Kris Baker from Davey's Orlando office uses his experiences as an arborist in Michigan and Florida to share how arborists can help your trees in cold weather.
In this episode we cover:
To find your local Davey office, check out our find a local office page to search by zip code.
To learn more about caring for trees in cold weather, read our blog Tree Care Checklist: How to Keep Trees Healthy This Winter.
To learn more about the best trees to plant for your region's winter, read our blog Plant Hardiness and Its Significance to Your Trees This Winter.
Connect with Davey Tree on social media:
Twitter: @DaveyTree
Facebook: @DaveyTree
Instagram: @daveytree
YouTube: The Davey Tree Expert Company
LinkedIn: The Davey Tree Expert Company
Connect with Doug Oster at www.dougoster.com.
Have topics you'd like us to cover on the podcast? Email us at podcasts@davey.com. We want to hear from you!
Kris Baker from Davey's Orlando office uses his experiences as an arborist in Michigan and Florida to share how arborists can help your trees in cold weather.
In this episode we cover:
To find your local Davey office, check out our find a local office page to search by zip code.
To learn more about caring for trees in cold weather, read our blog Tree Care Checklist: How to Keep Trees Healthy This Winter.
To learn more about the best trees to plant for your region's winter, read our blog Plant Hardiness and Its Significance to Your Trees This Winter.
Connect with Davey Tree on social media:
Twitter: @DaveyTree
Facebook: @DaveyTree
Instagram: @daveytree
YouTube: The Davey Tree Expert Company
LinkedIn: The Davey Tree Expert Company
Connect with Doug Oster at www.dougoster.com.
Have topics you'd like us to cover on the podcast? Email us at podcasts@davey.com. We want to hear from you!
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Doug Oster: Welcome to the Davey Tree Expert Company's podcast, Talking Trees. I'm your host, Doug Oster. Each week, our expert arborists share advice on seasonal tree care, how to make your trees thrive, arborists' favorite trees, and much, much more. Tune in every Thursday to learn more, because here at the Talking Trees podcast, we know trees are the answer. This week, I'm joined by Kris Baker. He's a sales arborist in Orlando, and we're talking about what to do with your trees when things get colder. Chris, it doesn't get cold down there. [laughs]
Kris Baker: No, it doesn't.
Doug Oster: You worked in Detroit before going down to Orlando, so that must be terrible to have your winters down in Orlando now instead of Detroit, right?
Kris Baker: That's the whole reason I moved here.
[laughter]
Doug Oster: Actually, down in Orlando, we're not getting cool weather like we are here in the east and the north. Are there some things, though, down there that you've got to go do as the seasons change and go to a relatively cooler temperature?
Kris Baker: Most things can stay the same, but there are a few things that some people do in the wintertime here, or "wintertime." Crate myrtles, for example, will lose all their leaves, and it's probably the best time to prune those because usually they bloom all summer long, so if you want to do the pruning, it's the best to do it when they're off-season, so they actually lose all their leaves like you would up north.
Other things you can do is the cleanup of your beds. Obviously, you are going to get a lot of leaf drop. Even though the trees won't drop all their leaves, they will drop quite a few, so cleaning up your beds is a good time after you get all those initial leaf drop, and that's a great thing to do as well.
Doug Oster: When you worked in Detroit, could you grow crate myrtles there? We can grow them here in Pittsburgh Zone 6, but every once in a while, they're killed to the ground.
Kris Baker: No. Up in Detroit, it's too cold up there for them.
Doug Oster: Let's talk about the north, talk about the northeast and colder areas. When you were in Detroit, what things were the first things that you thought about going into winter? What should we be looking at for our trees?
Kris Baker: Again, you're going to have all the leaves that are getting dropping, so you have your fall cleanups that go on, but the big thing, of course, is going to be your oaks and elms, which they can really only be pruned during the winter months. That's usually December through maybe early April, just depending on what exact zone you're in, is the main time that you're going to be pruning those trees. Concerns of oak wilt and Dutch elm disease is the reason why you want to do those in the wintertime.
