Hamas big reduction/pruning thread!

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

nope im not doing and any free lance work for him

 

who do you know that I know then?

[Treecreeper1961]

Its called a round over, its fround upon, but in this case (sycamore?) probably better than larger cuts as in the drop crotch style.

 

What do you mean by "larger cuts as in the drop crotch style" Hama?

 

I take drop crotch to mean reducing back to the next union or lateral, target pruning really. Have I got that wrong?

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

What do you mean by "larger cuts as in the drop crotch style" Hama?

 

I take drop crotch to mean reducing back to the next union or lateral, target pruning really. Have I got that wrong?

 

Drop crotch is where you go down into the fork and take the leader out leaving the two sub order branches/limbs as the new leads, this "drops" the crown periphery in and maintains (hopefully) a natural frame. however it means that a bigger cut is made as opposed to a higher maybe even internodal cut, that would be many times smaller than the traditional drop crotch method.

[Treecreeper1961]

Drop crotch is where you go down into the fork and take the leader out leaving the two sub order branches/limbs as the new leads, this "drops" the crown periphery in and maintains (hopefully) a natural frame. however it means that a bigger cut is made as opposed to a higher maybe even internodal cut, that would be many times smaller than the traditional drop crotch method.

 

Yeah thats what I take it to be.

 

So you reckon in some circumstances an internodal cut is better than natural target pruning? You would have to be dropping a long way to that crotch.

Gonna have another look at that photo.....

Edited February 20, 2012 by Treecreeper1961

[Treecreeper1961]

OK, had a look. There is a long way between where he has cut and next lateral, long poles as he says to be fair.

I find this difficult with some trees, they really don't lend themselves well to a sympathetic reduction. You either have stub cuts or you drop so far down you loose a natural crown and end up with isolated laterals/limbs.

Sycamore I find can be awkward like that. I wonder what dictates the structure of the inner crown. Sympodial growth seems to create this outer arrangement of growth with nothing much originating from just within.

That maybe my excuse for doing bad reductions.

No, I've got a better excuse than that, ha ha.

[Wolfie]

there are a majority of the tree is to growth points. and it was what the customer wanted to do they wanted it lower than this.

 

Hi Nathan, just what to try and explain a bit about growth points. Sorry if i'm trying to teach you what you already know but you seem to think that plenty of growth points were left.

BS says that you should aim to leave growth points that are one third of the size of the branch that you are cutting back (if that makes sense), basically if you don't leave a sufficient size growth point then the tree will react the same as if you didn't leave one at all.

It sounds like your boss hasn't prescribed the best course of action. As stated, the tree will send out a large amount of reactional growth and in five years time the client will have a lot less light than they did before the work was carried out.

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

As if by magic, today I had an opportunity to help Nathan out with a like for like example, treecreeper you'll hopefully appreciate this one too. the images do not really do the amount that came out justice, but basicaly Nathan, this is what a VERY hard reduction could of should have looked like in your case. This is drop crotching, the way its done to keep within the recomended thirds (branch cut back to at least a third the diameter of that removed)

 

one of the stems removed was 20ft plus long! I wouldnt go that hard normaly but if you have to, then I hope this gives a sample of what can be done when were in a corner and gotta do what the client asks.

 

 

 

[MattyF]

I would say job well done!

[alex_m]

Good job, looks like they were hacked back a fair few years ago.

[Mark Bolam]

Much better Tone, but that tree wasn't a shite-bag in the first place like the one Nathan raped!