You want your back yard to be beautiful, and trees offer that beauty along with relaxing shade in the summer time. But when you have a growth on your tree, you might worry: Will I have to cut this tree down, or will it go away? There are different types of malignant tree growths, but not all tree growths are deadly.

Different types of malignant tree growths include:

Galls: These growths come in various shapes and sizes. Some are very large, some small, some fuzzy or furry, and some are smooth to the touch. These are caused by infestation of different egg-laying bugs. They happen because your tree is reacting instinctively to protect itself from the different chemical changes that occur with an egg-laying insect. While the galls themselves may not be malignant, the bugs producing them could have a serious effect on your tree and may damage or kill it.

Burls: Although there isn’t much known about the roots of these growths, they are thought to be similar to galls. They can also come in various shapes and sizes, but they usually become pretty big. They can damage your tree and ultimately kill it. However, they don’t have to get that bad. If you discover a burl on your tree, you should not remove it; this would produce a large wound that would most likely become infected and kill the tree. Instead, you should prune the tree properly to avoid the burl’s growth.

Laurel Wilt: If you live in a warmer, more tropical climate, Laurel Wilt may just be your worst nightmare. This specific fungus has been killing Florida trees rapidly. It is brought to your trees by ambrosia beetles and it can kill them almost overnight. They block the tree’s capillaries, which prevents the water from getting through. There are fungicides that can prevent Laurel Wilt. If you think you live in an at-risk area, you may consider it.

Consult The Experts

These are just a few of the types of malignant tree growths most commonly found, but there are a great many more fungi that could infect your tree. If you need help with your lawn care or trees, TalkLocal can connect you with qualified professionals in your area that can help.

If your tree or a neighborhood tree is pressing on power lines, you should contact your electrical company immediately to request to have the tree trimmed. Most tree companies strongly advise that you do not do any work around power lines by yourself. However, many electrical companies are backlogged with tree-trimming requests by other concerned customers.

Emergency Situations

In the event of an emergency, you’re strongly advised to contact an arborist who is trained in dealing with trees that are next to power lines to remove the offending branch for you. Otherwise, the combination of unpredictable tree branch behavior and extreme high voltages present too much of a lethal risk to be worth it. Many states also specifically ban trimming trees around a power line without a specific license to do so. Find out the minimum distance from a power line a branch has to be in order for you or an uncertified arborist to trim it.

Some electrical companies will not trim around home service drops, as they are insulated. If you feel like the pressure on your service drop is too great, call the electrical company to disable the electricity to your home temporarily so you can trim around the service drop safely.

1. If your family’s lives are in immediate danger because of a tree branch pressing on power lines, call the electrical company to disable electricity to your home first.

2. Wear protective clothing, such as lineman’s gloves, a non-conductive hardhat, a close-fitting long-sleeved shirt, slip resistant shoes, and non-conductive equipment. Never work with wet or moist equipment, especially in adverse weather.

3. Rope off the surrounding area you’re about to work in to avoid getting bystanders involved, and make sure to cut branches off in a way that allows them to fall away from the power lines. You could also use a pull rope to prevent branches from falling on power lines.

Call In The Professionals

Only in the most dire situations should you ever attempt to prune near a power line by yourself. In the event that your power company cannot trim the tree in time, call a certified arborist, which couldn’t be made any easier by TalkLocal! We will connect you with up to three tree removal professionals in your area, getting you the help you need, when you need it.

There are many ways to kill or remove a a tree — but the important part is to do it safely, and if possible, quickly. Read this guide to learn how to safely kill a tree. We’ll give you the tips, as well as precautions to keep in mind when trying to kill a tree.

How To Safely Kill A Tree

Salting the Ground

In ancient times, salting the ground was used as a means of spite after a war, so that the enemy territories would not grow any crops or fruit. Although salting the ground around a tree is an efficient way to kill a tree, it is generally not recommended. Salting the ground around a tree will also prevent any other vegetation from growing in that area. So don’t salt the ground — salt only the tree.

1. You can do this by drilling holes into the tree’s trunk, in a slanted direction.

2. Then just pour salt inside the hole.

3. Pour some hot water inside of the hole in order to dissolve the salt and accelerate the tree’s absorption of it.

4. The more holes you drill, the faster the tree will die, but too many holes may compromise the stability of the tree as it dies, causing it to fall in a particular direction. The tree should die off in about one month, but this could vary depending on the extent of the treatment and the size of the tree.

5. Frequently check the state of the tree throughout the month to estimate how weak the tree is getting. If you find that it is weak enough, you should organize a clearing for the fall and cut the tree in that direction. This will ensure that the falling tree does not damage any of your property.

