Beech reduction

[Joseph W]

I hope I've put this in the correct place-a before and after of one of my first reductions. I really struggle with reductions and this took me the whole day! Wondered what you guys think of it and Looking for constructive criticism and any advice to improve my next one. Thanks in advance,

Joe.

 

[western]

Top quality work fella,

[Charlieball1997]

Looking gooood!

[Stubby]

Works for me !

[Dobson89]

Good work, I tend to start at the top then work out to the shoulders and follow the shape round from there. On smaller trees I'll leave a lot of lower branches untouched and just do them off the A frame/lopper head.

[Andrew Gale]

Good job, if you can, pat yourself on the back......

 

Practice makes perfect; keep that level up and you'll be doing fine.

[Joseph W]

Thanks for the encouragement everyone, and thanks for the advice dobson, I found that I like doing the lower branches first (from the ground) so that I have something to aim for when I'm in the tree if that makes any sense! However your way would be far better when it comes to avoiding damage to growth points when chucking down branches...

[Joseph W]

Hi guys, I'm looking for a bit of advice. I was really happy with this tree and it came out beautifully in the spring. However in the last week it has dropped nearly 50%of its leaves. These leaves are mostly on the side of the prevailing wind... The only twist to this story is that my customer's neighbours do not like the tree and it is v.close to the boundary. Suckers on my customer's side of the fence are v.healthy but suckers on the neighbour's side were dead...furthermore they actually were wet at the time and it was a dry day. The neighbour could have been watering their flowers... I took a sample and have them in a bag. Is there any chance of poisoning? Any advice/ideas would be gratefully received!! Joe

[sloth]

Hmm, no pic. How big is the tree, are the remaining leaves green and healthy? Poison is a possibility, and this can be tested for - I think the RHS can do this, maybe...

The other thing which strikes me as odd is you mention suckers, yet the thread title says we are talking about a beech tree. Are you sure it's a beech? They don't produce suckers...

[sloth]

Sorry, just realised there's more to this thread than your last post! Does look like a beech, suckers are more likely seedlings, so any poisoning to them is unlikely to have any significant impact on the tree. So the 50% sudden leaf drop remains a mystery...