Davey Arborist Visit: What to Expect + When to Schedule

Matt Morgan from Davey's Sacramento office shares what homeowners should expect during a Davey arborist visit and the specific signs arborists look for to help your trees and landscape. 

In this episode we cover:  

• Seasonal calls Davey offices receive(1:02)
• Matt's consult routine (1:58)
• Hackberry trees (3:57)
• Hackberry aphids (5:22)
• What Matt looks for during a property inspection (7:39)
• Winter in California (8:43)
• Yearly rainfall in California (9:41)
• Watering California trees (10:35)
• Looking up at the tree for signs (11:21) (13:13)
• Sudden limb drop (12:17)
• Matt's journey to Davey (13:39)
• Spring tree check findings (14:40)
• How phosphonates work (17:18)
• Matt's client relationships (18:08)

To find your local Davey office, check out our find a local office page to search by zip code.

To learn about the importance of hiring a certified arborist, read our blog, Why You Should Hire a Certified Arborist. 

To learn more about sudden limb drop syndrome, read our blog, What Is Sudden Branch Drop Syndrome? 

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!

Transcript

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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. I'm joined today by Matt Morgan. He's a district manager for The Davey Tree Expert Company in Sacramento, California. Today, Matt, I'm excited. We're going to talk about what people should expect when an arborist comes to visit the house. How are you?

Matt Morgan: I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. I know most people don't understand what it's like having an arborist come visit.

Doug: They should learn because it'll save you a lot of heartache. Trust me. I talk about it on the podcast all the time. I'm in an oak forest, so I've got to have the arborist here at least twice a year. I just want to make sure everything's okay. My first question, I was wondering, when you get calls, are they always something different or is it seasonal? Do you get the same things? I've never asked that before.

Matt: That's a good question. It is pretty much seasonal. In the wintertime, we get a lot of people worried about storm damage. You may be going out there and looking at trees that they may be worried about or trees that are around their house or things like that. Summertime, maybe pest problems. We have a lot of aphids out here where we are in California. July, August is prime aphid season for hackberries. People may be calling in wanting to look at that. Same thing with getting in the fall. People are getting ready for winter. Spring, people are getting ready for the new leaves to come off. It's very typical to be indicative of what time of year it is.

Doug: Is there a standard procedure for you when you go out to a property, or are you starting out with whatever they have a question about?

Matt: I think it's very different for each arborist that goes out there. I usually start by asking, "What am I coming out here for? What are you asking me to come out here and take a look at?" Then I'll usually say, "Hey, do you mind if I point out stuff while we're doing a property walk?" It's really important to be able to address what their issues are on the trees. If I'm being called out, like I said, for a hackberry tree, and they have sap that's dripping all over their car, there might be some other issues. Maybe they don't realize that the tree needs to be pruned, that there's deadwood that's hanging up above their car as well.

I want to take an approach of, okay, let's take care of their needs, but also let's see what else we can help with while we're out there.

Doug: That's the part that I appreciate. Again, I've said it many times on the podcast that so many things have been discovered at my property which could have been disasters. I mean serious disasters, losing a garage. I'm the host of the Talking Trees podcast, and I was walking right by this tree every day not knowing that it was hollow on the inside. That's such an important part, I think, a visit from an arborist to look down, look up, and look at other things besides what the original problem is.

Matt: That's part of complacency. You walk by that tree every day and you don't notice any changes with that. You get somebody out there who's never been out to that property, or maybe they're out there once a year. They see those changes throughout your canopy of trees, and they see some of the issues that may be underlining that you're not paying attention about.

Doug: You need to school me on hackberry trees. I don't know what a hackberry tree is. I'm in the East, you're in the West, and you have that amazing California weather that we're so jealous of here. What's a hackberry?