Suffocate the Tree

Alternatively, you could cover up the ground around the tree to kill the tree at the roots. Use a large vinyl sheet, or sheets, and lay them on the ground around the tree. The vinyl sheets will prevent the tree’s roots from receiving oxygen and sunlight, effectively suffocating the tree from the ground up. This will also kill the grass and any plants around the tree. This process takes longer than salting the ground, but it will kill the tree safely.

Additional Help

If you feel like you need professional help with killing or removing a tree, TalkLocal can help you by connecting you with up to three professional tree removal services in your area. We will have you on the phone with up to three professionals in just minutes, and it’s free!

If Mother Nature, or a woodland creature, or a meddlesome teenager damages the bark of a tree in your yard, then the tree’s phloem layer, behind the bark of the tree will become damaged as well. When the phloem is damaged, the tree is unable to provide water and nutrients to it’s roots, branches, and leaves. If the phloem layer is left damaged and unprepared for too long the tree will die. This article will help you learn how to repair tree bark, which will enable the phloem layer to heal.

How To Repair Tree Bark

You will need: a  knife, some soap, a sponge, a bucket, measuring tape, and a garden hose.

1. Take your knife and cut off the rough edges of the damaged part of the bark.

2. In your bucket, mix a solution that is 2/3 water and 1/3 soap.

3. Use you sponge to clean the damaged area that you cleared with the soapy solution.

4. Use your hose to rinse the damaged area.

5. Find a healthy branch on the tree that is about two inches wide.

6. Use your measuring tape and your knife to cut a piece of the branch that is three inches longer than the damaged area.

7. Cut one side of the branch, so that it is flat.

8. Trim the ends of the branch, so that they are slanted.

9. Use your knife to cut flaps in the trunk, that start at the edges of the damaged area, but are longer than it. Make sure not to cut in between the flaps.

10. Place the branch inside the flaps, ensuring that it will be held in place by the flaps.

Keep Your Trees Healthy

If the bark does not begin to heal, or you decide you do not want to repair it yourself, you can contact a tree service professional. With the help of TalkLocal, you can be on the phone in minutes with up to three, high-quality tree service professionals in your area that are available when you are.

Maple wilt, or Verticillium wilt, is a soil-borne fungus that primarily targets woody ornamental trees.  If your trees are infected, you’ll most likely see it on the oldest branches and leaves on the tree.  They’ll begin to develop yellow blotches on the lowest leaves and can end up killing off entire limbs of trees at once.  If you take a cross section of one of those branches, you should see a brown discoloration in the stem tissues of the plant; this is the fungus blocking the vascular tissues of the plant.  Without nutrients and water, the limbs and the leaves will begin to die off.

How To Treat Maple Wilt?

Unfortunately, you only have two options if you want to know how to treat maple wilt. While there is no cure for maple wilt, you can prevent it from spreading. Once maple wilt establishes itself in trees, it becomes incredibly difficult to control. If a tree is significantly infected, you should cut down and destroy that tree.  Otherwise if the infection seems minor, you may be able to save the maple tree by pruning the dead branches.

Prevention Is the Best Defense

Healthy trees are the least susceptible to maple wilt primarily because they can produce new vascular tissue to limit the damage caused by the fungus.  The best prevention is to keep your trees healthy all year round, meaning keeping your trees well-watered during dry seasons and well-groomed and fertilized during growing seasons.  Furthermore, you may want to consider purchasing maple wilt-resistant plants (usually marked with a V under the “disease resistance” portion of the tag).  It may also be helpful to regularly disinfect your garden tools, especially if you use them in gardens or soils other than your own, as you may be introducing new fungi.  Simply wash them in a 10% bleach solution or rubbing alcohol to kill off any residual fungi.

Have A Professional Remove An Infected Tree

Ultimately, you may not be able to save your maple trees.  If you need to cut down or even try to salvage infected maple trees, you should consult a professional tree removal service.  You should use TalkLocal so that you can talk with a high-quality, local professional in just minutes.  You’ll have a  personalized assessment about your maple trees in no time!

Do you have fallen tree branches from dead or dying trees cluttering your yard? Are you asking yourself, “What can I do with tree branches?” We have some interesting ideas to help you put those tree branches to work — or to simply get rid of them.

Rent A Wood Shredder

Renting a wood shredder will allow you to convert your branches into wood chips. Tip – Check with your neighbors to see if they too need any branches disposed of. This way, you can split the cost of renting the wood shredder with other people, and have more wood chips to use as mulch.

Use Branches In Your Garden

Branches are great for supporting growing flowers and plants in your garden. The branches can be used to allow the flowers and plants support and stability as they grow. You can simply tie the plants to branch sticking upright out of the ground.

