Our January Tree Care Guide for Nashville and Middle Tennessee will give you a starting point to begin the process of looking over your landscape and deciding which task might be on your list for this coming year for maintaining the health of your trees.
Below are five main considerations to January Tree Care for Nashville and Middle Tennessee:
Planning
* Are any of your trees old and diseased and need removing?
* Were they planted in the wrong place?
* Do they pose a problem at certain times of the year such as dumping mock oranges all over your yard?
* Are your trees casting too much shade in your yard? If so, consider “limbing up” your trees to remove a few of the tree’s lower limbs. Be sure not to limb up trees whose shape it destroys including: Japanese maples, Dogwoods and Southern Magnolias. An alternative is to the “too much shade” problem is to thin a tree.
Planting
* Plant bare-root trees (trees without soil around roots) when they are dormant (not growing). December – February is the perfect time for this.
* Ball and Burlap trees may also be planted now.
* Trees may be transplanted from one part of your property to another anytime from December through March.
Care
* If your tree was staked when installed, be sure the apparatus is removed within 12 months and that the guying material (which fastens around the tree) is not cutting into the bark and that the wooden stakes have not come out of the soil.
Watering
* January is a wet month so watering is not normally needed unless you get a dry spell and have recently planted a new tree that needs a little extra care.
* Dwarf trees in a pot on the deck may need watering more often if the season is dryer than normal.
* Don’t water when soil is frozen.
* Test soil before watering. You don’t want to water too much. Too much water is just as deadly as too little.
Pruning
* Wintertime is the perfect time to prune deciduous trees as long as they are not the variety that blooms in winter or spring.
* Here in Nashville and Middle Tennessee, February is better than January for major pruning because the trees start growing again soon after and as a result recover quicker.
* If you must prune in January, be sure the temperature is above 25 degrees Fahrenheit.
* January Tree Care also includes pruning diseased and damaged trees as well as shaping a tree if limbs are growing out of bounds.
* When a diseased limb is heavy, don’t cut the limb close to the trunk. Doing so may encourage disease, such as the Emeral Ash Borer, and insects. This is best left to professionals if it’s one of your favorite trees.
Conclusion
January tree care for Nashville and Middle Tennessee is very important to the health of your trees. With fluctuating temperatures, doing the right thing at the wrong time may be costly.
If you’re unsure of how to prune, or otherwise care for your trees in January or any other time of year, it’s best to leave it to the professionals.
Here at Acer Landscape Services, our team of specialists can help you maintain your landscape anytime of year. As a full service landscaping company, we also design and install both commercial and residential landscapes, as well as build retaining walls, patios and sidewalks.
Visit our Houzz Page for highlights of some of our past projects and for reviews from our customers.
We are passionate about helping our community be beautiful and healthy. That’s why we say “At Acer we’re planting the good life”.
Don’t make costly mistakes on your landscape. Call Acer Landscape Services at 615-350-8030 today our fill out a form online to request a consultation with one of our professionals.
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Resource: Month by Month Gardening in Tennessee & Kentucky
