STOP THINNING mature DOUGLAS FIR trees, look at the research
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- Опубликовано: 25 фев 2023
- If you often thin, or recommend thinning on isolated Douglas Fir trees (not a large stand of trees) then please watch this video.
00:00:01 Intro
00:01:45 Example of a Douglas Fir tree that requires pruning
00:04:34 Hazard mitigation pruning of long, heavy limbs
00:05:19 Douglas Fir tree we pruned for to reduce risk of limb failure in strong wind or snow load
00:06:14 Julian Dunster's thoughts of thinning or 'Spiral pruning'
00:08:22 Nick Dankers paper titled 'Pacific NorthWest Conifer Care Guidelines'
00:11:04 Example of more risk mitigation pruning of long heavy limbs over a house with glass skylights
00:12:13 Final thoughts
#DouglasFir #Arborist #TreeWork 
Хобби
So helpful Daniel. Your focus on climbing/rigging safety and proper tree care brings the conversation beyond modified chainsaws and dramatic tree felling.
Appreciate your comment David 🙏
I’ve been doing tip reductions for 17 years. Have had more than a few call backs when the tips drop sap onto patios etc, so that’s worth mentioning. I’m also careful about massive canopy lifts. Don’t went 70’ of free fall before hitting a roof.
Thanks for offering up what you have experienced, that’s really useful info 👍
exactly, people want the bottom two whorls removed because they 'look dangerous over the house', when in reality the branches that you see broken after a storm are in the mid canopy(particularly if the tree has been topped as is common here, where the branches just below the new top have become over extended), these branches are are often caught or slowed by the large low limbs avoiding property damage. i try to tip them lightly if anything.
I only recently started hearing more about wind dampening and the hazards associated with thinning. It makes a lot of sense. The tip reduction seems like a brilliant way to get the intended result of reducing limb failure.
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Redwoods as well. So many tree guys sell over thinning. I agree with this but end weight can also cause serious future issues. Many trees will develop multiples in a few years which increases tip weight. If you keep up with the trees, great. I have seen so many end weight jobs with massively heavy new growth which causes limb failures after time.
Agree with everything you say, which is why we all need to educate our clients into realizing that this type of pruning isn’t a once in a lifetime deal. Trees around our homes, over roads etc need management to keep them safe
100% agree! The other issue I commonly see is arborists "elevating the crown" of Douglas Firs. One or two windstorms later they shear in half due to the unbalanced load of the altered wind sail
Great content as usual Dan!
Appreciate it!
Great info, just what I was looking for, thank you!
Thanks for letting us know , glad it was helpful 👍
I like these informative videos. A LOT. thank you
Glad you like them!👌
Great video, thanks!
Glad you liked it! 👍
Brilliant video
🙏
Well done Dan. Excellent overview of CCG. Many thanks
If you’d like to talk more about Avant-garde Arboriculture, lemme know amigo.
Awesome video great work
Thank you very much!
Thanks for the useful infos.
Glad it was helpful!
Cool! Thanks for the info.
Makes sense to thin this way so the wind doesn’t tip the entire tree over as well.
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Great video. I'd love to see a more in depth video on the techniques and positioning you are using for reducing the branch length. Limb walking is hard on these Doug fir limbs, especially the longer skinny downslope ones...
It’s something we do quite often. This video might be useful ruclips.net/video/g1RUL9eJe1Y/видео.html
Thank you for sharing your knowledge and opinion about douglas firs. It is definitely an eye opener and a reminder to keep an open mind and welcome new approaches. However I (used to) believe thinning firs is ultimately to help prevent a catastrofic STEM failure. Branch failures are secondary compared to a broken top crashing down during a wind storm. I get it, a single fir branch is enough to crush a car in your driveway. I am in the interior BC and snow load is also a factor. I understand that branches need to clash (we are talking douglas fir specificly) but by my experience, I find thinning the branches allows them to flex individually and in result help the tree to shed snow.