Matt: Hackberry tree is just one of our shade trees that we have. That's a pretty common landscape tree. It's not a native species, but it's something that's pretty common around parking lots, around front yards, things like that. We already have aphids that are active, and it's not even May right now. Like you said, we have this great weather out here where it's been warm for the past month or so out here. Bugs and pests are already starting to move around, and you start getting the sap that's coming off on the crape myrtles, on the hackberries, on all that stuff right now.

Doug: Oh, you just broke my heart when you said crape myrtle, because we can barely grow them here. It's one of those things where everybody wants to grow them, and every seven years they get killed to the ground.

Matt: That's a shame because it's one of those trees out here where people-- that's one of the hardiest trees out here that people can just ignore and abandon, and they'll do great.

Doug: It's so beautiful. I guess part of it too is wanting to grow something that you can't. In the case of that hackberry tree, and it gets aphids, what is the problem? What are the people seeing is the problem? Is it what the aphids are excreting? Is that the problem, or are they looking up and seeing an infestation in the leaves?

Matt: Most times, so Chinese hackberry has a hackberry woolly aphid. It's definitely a visible aphid, a little bit bigger than a pen ball tip. It's definitely more prominent, and they do fly around. The main culprit of people calling is the honeydew, the byproduct. The secretion of the honeydew coming from the aphids. It's to the point where it's globs that'll be just dripping on your car, on your sidewalk, on your driveway, on your entryway, on your patio that's in the backyard. It's definitely something that needs to be treated, and if it's not, it's a huge nuisance.

Doug: Basically, it's get the aphids out of there, right? Is that what you have to do? It's not going to be cutting branches or anything, right? It's going to be treating the insect, right?

Matt: Correct, yes. You're going to have to use a systemic product to get into the tree and actually stop the feeding of those aphids. A lot of times, by the time we get the call, it may be too late in the year. It will have to be done the following spring to get that uptake and get that preventative taken care of.

Doug: Are customers usually thinking that it's an aphid problem, or do they think it's the tree that's dripping sap?

Matt: Most people think it's a tree. They don't realize there's a little bug that can cause this big of a problem. It's always people calling in saying, "Oh, my tree's doing this," "My tree's doing that." It's like, "Well, wait a minute, have you ever treated it for something like this?" It's like that with a lot of diseases. A lot of things just come natural with trees. We have our California sycamores that are out here. One of their big things that they have is anthracnose. People get accustomed to leaf drop in the spring right now, and they may not realize, like, well, we have leaves year-round here with this tree.

It's not supposed to be that way. We have diseases that cause this to happen. You're just getting used to this, what you see.

Doug: Tell me a little bit more about when you go to a property, the things that you're looking for when you're either looking down or looking up.

Matt: Besides from whatever the client is asking for, I'm usually looking for any changes in the landscape. Have they done any kind of relandscaping recently? New driveway, new lawns, what kind of watering system they have. If something hasn't been watered in a long time, there may be more signs of drought. Especially here in California, again, we didn't have a great winter last year. We're seeing some of those signs right now. Looking around at the property like that, looking up to see if those trees have been pruned. Have they ever been maintained? What kind of maintenance schedule they look like they've had in the past?

Then we can go into detail with the property owner and be asking them certain questions of, "Hey, how long have you lived here?" You get a timeline of when these trees have been maintained or if they never have been.

Doug: What are you looking for coming out of winter? First off, what was your winter like for your climate?

Matt: We were very mild. We didn't have a lot of storms. We had a couple of really good storms a few years ago that took a toll on a lot of the trees. Any of the winds that we had this past winter didn't produce a lot of storm damage, which is great for homeowners because of what happened. Right now, we're looking mostly for leaf expansion. What kind of leaf expansion is coming from those trees? There are some trees that are always a little bit late. We have the English walnuts that haven't even leafed out yet right now. They're one of the very few trees that do not have leaves. If you have, say, a California sycamore or a red maple and it doesn't have leaves on it right now, there may be some underlying issues or some decline that we may be able to address early enough.

