Three Ways You're Unwittingly Harming Your Trees

The trees in your yard deserve to be healthy. If you've planted trees over the past few years and noticed they’ve become weak or frail, this could be attributed to the care you give them. But if you've been diligent about watering, fertilizing, and waiting for blossoms, that may seem like an impossible cause.

However, you could be caring for them the wrong way by accident. You may think you're being careful, but some simple mistakes that seem helpful can actually do more harm than good.

Most of the time, fixing these mistakes is a matter of adjusting what you're doing. Below are some of the common mistakes that many property owners make when caring for the trees on their property.

Not Taking Rainfall Into Account When Watering

Trees in Missouri have to be able to handle a lot of rainfall if they want to survive the seasonal storms that sweep through the state. But that doesn't mean the trees are invincible in the face of too much water. And if you haven't adjusted your watering schedule to account for added water from rainfall, your trees will suffer.

Too much water can saturate the soil and drown the tree roots. It's not just your houseplants that suffer from too much water. Your trees can also end up dying if the roots can't receive enough oxygen from the soil.

Giving the Tree Too Much Food

Trees benefit from fertilizer at specific points in their lives, especially when they're younger, as does your lawn and the plants in your yard. But if you're fertilizing everything in your yard, you could end up over-fertilizing something by mistake. For example, when you apply tree fertilizers and lawn fertilizers within a short time span of time, you should ensure that the soil between the end of the tree's root zone and the edge of the lawn isn't receiving too much fertilizer.

A little-known fact is that an overabundance of fertilizer can actually cut off a plant's ability to absorb water from the soil. You might think your tree will be okay, but over time, the leaves can wither, and the tree may not grow as well as it should.

Promoting a Fruit-Tree Superbloom

If you've planted fruit trees and have gotten only weak, tasteless fruit (or no fruit at all), the blossoms could be to blame—or, rather, your love for the blossoms. It's fine to admire a tree laden with blossoms, but at some point, you have to remove a large portion of them.

To see flowers spilling off the ends of twigs and covering every branch of the tree is a marvelous sight, but each blossom is trying to turn into a fruit. When you have too many blossoms on the tree, they're all in competition with their neighbors. The tree's roots and leaves don't automatically collect more sunlight and soil nutrients to fulfill each flower’s needs; the tree gets what nutrients it can, and then the blossoms have to essentially fend for themselves.

The University of Missouri Extension points out that with all that fruit forming, there isn't enough sugar to go around, leading to tasteless fruit. Too much fruit on one branch can also damage the branch, leading to under-ripe, wasted fruit.

If you're not sure how many blossoms to remove, how to adjust your watering schedule to account for rain, or how to feed a tree when it needs extra fertilizer, contact Baumann Tree for quality tree service. Don't risk having your trees fail by guessing what your trees need; let us handle the tree care to ensure your trees bounce back and thrive.