Long time sub. Didn’t realize you were in wa. I’m going to try and find out if you do work on the Eastside!
Wicked! What a great video. For how common they appear in the PNW, Pseudotsuga are a very unique tree. Will be sending this video to concerned clients and friends all around. Great tip about the heading cuts- could've only learned that from watching this. Thank you! Hail Douglifer!
Thanks for your comment, so glad you enjoyed this video 😄
Full sun Doug’s 😍.., they pretty much prune themselves if you’ve ever lived next to them lol
😆
Thanks for sharing this. Do the ends that get cut branch out some more? Thinking of those trees that have been topped where the growth that follows can be a mess, like our western red cedar that prior folks topped and now branches below that cut try to become the new top, and get quite huge.
Very difficult to prune the end weight of long Doug fir branches Great Job
I sometimes resort to temperarily tying off a large branches with targets, incase it snaps as I get out there.
Battery pole saw from out on a lower branch is also useful if you can let fluffy tips fly free
That’s why people hire professionals like you and I, if it was easy, every man, gardener and their dog would be doing it
Yes but with both you guys desire and skill to teach,,,everyone can learn from you even the layman just started out from scratch Thank you even all you other social media guru’s Your Teaching proper Safety procedures in tree work are way appreciated
This is most helpful. In your opinion, can a slice of the vertical canopy (perhaps10-15%) be removed to stop limbs and debris falling on an adjoining home and deck structure? The remainder of the canopy would not be touched. Thanks again for the video.
Thanks a lot for a very helpful video.
I hope I'm not too late for you to see this.
Is this also the case for Picea abies and other spruces?
Spruce branches are much more flexible, so I wouldn’t say it should be the exact same approach. But maybe
@@ClimbingArborist 👍
Man I'd love to climb something that tall. The most comparable tree species (in terms of growth pattern and limb length) in my area is the eastern white pine but I haven't encountered any monsters. Maybe 70ft tall at the most.
Highest I've been was ~85-90ft in a ~110 ft cottonwood.
Awesome video. As always, thanks for your content. On the subject of firs and thinning, I recently was working on a fir that was experiencing lots of branch failure. Probably 110 ft tall. In clients lawn, retaining wall a few feet away that was also a few feet. The side walk was next to this retaining wall. Fair to say there could have been previous root damage but i think that would have happened decades ago. Anyways, fir looks relatively healthy but is experiencing lots of branch failure. I went up to fish out a hanger and had an entire fir branch under me fail all the way to the branch collar. It essentially just popped off. Hadn't experienced that before while climbing a fir... Any idea why the branch failed at the collar/trunk? It also looked a little funky. Not like fresh green wood that just teared. I feel like all of the above is factoring into this but I'm curious if you have any input. Thanks again for the content. Would love to connect with you someday. I'm in Portland Oregon so also the PNW. Peace!
Strange, but not all that shocking. Could have been slightly weaker than normal for whatever reason , and combine that with the common limb failure of Doug Firs and it can happen. I’ve had them break while in a tree doing some pruning.
MONEY : Doing an SRT rope walk with high canopy - limb tie to just tip a BIG fir is a lot more time intense ....vs....speed lining a few whole limbs off....My customers won't pay a thousand bucks to do that. I would lose most of my climbing job's...... I do what my customers want and I tell them the ups and downs.... Douglas Firs are actually very wind resistant, I live in extreme southern Oregon we have 140 foot 100 year+ Doug Firs and they just held up fine in an 80 mph wind storm last month, they don't live to be that long if they are fragile.
Very strange that in Oregon your Douglas Fir trees don’t shed huge limbs in high wind. Doug Fir trees everywhere else seem to drop the big long limbs at every chance they get, which is not good in an urban environment
@@ClimbingArborist they do but not the giant limbs as much as the inner branches. I guess it's a matter of how much wind they have to adapt to, one side of a mountain or valley may get almost no wind ( exercising the branches to adapt ) and the other side may have high winds making them adapt .....cheers
Bay Area California, people are just removing every mature Doug Fir in favor of Redwoods in mixed second growth forest / rural home areas. It's a shame to watch.