Doug Oster: My personal landscape, I'm dealing with oak wilt. It's terrible, but again, I've got my Davey arborist set up for some winter pruning. Explain to people why we don't cut those oaks and elms during the season. If somebody comes to your place, this is what drives me nuts, is that Chuck in a truck comes to your place and he wants to make some money off you, he's going to say, "Oh, we need to cut that oak. We need to cut that elm." As you mentioned, that's a bad thing to do until we get into dormancy, right?
Kris Baker: Yes. The disease is carried by insects. For example, oaks, it's the picnic beetle. Whenever you have an open wound on a tree, that's going to attract the insects because the tree emits a pheromone and that's what's going to draw them. They carry the disease on them. When they get into your tree, that's what causes that disease to go into it. The disease can also be spread tree to tree, but we're not worried about that part in the summertime. We're worried about the opening wounds that are going to be caught drawing in the insects, which are the vector.
Doug Oster: Then when you were going to a property in late fall, what else are you looking at on those trees moving into the winter?
Kris Baker: It's another good time to do a lot of your deadwood pruning or any other pruning in general. Sometimes it's a little bit easier to see maybe that there's issues going on in a tree that you can't see when all the foliage is on because it's hiding it. Sometimes there's maybe some cankers or things like that are going on in the tree that you can't visibly see because there's so much foliage in the summertime that might be-- leads you to know what may be problems there may be for the tree and that way you can advise a way of treating it.
Doug Oster: When you go to a property, and usually a homeowner or client will have one specific thing on a tree. You're looking at a lot more on that tree too, aren't you? You're examining the whole thing top to bottom, right?
Kris Baker: Yes. Exactly. Most people are drawn to what's up in the canopy. Everyone always looks up and that's a common mistake. Sometimes a lot of the problems are down below at the roots. We might see things like girdling roots or where maybe people are mulching wrong and they're piling it up on the trunk of the tree and it's causing rot to set in. There's a lot of different things. Looking up in the tree is what usually people do, but we need to make sure we're also looking down at the base of the tree as well.
Doug Oster: In the North, is it still okay to fertilize or do we stop at a certain point and stop fertilizing later in the season?
Kris Baker: You can fertilize pretty much any point in time until the ground is frozen, even though maybe the trees aren't uptaking. In the fall time leading up to when, before the ground gets frozen, actually the roots do their most amount of growth on the tree. That's the biggest time for root growth is actually in the fall. They're still pulling in nutrients then and plus the nutrients of the fertilizer stays in the soil for up to a year anyway. That way that nutrients is already there when the spring thaw comes and the tree can immediately draw from it.
Doug Oster: Then how about mulching? What are we doing at the end of the season as far as mulch? Anything?
Kris Baker: Most people, you'll just clean out the beds. Usually, you can add mulch in there, but most people wait for the springtime when they want that because you get the snow that piles up on the mulch in the North and then it doesn't look as fresh in the springtime. Most of the time you're just cleaning out the beds, cleaning out all the leaves that are falling out. Some people do like to add mulch at that period of time, but usually best to do it in the springtime if you're going for aesthetics.
Doug Oster: Is it weird going from Detroit to Florida and not having the change of seasons?
Kris Baker: It's a different change of seasons. We have a rainy season and a dry season. We'll get periods where it won't have any rain at all. It gets actually rather dry and you don't have the humidity that you think of in Florida during the wintertime. The climate is quite mild and nice and enjoyable. It's funny. Summertime in the North is when you enjoy the weather and you actually enjoy the wintertime down here.
Doug Oster: When we have a bad snowstorm in the North, do you call back to Detroit and start laughing at them?
Kris Baker: No, I don't laugh at them because sometimes they get a lot of work out of that. That's how we get a lot of work out of the storms that we have down here in the summertime. They get their work out of the winter storms.
Doug Oster: Talk a little bit about that difference. What you just mentioned there, the storms are completely different in Florida, but you're providing so much help to people in the same way, but in a different season, sort of.
