Welcome to the Good Growing podcast. I am Chris Enroth, horticulture educator with the University of Illinois Extension, coming at you from Macomb , Illinois, and we have got a garden bite for you this week. Would you look at that? Would you look at that? Would you look at that?

That is something I exclaim almost routinely as I drive around town with this whoever or hapless passenger I so happen to be talking to. So as a horticulturist, it does not make for the most enjoyable person to ride around in a car with. Let's just say I'm not great company when it comes to sightseeing along the landscape, especially if, like my wife, you could care less about the health of a wayward tree or having to circle back to inspect a random flower bed. Was was that a field of cabbage back there? Oh, turn around.

I need to take a picture of that. If I am late to something, it is probably because there was something going on the landscape that required a double take. As we reach the last leg of winter here, we are entering a time frame or a window, with spring there right on the horizon, that is going to be a great opportunity for us to do some pruning for our shade trees. Now there is one particular part of pruning. Okay.

Well, maybe there's more than one. But for the purpose of today, a particular pruning practice that is so horrid, which throws me into a tirade that I must expound my disdain just for driving by it every single time. So you are about to, listen to my rant or well, no, no, at my discussion about tree topping. But our grandparents did it and so did our parents. If it's good enough for them, it's good enough for me.

Well, with all due respect to Gramps, they were wrong. Both plant scientists and arborists unanimously agree that the practice of tree topping is an unjustifiable practice, and it has no redeeming benefit to the tree. Still don't believe me? Well, let's describe tree topping and what happens after that chainsaw is put away. There's a lot of names for tree topping.

It's also known as stubbing, hat tracking. I don't know where that came from. And there's other names out there, I guess, depending upon where you're at in the country. When a tree is topped, there is no thought or planning as to where that chainsaw cut is going to occur. You essentially take your chain and it's used to cut the canopy of the tree back to a uniform height.

I would maybe think of it more as a buzz cut for trees. What happens when a tree is topped is that it loses a significant amount of its leaf cover. Now despite our everyday use of the term of feeding plants with fertilizer, which I know you've heard me say on the podcast before, we don't actually feed them with fertilizer. Plants feed themselves through photosynthesis. And when the bulk of that photosynthetic power, a k a the leaves, are removed, the tree has to spend valuable energy to replace those lost resources.

To do this, the tree has to activate latent buds deep within the woody tissue. Now these are called epicormic shoots. There's also water sprouts. There's a couple other terms for these structures of trees as well. But essentially what these are, they are new branches.

They are the the backup system for the tree. They have to grow fast, and they have to grow densely to replace that lost leaf cover. Now, some people who top their trees will even contend this new growth is better than before. However, this lush growth has a very weak connection to the old growth, making it far more susceptible to breakage from wind, ice, snow. It is more vulnerable to attack from insects and disease.

In fact, around this time of year in the winter, if you drive around town while trees are bare, you might see trees that were topped from years past, and they will have hanging limbs in their dense canopy. Now it's very often that we can't see these hanging limbs because that dense epicormic shoots that sprout from those top trees, it masks or obscures any hanging or broken limbs up there in the top. Now these hanging limbs up in the canopy are known by arborists as widowmakers. As these new sprouts continue to grow, they are going to put on more and more weight. The danger for people of property below becomes a bigger problem.

Legally, a homeowner is liable for any damage or injury caused by a poorly managed tree if that person is found negligent. So if your neighbor warned you of a hazard posed by the tree or hanging limbs and that same tree fell and damaged property or hurt someone, you and also potentially the landscape company that did the tree topping in the first place would be held responsible. And this brings up a very good point. So if you are wanting to prune a large shade tree and hire this out to a professional, it is important that you insist that they are a certified arborist and that they are insured. Heck, ask to see their insurance.

That is a very important thing, because doing work in the canopy of the tree is dangerous. The canopy of your tree can be pruned and managed responsibly with forethought and planning as to where to make the correct pruning cuts. And certified arborists are trained in how to do that and how to make thoughtful cuts where maybe you don't have to remove an entire humongous limb, but you can make cuts on smaller parts of that limb to reduce wind load or the weight that might occur should ice or snow accumulate, and then reduce any risks to targets below that tree. And finally, topped trees are just ugly, and they could negatively impact your home's curb appeal, and it will shorten the life of your most significant landscape investment, your trees. And if a tree cannot be remedied with proper pruning, remove it, and then plant a tree that is more conducive to the site.

This is really common when dealing with utility lines. And there's shade trees that are growing into the utility line, so they just routinely come by and top those trees. Then those epicormic shoots sprout up, and then after a few years, they're growing up in the power lines again. So are those power lines any safer now that we have a more weakly attached branch growing up through them? No, they're not.

That's a great opportunity for you to remove that tree and plant something new. I know the cost of removing a tree may be expensive, but keep in mind that a topped tree will never again regain its natural shape and will always require more pruning down the line. Plus, it has the potential to save you any costly outcomes down the line. Now there is also another type of topping a tree, which is a bit different. Now this is called pollarding.

Pollarding is a practice that became very popular over in Europe, kind of in the middle ages where they would every single year come through and remove the annual growth on trees, those epicormic shoots. They would use that those shoots for, making furniture, weaving, making baskets and the like. And because it was such a functional part of their lifestyle, it became an aesthetic part of their landscape. And so pollarding is something that you would commonly see even today in Europe, but the difference between pollarding and topping a tree is that when you pollard a tree, you go in every single year and you remove those epicormic shoots. Whereas whereas with tree topping, you top it once and then you let those epicormic shoots grow and develop for years and years and years until eventually they snap and break off in the wind, or the tree itself just develops rot down deeper into the trunk and, has to be cut down.

Well, that was a lot of great information about what not to do when it comes to tree pruning. There are still companies out there, and I see them still. Billboards, Internet ads of we will top your tree for you. So please do not do that. Do not take them up on the offer.

Make sure that you're utilizing certified arborists that are insured, is the big takeaway from today. Well, the Good Growing Podcast is a production of University of Illinois Extension edited this week by me, Chris Enroth. Well, listeners, a big thank you, of course, to you for doing what you do best, and that is listening. Or if you watch this on YouTube, watching. And as always, keep on growing.