Pruning Trees Yourself

You can Prune your own trees

The real problem in pruning trees is that real professionals are set up for big trees, yet the best way to prune is a little bit every year, when the trees are young. Do not trust a landscaper to know how to prune trees right until you've quizzed them on some basics, to see if they really are able.

Three questions to determine if a landscaper is qualified to prune your trees.
1. Ask them what is a three step cut?
2. Should they prune flush with the tree?
3. What five things are always considered when looking for what needs to be pruned.

Answers
1. Cut bottom five inches out from final cut to keep from peeling the bark like below

2. No, not flush with the tree but leave the branch collar so the wound can heal like below

 

3. Dead limbs, Crossing limbs, Rubbing limbs, suckers growing inside, broken limbs as below.

These are real basic tree 101 questions; so if they don't know this quickly and easily, do not let them touch your trees.

But that may leave you having to do it yourself. You will need the correct tools as covered in another post. You will also need the basic tree knowledge listed above. But that is simple to and you can use several books on the subject plus go though some basic videos, which I'll list. However, trees NEVER look like the trees in the books, so  you will need to make decisions on what is the best cut to help the tree.

My rule with new folks pruning trees is, "if in doubt, leave it for next year and do some more studying." If you are pruning every year, you will grow in your experience. The tree has no plans to run off so you can always take the time to find the information to decide what to do with unique growing situations on the tree.

Some good material to get started:
Tree Basics in Pruning Video

Important Tree Structure Pruning

More Tree Pruning Tips