Kris Baker: Yes. Here I would say we do a lot more to prepare for the storms. Up north, a storm happens and we are reactive to it. Of course, we have that issue here where we're reactive to the storms as well, but there's a lot of preparation. Usually April, May, early June, before the "hurricane season" starts, we'll be doing a lot of preparation for trees, trying to limit the amount of damage or wind that they'll take when those storms come.
Doug Oster: Now, is that something we should think about in the North, doing a little bit more of that, or is it just, you can't be done that way here because you don't know what's going to happen when the snow hits the tree. What are your feelings about that?
Kris Baker: I think we could probably even do it in the North, not necessarily for the winter storms, because it's the ice storms and things like that. It's just impossible to prepare for because it just puts so much extra weight on the trees, but preparing for wind storms and things like that with proper pruning and regular pruning, especially on older, more mature trees, can definitely limit the amount of damage you have from the storms there, because you still have the high winds and tornadoes up there. It's still almost the same in a way.
Doug Oster: How often do you usually go to a property that's like a regular client? How often do you want to be on that property to see the trees?
Kris Baker: For down here, it's almost a yearly thing. Up North, we may be pruning every three to four years on your oaks. Down here, it may be a year to two years because the growing season is much longer. The trees grow so much more, they grow faster. Plus, we have unique situation with having palm trees, which they can be pruned sometimes twice a year because the amount of fronds that grow on them.
Doug Oster: Was there a learning curve for you going from the North to the South as far as the different trees, or does it stay the same basic-- is the same basic knowledge used in dealing with trees down there?
Kris Baker: No, it was a huge learning curve, and it still is. I'm caught up with all the main trees that we have to deal with, but also a lot of the shrubs and things like that. I still have a rough time identifying them as well, because there's very few trees that we had up in the North that we have down here. There'll still be some sycamores, some maples. A few of those still are down here, but just the oak trees also are completely different. You're used to the typical oak leaf, and there's only maybe two oaks down here that have that, and the other ones have an entirely different leaf, and they're an evergreen rather than a deciduous.
Doug Oster: Tell me a little bit about that learning curve and working on ID-ing all these different things because I know that anytime one of us from the North goes down there, and again, I'm a plant guy, but when I get down there, people are saying, "What's this?" I said, "I have no idea."
Kris Baker Yes. Because Florida not only does it have its native, but it also has a huge amount of foreign tropical trees that they've introduced here as well. It probably has more actual trees than any other state that there is. The first thing I did when I came down here is I just went to a nursery and I just started walking around the nursery and looking at labels.
Doug Oster: Well, that's a great idea.
Kris Baker Yes. That's usually one of the first things I do when I'm trying to figure out things is at least the local nurseries, I'm going to have a good idea. That's not going to have all the exotics, but it's at least going to have all the natives that are going to be in the area and most things that grow.
Doug Oster: When you were up north, did you have any certain trees that you-- Again, we say this over and over again, right tree, right place but was there anything that you really thought should be planted more when you could find the right spot for it that might be off the beaten path a little bit.
Kris Baker I like to go with more unique things. Sometimes suggesting people, like for example, crab apples are a very popular ornamental tree in the north. I know I'm going to say the name wrong, Adirondack. Crab apple because it's resistant to apple scab and it also has a very unique look to it. I really like that tree. A lot of times I'll suggest that one to people rather than maybe some of the other traditional crab apples that are prone to disease that they would get.
Doug Oster: Most crab apples in the north, at least around here, they're defoliated well before fall just because of apple scab and I've got the same thing. I should be treating them and hope maybe next season my arborists will convince me, "Treat those things early so you keep the leaves on them." What else you were thinking about when you were back up here?
Kris Baker Maples are a very popular thing up there. In Michigan particularly, a lot of people really like the red maples, but I'm not a big fan of them because they normally get chlorotic because our soil just doesn't hold the right pH. Without constant treatments, you're constantly fighting a battle of the trees turning yellowish color in the middle of the summertime when they're supposed to be green. Some of the things that people like to plant, I like to suggest other things for them. Maybe going with a sugar maple instead of a red maple or a hybrid.