Doug: Where are you as far as your moisture content? Over the past couple years where you're at, are you struggling with rainfall or are you guys okay?

Matt: It hasn't been bad. The past three years have been really good as far as our rainfall over the winter. I know we've done a lot better with our snowpack this year. I know we're above average right now. That should keep us with water coming into the valley here in Sacramento. Right now, we had a little bit of rain over the weekend, but it's very minimal. People need to have their watering systems checked and have them on right now just to start getting that water going and making sure that they're ready for summer. Once summer hits here, we hit 100-degree temperatures very easily here in Sacramento Valley. Once that comes, you better be ready for it with your water.

Doug: Is a watering system just what has to be done there because of the heat in the summer, even for big trees are we talking about?

Matt: Even for big trees. What'll happen if you're not having any water in those trees, having that hot temperature, it's going to put continued stress on those trees. Eventually, that tree is going to feel the effects no matter what. Most of the trees that we have around here are non-native. Most of the ones that we see in landscapes, we have very few native trees, just our native oak trees. Again, with those being planted around homes, they get used to the water that they've been given for the past 20, 30 years of their life. Any change of that plays a huge toll on the recovery of that tree.

Doug: How about when you're in a property and you're looking up at just the shape of the tree or the health of the tree looking up through the branches?

Matt: Common things to look for would be large deadwood, stuff that's a hazard to people that are walking underneath it, hazard to vehicles, and hazards to the buildings that are around there. Other than that, we're looking for air circulation to see if wind can get through there for the wintertime, making sure we have reduced end weight that's on the canopy, some of those long limbs that they aren't sticking way out with excessive weight on them that can cause a limb failure during the summer.

Again, we're in a very unique area here in California where we do have summer limb drop. Summer limb drop can come out of nowhere during those hot months of deaded summer. The best way to reduce that is by proper pruning.

Doug: Tell me about that because I have never heard of that.

Matt: Most people haven't. I know I've been on a couple places with ISA, and they've never heard of it either. What'll happen here in Sacramento is when we start getting above 95 degrees, we'll get some major limb breakage, which is large limbs. Some of these oak trees that are 100 year old, you're talking about 30-inch limbs just breaking off because of the heat. Whether it's related to the amount of moisture that's in the ground, that's in the tree, and the tree being able to try to retain that moisture and recover for itself and not have to worry about drying out, that's up for discussion still. It's still the best practices for pruning, trying to reduce that weight and not let that happen.

Doug: You're basically looking up at the tree and you're seeing, like, "Geez, that branch there, that would be a good candidate for dropping," and so it's removed?

Matt: Not necessarily removed, but reduced. Taking the weight off of that limb and not necessarily removing that whole limb so we can still maintain a canopy, so we can still maintain the structure of the tree is what's going to be best for it.

Doug: Talk a little bit about your journey into your job. Why is this right for you?

Matt: I never thought as a high school kid or a young college kid or whatever that I'd be getting into this industry, and it was something that just fell onto me. I just celebrated my 20th year working here at Davey Tree. Almost half my life has been here working for this company. It's something that I love. I love being able to help the environment, help the people, and you see direct correlation to the health of these trees by what we do. To me, that's just a lot of fun. When you're looking at properties for 15 years and you're seeing these trees develop and grow and you get to know these clients and the people that actually care about their trees, it's fantastic.

I love what I do. I wouldn't change anything in my life anymore.

Doug: Awesome. This time of the year, what are some other things that you know are going to come up since you've been doing this for so long? You're like, "Okay, we're at this time of the year. I know to look for this, this, this, and this.

Matt: I mentioned earlier anthracnose on sycamore trees. Right now, we have a constant leaf drop that's in the street, in people's yards because of anthracnose. Anthracnose is a fungal issue that affects the leaves. One thing that it does cause is this premature leaf drop. It's for the sycamores, for the London plain trees, and we have a lot of them here. We have the Fab 40s. We have East Sacramento, where these trees go up and down and just cover the whole streets. You see a lot of these leaves that are on the ground right now. What happens is, it's not a detrimental disease to the tree itself, but it's repetition.

