Bomb cyclone
When the weather forecast calls for a bomb cyclone, you can expect heavy winds and rain to cause damage. And sure enough, as soon as I parked my car I could see the broken branch hanging over the curb.
Now, since this is a high profile sidewalk and driveway entrance there are many potential targets on the ground should the branch break off and fall. That’s why this tree branch should immediately go to your priority task list. Changing your plan for the day is totally fine. After all, leaf pick up can wait. Injured school kids could ruin your day.
Step 1: drop the weight
I grabbed my pole pruners and dropped the weight first. If you skip this step and try to finish the job with one cut, you risk tearing the bark as the branch falls. This is why we do three point cuts.
You don’t have to be cute in this step. I aimed for the broken part and checked for pedestrians before dropping the branch. Safety comes first.
Pole pruners are great because they place your body far away from the damaged branch and eliminate the need for ladders. Pole chainsaws are also good but I find it difficult to finish my cuts without slipping and cutting into healthy bark.
Step 2: finishing cut
Now, remember, we don’t want to leave stubs on our trees. They look ugly, they die and break off eventually and they could allow disease to get inside your tree. So make a decent cut at or near the branch collar. Obviously, being far away with my pole pruners was a disadvantage but I gave it a shot. The broken branch had to go.
Step 3: clean up
Before I dragged away the broken branch I took a few more branches off. Some were short and stubby and the others were pointing into the road. It’s always nice to check over your tree and make additional cuts, if necessary. November is a great time to do tree work: the leaves are off the tree and the crown is clearly visible. Plus the tree is going into “hibernation”.
Conclusion
Broken branches look awful and the damage could allow diseases to get into your tree so take action as soon as you can. In the example above we had potential human and vehicular targets so I took out the broken branch soon after I noticed it.
I know it feels weird to be reaching for pole pruners when your crew is picking up leaves but that’s how it goes. Safety first.
