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Planting New Trees In Oak Wilt Sensitive Areas
Oak wilt is a serious problem in central Texas. It kills neighborhoods worth of trees at a time. Implementing control programs is crucial, but implementing programs to plant replacement trees is arguably more important. But, what kind of trees should be planted?
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Soil Restructuring. An Important Part of Tree Care.
Soil restructuring is one of the most powerful tools we have for tree health management. The idea is to till the soil; improving its structure will allow valuable air and water to more easily penetrate the soil. While fundamental in gardening theory, this task is not easy at the scale of a large tree.
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What is a Good Fast Growing Shade Tree for Austin and Central Texas? – Red Oak
What is the best fast growing shade tree to plant in Austin? Here is my answer: red oak. There are several factors that must be considered, and there are special precautions you need to take. No tree is fool proof.
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Part 4. Tree Fertilizer Products. What to Use.
There are a variety of tree fertilizers out there. Knowing which ones to use can be very confusing. And, to make matters worse, many quality tree friendly products are really “fertilizers” at all. Most of the products in the line I use for my companies treatment programs are alternative products (I don’t like the word…
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Part 3. How to Apply Treatments to Trees
There are a variety of ways to apply tree fertilizers and other treatments. For the average layperson, applications to a tree can be challenging. High pressure sprayers are readily available at equipment rental stores, so you can do it yourself, but this equipment is not easy to use. Accessing a tree’s root system deep in…
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Tree Selection. How to Pick a Tree.
There are two basic categories you need to address when it comes to tree selection. What is the best tree for your planting site and how to pick a quality specimen. You need to get these two things right or all you labor will be for nothing.
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How to Plant a Tree
Planting a tree is slightly more complicated than digging a hole and sticking a tree in it, but not too complicated. Follow these quick tips and your new tree will be sheltering you from the sun in no time. And, by that, I mean in a few years. The first step is to pick a…
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Tree Fertilizer, Part 2: When to Fertilize Trees
Timing might be the most important factor to successful tree fertilizer applications. Even if you use quality products you can injure a tree by providing the wrong fertilizer at the wrong time of year. I like to describe tree fertilizing by comparing to grass fertilization practices. You can fertilize grass virtually any time of the…
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Tree Fertilizer Part 1. An Introduction.
Fertilizing your tree will provide a big impact to the health of your tree in both the short term and long term. More than pruning, more than any other tree care service. There is a lot to know about tree fertilizers. This article is meant to be an introduction to tree fertilizer. I highly recommend…
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How Summer Heat Stress Affects Your Trees
Summer heat stress is one of the number one tree killers I run into. Okay, realistically no tree ever dies from just one problem, but rather a cumulative affect of many stress factors. Heat and drought stress are stress factor that almost all trees in the central Texas area deal with on an annual basis.…