It takes years and years for this to happen over and over again. The tree gets stressed out by that repetitive leaf loss every spring. What'll happen is you'll gradually get some decline in the trees. They're just not able to do as much as what they used to. The best action that we can do is appropriate watering, proper fertilization, proper soil maintenance, soil health, to make sure these trees are actually able to take in all the nutrients and try to recover from that constant leaf drop that they have in the spring.

Doug: There's no fungal treatment for a tree that size? That sounds-- a big sycamore, it sounds like it'd be hard to spray the whole thing with some fungicide. Is there another way to deal with it?

Matt: Yes. Our best treatment for something like that is phosphonates. Trying to actually increase leaf health, the cuticle of the leaf, and try and fight the disease that way. The healthier tree that you have, the easier it is to make that tree resistant to some of these diseases. Back in the day, back when I started, there used to be trucks going down the middle of the road just spraying every tree like firehoses going everywhere. That's not done anymore. It's very tree-specific is what we do. The nice thing about phosphonates that we use is it's a soil application. You're not putting anything in the air. You're not putting anything going into people's homes or people's windows and things like that.

Doug: How do they work? I've talked about them before, but I'm not really sure how it works. Is it kind of a fertilizer type thing or?

Matt: Kind of, yes. It's an interesting thing. It is a fertilizer that increases the overall health. It can be labeled as a fungicide depending on what product that you use. We use a product called Reliant fungicide. What'll happen is, like I said, you're basically increasing the overall health of the leaf. When you have that thicker cuticle, that waxy portion of the leaf, it makes it harder for the disease to penetrate and get through. When you do that treatment, you're basically just putting an extra barrier in there for that disease.

Doug: Matt, before I let you go, tell me a little bit about your relationship with the clients and that feeling when you can go to a property and save a tree or make a tree healthier.

Matt: There's different relationships that you have with everybody. There's that person that may call you every three, five years just to look at that one tree, which is great. I'm happy to do that. I also have a lot of relationships with people where I'm out there twice a year, three times a year. When you try and get on a property that often, you're able to look at the different times of year, the different diseases that are attacking the trees, and you can see a progression of the health of the trees. I always recommend, get a spring look at the trees. You can see what that leaf expansion looks like. You can see how the trees are coming out of winter and have an idea.

The first time you go look that, you may not know what the health history of. You may not be able to see what that tree used to look like. If you're looking at that on a yearly basis or a quarterly basis or bi-annual, you start seeing these trees and you can actually see how they're being affected throughout the year. I really like to get on there at least once a year with the property so I can take a look at it and see how things look.

If we can meet and talk about your goals on the property, on your trees, along with the budget, how much do you want to spend on your trees? That's going to be really important, especially for relandscaping, zeroscaping, which is a big thing out here over the years. What kind of effects is that zeroscape install going to have on your tree that's been there for 50 years? Can we plan around that?

Doug: Well, Matt, good stuff. Thanks so much. That's great. Like I said, from the East, we really long for that weather you have out there, but when you told me the 100 degrees in the summer, I'm not sure if I can handle that.

Matt: That's probably the worst part that we have here. We don't have to shovel snow. We don't have to deal with any of that, but getting through with that summer months is what's difficult.

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Doug: All right, Matt. Thanks so much. We will talk to you again.

Matt: Thanks, Doug. Appreciate it.

Doug: 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. What do you think of this podcast, and what should we be covering here? You can either send us an email to podcasts@davey.com, that's P-O-D-C-A-S-T-S@D-A-V-E-Y.com, or you can also click the link at the end of our show notes to text us a fan mail message. Your ideas certainly could be on a future podcast, and we'd love to hear from you. As always, we'd like to remind you on the Talking Trees podcast, trees are the answer.

[00:21:06] [END OF AUDIO]