Vertical Techniques Urban Gardener

Pruning the Big Oak

 

 

The next step in the building the Hugelkultur garden was to prune the large Burr Oak (Quercus macrocarpa) that was growing on the site.  Burr Oaks can be huge trees.  The way in which they relate to their space sometimes needs to be managed.  When that time comes an opportunity is presented to the client to utilize the material that is removed from the tree in a Hugelkultur garden.  Here is a link to Hugelkultur:

 Hugelkultur link.

 

This Burr Oak has a beautiful canopy.  Don't be fooled!  It will still produce quite a bit of material and look none the worse for wear.

This nice little Red Oak needs some room to breathe.

The large limb over the garage will be reduced by about 30%.

It needs to be pruned away from the wires.

Lots of wire to worry about!  The tree needs to be pruned to grow in a way that leaves it at least ten feet from primary wires and a reasonable distance from the service line to the home.

Beauty!

We will do a little reduction to clear a little space for the neighbor's Arbor vitae (Thuja occidentalis).  

 

 

Here is the result of the pruning prescription:

Now it's clear of the lines.

Now there's plenty of the room for the Arbor Vitae and the Black Walnut.

The Red Oak will grow nicely into this space!

The material starts to add up.

This material will work very well in a Hugelkultur garden.

A note on "the pruning of Oaks":  

Oak pruning should only be performed by trained arborists at the proper time of year.  Due to the prevalence of disease vectors for Oak Wilt fungus (Ceratocystus fagacearum),  pruning of Oak species in Wisconsin should only be done when the tree is in a dormant state.  That means Oak pruning should only be done between the time the leaves fall off in the fall and when the buds swell to push out in the early spring.  In Madison and Milwaukee there are dates that coincide with times of the year when it is legally okay to prune Oaks and other trees.  Notice that the tree in this post did not have leaves.