Shoutout to the guy who told me to stop pruning live branches in summer

I had a big elm tree in my backyard in St. Louis that was dropping dead branches every time the wind picked up. Last June I got up there with my pole saw and started cutting out what I thought were bad limbs. Problem was I took off too many live ones too. By August the leaves on the whole south side looked thin and brown. A retired arborist I met at the hardware store said I basically stressed the tree out by removing too much leaf surface when it was trying to handle heat. I never thought about how summer pruning messes with photosynthesis that bad. Now I only do deadwood removal in summer and save the big cuts for late winter. Has anyone else dealt with leaf scorch after a heavy summer trim?

3 comments

3 Comments

phoenix2461mo ago

Read an interview with a botanist from the Missouri Botanical Garden who said summer pruning is like asking a tree to run a marathon with a broken leg. The leaves produce the energy it needs to survive heat stress, so taking them off in July is basically starving the tree when it needs fuel most. That explanation clicked for me and now I treat pruning like surgery, timing matters more than technique.

jennifer8331mo ago

I gotta say I'm not totally sold on this whole "marathon with a broken leg" comparison. Trees have been surviving bad pruning for decades and still bounce back fine. I live in the northeast and my neighbor hacked a good third off his maple in August last year, thing looked rough for a season but it leafed out normal the next spring. I think sometimes we overthink tree care to the point where we act like one mistake is an automatic death sentence. Yeah stress is real but most trees are tougher than people give them credit for, especially something like an elm.

the_taylor1mo ago

I killed a birch tree in Kansas City doing the same thing. That summer heat just cooks the exposed wood and the tree can't recover. Late winter pruning saved my remaining oaks.