Let’s talk about pruning this spring and early summer.

First of all, how would you like for someone to come to your landscape and prune your trees free of charge? That’s not a chance happening but something that will happen whether or not you agree.

The free pruning service will be in the form of insects. Yep, I said insects, more specifically the 17 Year Periodical Cicada or Locust as some people call them.

They aren’t locust biologically because grass hoppers are in this group. They get tagged incorrectly as locust, because of their large numbers or swarms like western grass hoppers of the present and past.

Trees like maples, that can be pruned in the winter as well as summer, shouldn’t be pruned till the 17 Year Periodical Cicada has finished its damage in our landscape. That’s near the first of June.

If you prune now, you will get maybe further pruning you don’t want. I always call this insect “nature’s pruning machine”. You will notice because of their activity dead or dying branch ends on maple, oak, dogwood, apple and even crabapple trees. That’s where the female laid her eggs and damaged the small twig. That area will droop after a few weeks and the small limb will actually fall off. We call the hanging dead limb “FLAGGING”.

Make sure you cover the smaller trees because the flags I just mentioned just might be valuable main branches later.

You will probably need to keep your young trees covered for about 3-4 weeks after they emerge.