Trees shade our homes making them more livable. They add to our property value and create a pleasant community image. Trees attract birds and wildlife to our urban centers. Trees are great to sit under for a summer picnic with the grandkids. Trees help buffer wind gusts and protect our surroundings.

Trees also can be our worst enemy during a hurricane. Anyone who has ever experienced a tree problem during a hurricane can attest to this. Tree limbs can fall on homes and entire trees can be uprooted. As we enter the height of the hurricane season, you may consider having your trees inspected by a licensed and insured arborist for possible tree safety issues. Jed L. Goehring Inc. a certified arborist and landscape Design Company with over 35 years experience can help you examine your trees and ensure your safety this hurricane season.

There are a few things you as a homeowner can do to help limit the damaging effects of hurricane force winds on valuable shade trees.

• Prevent vines from growing up the trunk and onto branches in the tree’s canopy. The added weight of the vine’s vegetative growth increases the chance of branch failure. All the extra growth also increases the wind resistance of the tree limb. As the limb grows, it develops without this added stress, which now poses a safety threat.
• Protect the immediate vicinity around your home by pruning branches that may hit roof shingles, bathroom and kitchen vent pipes, ridge vents and wind turbines, chimney stacks and house siding.
• If you decide to have your shade tree pruned, resist the temptation to have the entire center cleaned out leaving only foliage at the branch tips. Over-pruning a tree like this allows wind to blow through the tree rather than around the tree. Branches on the leeward side of the tree, not accustomed to this extra wind load, are more likely to fail and come crashing down.
• If you have planted a new tree, it will most likely require staking to help it remain upright and prevent root damage during wind gusts. There are several methods to stake a tree, depending on its size, but support the tree trunk no higher than one-third its total height. It’s good for the upper two-thirds of the tree trunk to sway with the wind. But you want to stabilize the lower third of the trunk so the root ball does not move and cause root injury.

Jed L. Goehring Inc. has trained and experienced certified arborists that are equipped to perform all aspects of tree care and tree surgery and emphasize safety and knowledge in everything they do. Our crew has been together for more than 10 years and we are committed to a superior level of tree and shrub care. So before the peak of Hurricane season call an arborist today.

Danger of Damaged and Fallen Trees

Storms damage trees, especially the types of storms we’ve seen in Northern VA lately. If trees are damaged or fall down, they can be harmful to your landscape and dangerous to people and property—especially when more wild weather is predicted. Tree experts are most qualified to assess the risk and remove or repair the trees in question.

With over 35 years of experience in tree and shrub care, Jed Gohering’s team of VA certified arborists are local leaders in tree diagnostic and treatment, tree trimming, tree pruning, and tree removal. If a tree has fallen and is in need of removal, a qualified professional like us should be called to handle the heavy equipment and complicated saws. In many cases, stump removal is also required, which is a dangerous procedure best left to tree experts. If a tree is damaged, our tree experts will assess a number of elements—such as the size, species, type/position/severity of damage, and location of the tree—before taking action.

Tree Safety Assessment

If a tree is damaged by a storm, a tree expert should immediately inspect the damage to determine the level of risk and the safest course of action. Some of the areas our certified arborists inspect include:

Safe Tree Trimming, Pruning & Removal

Trimming, pruning and removal all require the use of intense equipment best operated by the professionals who use them every day. In fact, handling trees is risky business in itself: Trees have minds of their own and even highly trained professionals can have accidents.

Trees near a home or power lines can be extremely dangerous for an amateur to attempt to treat or remove. Better safe than sorry! Call your local tree experts as soon as you notice damaged or fallen trees.

With all this wild weather, many VA residents are looking at their lawns in despair. The latest string of major storms have been especially detrimental to tree health, leaving homeowners anxious about how to handle trees that suffered damage from excess winds and rain. Before rushing into tree removal, call a team of tree experts for tree diagnostic and treatment. According to the VA certified arborists at TreePhD, in many cases tree health can be restored! As long as the major limbs, trunk and roots are still intact, and there is no decaying wood, the tree has a high possibility of surviving—especially with careful trimming and pruning.

Leaf Loss Remedies

The strong winds present in major storms often cause most of the leaves on a tree to be blown off. This is referred to as “defoliation of the canopy.” Even if all the leaves have been removed, the tree isn’t necessarily dead or even severely damaged. If defoliation is the diagnosis, you’re in luck—all you have to do be patient. By this time next year, new foliage will likely appear on its own.
However, leaf loss can also be caused by excess flooding, which requires more expert tree care. TreePhD’s team of tree experts typically remedy this situation by irrigating the soil around the tree.

Recovering from Broken Branches and Limbs

If the tree diagnosis reveals that only small branches are broken or dead, some basic tree trimming and pruning will significantly increase the chance of recovery. If bigger limbs are broken or damaged, the treatment will depend on the type of tree. Some trees, like Live Oak, are naturally resistant to decay and can overcome damage to major branches with proper tree care. In many cases they can recover after storms that have injured up to 75% of their canopy. Unfortunately, other less-resilient species will not be able to survive significant damage to major limbs. It’s best to call a certified tree arborist to make the diagnosis.

In general, however, younger trees are easier to restore than older ones. If they were recently planted or have a trunk diameter smaller than four inches, young or small trees are likely to survive if they are replanted and followed up with proper tree care. The certified arborists at TreePhD would carefully excavate the tree, attend to jagged or torn roots, and plant it with soil from the site. The key is to keep the tree as straight and stable as possible—often with the help of stakes—and to water it sufficiently. Most tree experts recommend three gallons per inch of trunk diameter three times a week.

Call the Tree and Shrub Care Experts

TreePhD’s certified arborists are members of the International Society of Arboriculture and the Virginia Arborist Association. With decades of experience in VA cleaning up tree damage and reviving trees, we are the ideal tree experts to call for tree diagnostic and treatment after a storm. The difficulty and duration of the job depends on the severity of the storm damage, but in most cases a large number of trees are able to be recovered and restored to their former glory. If tree trimming, pruning and proper tree care can’t help, then we also offer tree and trunk removal services.