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maple tree pruning
karen paul
Posts: 230
Hi , I have a very large field maple that I would like to prune the lower branches off to let light through into another part of the garden. Whenever I have done this in the past it has grown another 5 or so branches from the cut mark. Is there any way to stop this? I seem to be just making it more bushy. Next door want it chopping lower but I feel this is a better idea as a lot of birds use it and it is probably a good wind barrier.
0
Posts
the technical name for what you want to do is called crown raising,
crown raising is usually done in the summer months as it reduces the number of water shoots appearing as all the plants energy gets diverted to growing points higher up. now is the perfect time to take the branches off, just be careful though as they are full of water and a lot heavier than they look.
try cutting the majority of the weight off the end of the branch leaving about a 1 foot stump and then remove that from the tree - this reduces the chance of bark damage to the trunk.
Thankyou treehugger, that's great! I will get started on it then