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Having a beautiful landscape allows any homeowner to enjoy the perks of fresher air and a relaxing atmosphere. Whether you reside in the countryside or the suburbs, you might have some space in your yard in which you can afford to care for some beautiful and plush trees.
Caring for this wonderful creation adds value to your home since they provide shade and aesthetics. They also help in reducing air pollution and help in balancing wildlife.
However, much like caring for other plants, trees require proper maintenance too. Whether you own a young tree or you’re planning for tree removal and have it replaced with a new one, it’s crucial to be familiar with how to make your trees healthy, as always. No matter how resilient trees can be, they still need constant care to thrive.
Apply some of these gardening tips to ensure your tree’s health:
1. Keep Roots Healthy
No matter how old or young your tree is, it must keep healthy roots. A tree’s roots are fundamental to its health, which means that soil needs to be healthy as well. Healthy soil has air spaces because oxygen is required for tree roots to absorb nutrients.
Because compaction blocks water infiltration and oxygen from reaching tree roots, compacted soil is a significant threat to tree roots. There are some ways to avoid your soil from being compacted.
The root system needs sufficient growing space, well-conditioned soil at least 16 inches deep, and ample water and oxygen. Check the soil and water conditions of the root environment by digging a hole beyond the tree’s dripline and examining the ground to determine whether it’s dry, wet, or compacted.
You can easily detect dried soil if your shovel is hard to dig or remove from the ground. Rather than frequent light watering, trees need long, deep watering to allow the soil to dry between waterings rather than regular light watering. If the winter is long and dry, water it once a month. This simple practice makes the soil moist, which ensures healthy roots.
2. Only Use Thoroughly-Composted Compost
Composting is one smart way to manage garden waste. Compost piles contain materials that decompose at different rates. For this reason, compost may be a combination of degraded materials that are garden-ready, but some may not be ready for use yet. High temperatures are generated for long periods by composting thoroughly, effectively killing pathogens.
Debris from infected plants that haven’t gone through this process may introduce disease into your trees. To ensure adequate compost for your tree, it’s crucial to select the best ingredients to use on your compost pile. Steer away from yard waste that may not be suitable to use as compost for your trees.
3. Protect Their Barks
The bark of a tree acts as protection. When the armor is damaged, it becomes easier for fungal or bacterial infections to take hold and cause the tree to rot from within. Therefore, you should protect the tree’s bark at all costs.
Try to look out for situations where the branches are rubbing each other. Some of them may be interlocked and entwined, potentially wound bark surfaces. Also, keep your lawn equipment away from hitting any part of the tree. Sometimes, the equipment could hurt the trunk of trees.
Lastly, it’s important to park your vehicles away from the trees. The trees near the driveway or car park might experience hits from cars. Roots can be driven over, and barks may break. It’s critical to designate a parking space healthy distance from your property trees.
4. Avoid Overwatering Or Overfertilizing
In general, mature trees don’t require much assistance in terms of food and water. Adding fertilizer and water to newly planted trees will benefit them, but excessive fertilizer and watering will damage large and aged trees.
A lawn or garden herbicide application can also destroy them. That’s another reason to spread mulch around the roots, so you’re not dousing them in chemicals.
Depending on the kind of tree you have, some don’t prefer water as they’re accustomed to withstanding a dry season. Overwatering these kinds of trees will only lead to their death. Hence, before deciding to water or fertilize your trees, be aware of what care requirements they need instead.
5. Prune
Pruning is essential in caring for your trees. Trees in their mature state need little care, but removing their dead leaves and twigs here and there could still help them remain healthy and well-conditioned. As for fruit trees, however, they need to be regularly pruned and trimmed to continue producing fruits.
Depending on the type of pruning, you can make thinning cuts or head cuts, whichever is most suitable for the kind of tree you own. If you’re not well-versed with this, it’s best to seek professional help or advice from a certified arborist.
Conclusion
Having some trees in your backyard adds zeal to your home’s overall aesthetics and appeal. However, it’s vital to care for them in proper ways to withstand living for many decades. With the gardening tips mentioned above, you now have some ideas for retaining your trees’ health.
