Neil Sperry: Time to take stock of ice storm damage in your North Texas landscape

By now you’ve had a full week to take stock of the impact of last week’s winter spell and the damage it might have done to the plants at your place. Let me help you fine-tune it all.

First, the cold itself didn’t do any harm. If your plants have been hurt by this winter’s cold, that damage came back at Christmas. This more recent exposure found temperatures hovering near and only slightly below freezing, so they can’t be blamed. We’ll find out how serious the prior damage might be in a few weeks when our plants start to bud out. We’ll see dieback or new buds — they’ll let us know.

Where we got hurt last week was in limbs that broke from the weight of the ice. Sleet the first day weighted down branches of junipers and other conifers, but the freezing rain that came through the second day was the “bad guy.” It layered itself across every surface adding hundreds of pounds of extra weight to the branches of large trees in the process.

Live oaks are always vulnerable. Even though their branches are massive and incredibly strong, their leaf surfaces collect so much ice that the limbs snap like fragile bones. Adding to that, many live oaks were severely weakened by the extreme cold two years ago. They were touch-and-go already, and many of them simply “went.”

Luckily for many of us, this year’s December cold caused a large percentage of our North Texas live oaks to defoliate early. Where they normally drop their leaves in late February before the new leaves are produced, they went ahead and dropped their leaves a week or two after that cold. That helped reduce the surface area vulnerable to accumulation of ice.

I am frequently asked if allowing English ivy to grow up the trunks and onto the branches of trees does anything to harm the trees. My answers are always “No” and “Yes, possibly.” Last week became a perfect way to explain it. Ice accumulations on the ivy leaves on the trunks didn’t do anything to put the trees at risk. But when the ivy grew out onto the branches, the ice could accumulate on those large evergreen leaves and add a great deal of weight to those limbs. They became much more likely to break. For that reason, I keep all of my ivy off the branches, although I allow a certain amount of it to climb the trunks.

Where do we turn now?

Minor pruning is usually a project a home gardener can handle. However, there are some common sense guidelines the professionals pass on to us.

• It’s best to limit the pruning you do yourself to what you can reach from the ground. Amateur tree people may not recognize trees that have been weakened by storms. Climbing should be left to the pros.

• Hire a certified arborist for any type of pruning or repair that goes beyond simple and basic. That will be someone who has achieved that “certified” status through the International Society of Arboriculture. They have a “Find a certified arborist” link on their website. Ask to see credentials and proof of insurance.

• If you’ve been referred to a highly rated tree service company, and if they tell you it will be a few weeks before they can get to your trees, unless there is immediate risk of further damage, it’s fine to wait for them. Clean up and repairs can be postponed by a few weeks if it’s going to allow you to hire the best company in town. Your trees deserve it.

If you’re doing some of the work yourself ...

• Keep your chain saw sharpened. A dull chain is very dangerous. Have an extra chain available as you cut. And don’t let your saw make contact with soil. That’s the fastest way possible to dull the chain.

• Never hold a chain saw above your head. And, although you’ll see the pros doing it, never take a chain saw up into a tree. (This is just another way of stating that you should not be climbing.)

• Remove broken branches small pieces at a time so that the weight of the branch won’t cause the bark to peel down the trunk.

• As you finish removal of a limb, leave no stub extending out from the trunk of the tree. The wound will heal faster if you leave just a small piece of the branch collar (the “delta” of the limb where it joins the trunk or larger branch). But don’t leave a stub that would prohibit formation of new bark over the cut surface.

• All cuts made to oaks should be sealed with pruning paint. That will prevent the entry of the deadly oak wilt fungus should it be active in your neighborhood. In the eyes of plant pathologists, arborists and foresters, that is non-negotiable. For other species of trees, however, pruning sealant is not recommended.

• It’s highly possible that your last step in pruning trees and shrubs that have been damaged by ice will be to reshape the plants by removing otherwise healthy growth. There are occasions when we have to do that to restore good symmetry and appearance. Don’t shy away from it.

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