Decorate Your Home!

Use a tree branch to give your home a nice, woody, rustic look by creating a towel holder of your own!

1. Take a branch that is around 3 inches in circumference and smooth out the edges.

2. After you have cleaned up the branch, begin searching for fake flower arrangements that can be placed on the end of the branch in order to give the branch some decorations and color of its own.

3. To secure the branch along the wall, use wall brackets and glue. Use clear glue in order to avoid unnecessary glue marks appearing.

4. Apply the mounting brackets for a store-bought towel holder. This will give you the support needed to glue the branch onto the wall.

5. Apply the glue and hold the branch in place with the brackets for a few minutes to allow the glue to take hold.

6. Next, pick a towel color that correlates to the wood color and the rustic feel you are aiming for. Oftentimes, greens and browns are great options to go with.

Use Branches As Kindling

If you enjoy a nice, warm fire in your fireplace, or on a cool evening outside with your fire pit, dead branches are great to use as kindling. Simply store the branches wherever you store logs to dry.

Have more questions about what to do with tree branches? Already made enough branch towel holders to fill your entire home and still have a lot of branches left over? It may be time to call a tree removal service to help you out! Check out TalkLocal. You will be connected directly to local, high quality professionals that can help you with any of your tree removal needs. Check it out!

Believe it or not, mistletoe is not as romantic as you may imagine. They are actually parasitic plants that depend on other plants, or hosts, for energy. Despite their romantic holiday symbolism, mistletoe can actually present a threat to the life of your plants. Keep reading to find out how to get rid of mistletoe.

The Effects of Mistletoe Infection

Birds that eat mistletoe berries spread the parasite through their feces, which contains mistletoe seeds. Mistletoe infect their host by anchoring themselves to a plant’s branches and absorbing its water and nutrients. They draw a lot of water from the host, which can desiccate the host during droughts. Mistletoe can cause the death of tree branches, and in worse cases, the death of the tree — although this would take many years.

Plants Prone to Mistletoe Infection

The plants that are most likely to be infected by mistletoe include:

– Maple

– Oak

– Other hardwoods

– Pine trees

– Other conifers, excluding juniper and cypress

How to Get Rid of Mistletoe

If any of your plants or trees are infected with mistletoe, take the following steps to get rid of it.

1. Trim and prune your plants at least 12 inches behind the mistletoe to prevent it from harming your plants. Mistletoe tend to grow on higher branches in trees, so it might be tricky to get them. We recommend hiring a professional arborist to climb the tree safely with the proper equipment.

2. This process will need to be repeated every year, as this does not cure the host plant entirely; it only expands the lifespan of your plant or tree. Do not over-prune the host plant, as this causes extra stress on the plant.

3. You may also try to cover the mistletoe with black plastic to cut it off from sunlight. Although it is unsightly, this will slowly kill the mistletoe. You can use an herbicide, but there is a large risk of damaging or even killing the host plant.

4. If the parasitic plant has infected most of the host plant, then it might be wisest to remove the host plant altogether and plant something new later.

Seeking Professional Help

If you are having serious mistletoe problems, call an arborist to help you regain control of your plants. TalkLocal can connect you with the best arborists and tree removal services in your area who can help you control your mistletoe infestation. Talk Local is completely free, so try it out today!

If your tree has frost cracks, you will want to heal them. Frost cracks pose a serious threat to the health of your tree, and a dying or dead tree poses a serious threat to your yard and your home. Fortunately, frost cracks can be healed.

How Does A Tree Get Frost Cracks?

Frost cracks are caused by sudden drops in temperatures. On cool days moisture can collect on the bark of the tree. When the temperature drops suddenly, such as when the sky becomes overcast, the bark cools rapidly and the moisture freezes, causing the bark to expand. This exposes the inside of the tree like an open wound; bacteria, fungus, and insects have easy access to the tender wood of the tree and cause disease, or even simply wear down the health of your tree.

What to Do If Your Tree Has Frost Cracks

Frost cracks can usually heal on their own if there is clean crack with no loose bark. If the tree has a jagged crack and loose bark is present, you may have to heal the tree yourself. The tree heals frost cracks by forming a callus layer to seal edges of the crack. Neither tree paint nor tar can cause this formation and should not be used to heal a tree’s frost crack. When healing the tree yourself, you will enact this formation of the callus layer. To heal the frost crack you will need: denatured alcohol, water, a sharp knife, an empty spray bottle, and a towel.