Doug Oster: I'm always surprised when I talk to arborists how much they love that sugar maple. That is really kind of have me rethinking. When I go out to these places and I see a big sugar maple, especially up here this time of the year, boy, the color is just spectacular. Anything else you could think about up this way or even down there that you would want to do as the season changed?
Kris Baker The only other thing, especially down here would be just having the trees inspected. Again, some of them do lose leaves. They don't lose all of them, but they lose some of them. It's a good time, just as the trees are not doing as much growing at this point in time, just to have them inspected to see if there's any sort of health issues. It's just early preparation for things down the line.
As I said, we have our oaks down here. Two of the main ones are your live oaks and your laurel oaks. The leaf of them is very similar, but the bark is quite a bit different but your live oaks can last hundreds and hundreds of years where. Your laurel oaks, they grow much faster and get very large, but the life expectancy of them is maybe around 50 to 60 years. They constantly have hollows, they constantly have sap seepage and they constantly are the ones that we're pulling off people's houses.
Doug Oster: Tell me a little bit about how you got into this. Why is this job right for you?
Kris Baker Well, a unique situation. At one point in time, I was living in Brazil and I was wanting to come back to the United States and it was kind of difficult without having a job or home or anything like that lined up. My cousin had a tree and lawn business that he offered help me get started back up and offered me a job and brought me back to Michigan with that.
I worked with him for quite a while there. A couple of people that I worked with actually worked for Davey beforehand and they were constantly talking well about Davey, and that's what made me want to actually move on from where I was working with my cousin and get more into the tree side of things and moved on with Davey.
Doug Oster: Tell me a little bit about the process. How did you start with Davey? Doing what?
Kris Baker I started as a PHC technician in the Northeast Detroit or the North Detroit office. Josh Leo was the one that hired me. I was there for three years as a PHC technician and I was promoted to sales arborist. Then just last year, I applied down here for Orlando to get a nice little change of weather and just to challenge myself too. Sometimes you get complacent in things and you feel like you're not maybe as learning as much as you could and you want just something that's going to challenge you. And that's why I decided to move down here.
Doug Oster: That's good stuff. Talk a little bit your relationship with your clients. I always think it must be a great thing to go to a property and tell people that we can save this tree because we all love our trees.
Kris Baker Down here it's a little bit different because sometimes, I should feel like I say that a lot less than what I do in the north as far as I can save your trees. Because here, like I said, we have the laurel oaks and the live oaks. It's usually people that are calling me about these laurel oaks that have these giant hollows and splits and things in them. I'm usually having to tell them that we need to remove the tree more often than I can tell them we can save the tree because they just have a poor tree profiled.
Doug Oster: Again though, you're helping them out by getting that tree out of there. Because what's going to happen if they don't get that tree out of there? Eventually, something bad's probably going to happen, right?
Kris Baker Exactly. What I do is, I offer them, "We're going to take down this tree here and we're going to--" Maybe we want to consider putting a new tree in and then we're going to replace it with a live oak. Something that's going to last them a lot longer.
Doug Oster: Well, Kris, I'm going to leave it right there. That's good stuff. Even though you don't have to get ready for winter, we hate you for living down there because we're all bracing for winter up here, but good for you. I love what you were saying there about stretching and learning all those new trees down there. Thanks very much for your time. I sure appreciate it. It was fun to talk to you.
Kris Baker Thank you. It's good to be here.
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Doug Oster: Tune in every Thursday to the Talking Trees podcast from the Davey Tree Expert Company. I'm your host, Doug Oster. Do me a big favor, subscribe to the podcast so you'll never miss a show. If you've got an idea for an episode or maybe a comment, send us an email at podcasts@davey.com. That's P-O-D-C-A-S-T-S @ D-A-V-E-Y .com. As always, we like to remind you on the Talking Trees podcast, trees are the answer.
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