Dr. Coder describes your recommended practice as “streamlining”.
Do you think this would be similiar for eucalyptus trees in Australia?
Eucalyptus are certainly very different in the way they flex and move in the wind. I’m not all that familiar with them and their species profile, especially when it comes to limb failure, but thinning should ideally be focused towards removed branches that are/will cause structural issues
Would this be applicable to big ponderosa pines?
Yes, I imagine so
Ever come across the ‘limb snare’ Dan
What do you mean by that?
@@ClimbingArborist short piece of untensioned cable permanently in place on suspect branches. i think a company in Vancouver coined the term and installs occasionally.
Why thin any tree? It makes no sense from the tree’s perspective. Only ever need to prune for structure & clearances.
Agreed.
Probably depends on what people refer to as thinning. I agree only maintenance ie removing deadwood and crossing and touching limbs that will eventually pose a hazard.
I only see it necessary for limbs rubbing together personally
You’re opening a can of worms there 😆 But yeah, the focus should be on structure and hazards , but the urban environment may demand a multitude of other reasons that to someone asks of a tree company, hence the video
We have people ask for their Doug firs to be thinned to allow more light in their gardens, Or for ocean views.
If the customer wants it thinned and I don't do it, they'll hire someone else and money is lost. If I recommend reducing limb length and one still breaks off in the next wind storm, they'll blame the tree service and say to themselves, "I knew I should have had the tree thinned." I say give the customer what they want.
Do you think they say that in other trades? The electrician: "well if i wire it that way their house will burn down but its what they want." Its been my experience that if you refuse to do something and explain why and are willing to pass on the job because of it that gains you more respect and trust. Maybe not 100% of the time but still a better business model
When it comes to super sketchy/critical work, I agree. But for this topic, I do not.
Sounds like you are a tree trimmer not an arborist
@@ryanauburn I consider myself a tree removal expert. We all have our specialties. Some of us take down huge trees others pass on, and some of us are tree biologists who only diagnose and prune little trees.
This goes to show we still don't really know, science is verifiable and repeatable, im sure these people are intelligent and experienced but this is still just anecdotal opinion.
I believe Julian Dunster with a research team had a bunch of trees pruned and other not in a controlled area and got the results he described in his message.
It's almost as if you didn't watch the whole video!
I know very little about being an arborist but yeah, as a logger every big Douglas fir I’ve seen in the wild was open with large extended branches. I doubt cutting the tips is going to benefit the tree in the long run. A couple thousand centuries probably made them the way they are on purpose. Gotta do whatever you gotta do however once man gets involved but I doubt it helps the tree much.
I agree with this - been doing tree work for 15 years now & I’ve learned that tree science is evolutionary - ie it changes! Certainly makes sense everything in this video but why does the tree grow that way in the first place? Is there a reason & isn’t it better to let the tree do it’s thing? I always look at the species in the woods (untouched by our good selves) and see how they fare. Trees do shed limbs or ‘self prune’ and I guess that’s the point at which we need to step in if a limb is likely to ‘self prune’ itself onto a house! Thanks for your posts and your knowledge Dan - you’re doing great 👍
I’m not a professional arborist, but I’m pretty sure the trees in the forest are part of a larger ecosystem, and provide habitat, so if they all grew perfectly with minimal breakage that wouldn’t work with the rest of nature… But around houses, etc. it’s a different story so you sacrifice the habitat and try to keep the tree strong and healthy. Am I wrong?
Seems like an officious tack for an argument based on conjecture and anecdotes- I would venture the notion that there has been no dynamic analysis of pseudotsuga menzeisii canopy behavior and its a pedantic and baseless argument either way. Just cut the thing down or leave it alone.