1. Mix denatured alcohol and water, consisting mostly of alcohol.

2. Dip a knife into mixture.

3. Carefully remove loose bark and smooth the edges of the crack with the knife without cutting deep into the wood.

4. Cut a ½-inch deep oval around the frost crack while sterilizing the knife with the alcohol mixture between each cut. Have the cut 1 or ½ inches away from the frost crack.

5. Remove bark from the newly cut area, so that the area is bare.

6. Pour the mixture into a spray bottle and spray it onto the exposed area to sterilize it.

7. Soak up any excess mixture with the towel.

Need Professional Help?

If you think your tree has frost cracks, or may be dying, contact a quality tree removal service. TalkLocal will connect you with up to three tree removal services in your area in just minutes. Try it out today, for free!

All trees grow at different rates, and the best time to trim trees depends on the climate of the area you live in, the type of tree you are cultivating, and the degree of pruning you wish to do. Essentially, the best time to trim trees depends entirely on that tree’s unique situation.

The Best Time to Trim Trees

There are certain ages, months, and periods during which it is better to trim trees. A good time to trim a tree is when the tree is in its younger stages and there is less pruning to be done. At this point, the tree is small enough that you can easily cut the bottom branches. If you want to prune a tree, doing so when it is young is the best time, as the branches can heal more quickly, and a younger tree has a better chance to adjust to the trimming.

Another rule of thumb for pruning trees is that the best time to prune living wood is when the tree is dormant. If you prune the tree in early spring or when the tree is still budding out, you can inflict damage to the tree at a time when it is most vulnerable. Instead, a good time to trim the tree is during the late summer months or even in late winter. For mature trees, less is better, meaning you should avoid removing limbs that have a diameter greater than 6 inches because this can cause the tree to start decaying.

As all trees are not the same, certain trees need to be trimmed before others. Trees of varieties such as dogwoods and crabapples should be trimmed as soon as they begin blooming, usually during the spring. However, you need to be careful to not cut too much or else you may subject the tree to decay when it is devoting its energy towards growth.

For trees that have dead branches, any time is a good time to trim the tree. You can identify dead tree branches by scratching through a layer of bark. If the inside is green, it is still alive and you shouldn’t cut them unless the time is optimal. If the inside is brown, the branch is dead and they can be removed at any time.

Find the Right Tree Trimmers

Knowing when to prune your trees is an important step in maintaining healthy trees. If you would prefer help from a professional, consider using TalkLocal to find a capable tree removal service for you. TalkLocal is a free service that will connect you with top-quality, landscaping and tree removal contractors in your neighborhood within minutes. Just enter in your specific problem, location and availability, and up to three companies will call YOU directly, saving you the time and stress of finding one yourself.

What is tree topping? Tree topping is removing the tops of trees completely/and or only removing the topmost branches from the main stem of the tree. It is usually done for safety measures, but rarely for aesthetic appeal – sometimes people prefer a yard with less shade or a particular shape of a shade. Unless you absolutely need to top a tree for safety measures, it’s generally not recommended, as it is not healthy for the tree.

How Is Tree Topping Harmful for the Tree?

Remember that when you cut the tree’s tops, you are not just cutting off the branches – you are cutting off what is on those branches as well, including, but not limited to: leaves, fruit, and any shelter for the wildlife (birds’ nests, etc). Cutting the branches leads to less leaves on a tree, leading to a depletion in the tree’s ability to photosynthesize.

Without being able to convert the sun’s energy into its own, the tree is less likely to survive – even if it does, it will bear less fruit or smaller fruits due to its lacks of energy. Trees do die out because of lack of leaves, and they also decay, becoming mores susceptible to breakage as they die – this defeats the whole purpose of tree topping, in the first place – a rotten tree is more likely to fall, potentially causing damage to your home.

The other downside to topping trees is that cutting trees leaves open wounds for the tree, making the tree more susceptible to invasions by pests or fungi. These invasions lead to infections for the tree, accelerating the process by which it rots away and dies. Again, a weak tree is more likely to fall down – maybe on your house or other valuables.

Although topping the tree may make for a more visually appealing style for a while, the tree will grow back if it survives – and the tree will grow new branches like a broom in order to compensate for the fact that it lost some of them before, making the tree ugly in the longer term. Unless you plan to top the same trees over and over again, it’s really not worth the effort.

Remember: if a rotten tree falls on your neighbors’ properties, they can sue you for the damage, and most likely will win the claim – because your tree was rotten and you failed to take proper precautions to protect the property around it. So be careful to monitor the health of the trees when you decide to top them.

Additional Help

If you feel like you need professional advice on topping trees, TalkLocal can connect you with up to three tree service professionals in your area. Let us save you the hassle of searching for the right professional.