soil gets dried out.

4:06Landscaping fabric lets the water through with- blocking the weeds and rubber chips made from old tires or typically used in play areas. Not really the ideal mulch. Out of those non-organic mulches, the rock or gravel would be the best alternative. As I've seen, multiple people do that type of thing around the trees. But when you're getting landscape fabric or rubber chips or it's not good for the environment because you've got- if you're going to have it underneath your play pin in the back, that's fine. But around the tree in the front yard, not so much. It's not going to break down. Now, you ideally want to mulch before the ground freezes. If you can. And then also if there's fallen leaves around the base of the tree, just mulch over them. Those leaves aren't going to hurt anything. You don't need to rake the leaves away and then lay them all. You just mulch over the leaves because that will just add more organic matter to the soil around your tree. Which is easier said than done because everybody wants to clean the leaves up and then mulch because that's kind of how you think you got to do it.

5:07You can actually mulch the leaves around the tree and then put the mulch on top of it. So you don't have to discard the leaves. You know, rake them all around the tree, keep them away from the trunk and then cover cover them up with that mulch. Remove pine needles from beds and turf. The autumn leaves are nice, but eventually they fall. And with the pine needles, this is a good mulch for your garden. Now, when you clean pine needles up, if you're concerned about pine needles and they're just kind of falling around and you want to rake them up in the kind of quote-unquote common area, that's fine, but you do not want to rake them up underneath the perimeter, like the actual core of the tree. You want to leave that because that's part of their mulch and how the tree survives. Right. Yeah, so using the pine needles is smart and to leave them where they are, so I'd mention pine straws. Pine straws, yeah, some people call it, yeah. It's perfectly fine. There's really no need for you to rake them up. Like, yeah, they're just putting them with the lawn more. In the forest, nobody's out there raking the pine mulch.

6:11And yeah, well, you're right in the forest because Bigfoot is worried about putting markers. You know, they let the big trees up and cross them and that's their territorial boundaries. Right. Bigfoot harry has this quadrant and then Bigfoot Susie has that quadrant. I wonder if Bigfoot Susie is as strong as Bigfoot harry. I'm going to say she's stronger. You think? Yeah. Well, you see them. Okay. We want to talk about tree trimming. And if you have Bigfoot, he can come out and reach the high limb so you don't have to get the ladder out. But tree trimming is essential for annual practice. You want to prune the dead and diseased unsafe branches from the tree, not only to protect you, but your home and your belongings. Here's the other thing that maybe you need to be aware of that you don't know is a concern. A lot of people in towns, you got a big tree and it cascades over top of the sidewalk. Looks really pretty in the fall. You know, the leaves fall down in one of those hallmark movie calendar pictures.

7:14But if you look up in that tree that's cascading over the public sidewalk and you see some not so nice dead looking stuff up there, you are liable if that comes down and hits somebody. So you want to take care of that. Now, certified arborist is the way to go. Preferably somebody that has an actual truck, not just a name, magnetic to the side or rough painted, you know, Jim's tree removal. And as soon as the bad things happen, Jim leaves in the truck and you got to crush this or that. So you would think, you know, we often think and we all have this mindset and it's no different. Well, it doesn't look that bad or I will get to it or it'll next year we'll do it. Well, here's the problem. Next year, you don't know what? That tree could come down in a storm with ice on it with snow and it can hurt somebody. And paying a certified arborist, let's just put around number $3,000 to take that tree down or away

8:14from the bad stuff off the sidewalk, that's certainly $3,000 and I'll make of that number up. Is a way much more affordable and sound piece of mind purchase than to have to have that tree fall, fall on somebody, fall on a car, go to court, pay somebody's medical bill, you see how that's going. So he'd the warning, make the move first so you can avoid all the other stuff because now instead of $3,000, who knows how many zeros is behind that three after you all this other stuff gets done. Yeah, it's definitely if you are going to have trees on your property, just like they don't require as much attention as other things necessarily, but because especially where we live, if you are in an area that gets snow or ice or wind during the winter, you need to be responsible for any sort of damage that those could cause, especially if you are in a, you know, situation like sometimes an HOA, I've heard of people having to even trim their bushes.

9:19Just the word HOA triggers her, but anyway, right, even trim their bushes and then could you imagine if you were an HOA and then a tree, I'm sure your neighbor's yard, I'm sure that would just be I'm sure it's happened, but it's a mess in itself. So there's some things in which you need to be aware of, some things that you need to do and to get your trees ready for the fall.