We Provide Tree Maintenance in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Surrounding Areas
Trees are investments that needs to be looked after, especially in their younger years. We offer on-going maintenance and recommendations designed to ensure that your landscape is safe, healthy, and aesthetically appealing.
Our Tree Maintenance Services
Anyone can cut a branch off of a tree, but it takes an uncanny ability to peer into a tree's future and do it skillfully. How and where you cut a stem will determine if your cut will do more harm than good, so having the proper knowledge will go a long way in managing your trees for the future.
Fruit
There are a few right ways and many wrong ways to prune a fruit tree, and each fruit species gets a slightly different treatment. Access to fruit and supportive structure are a couple of common concepts to factor in, but did you know that branches can get "sunburned" with too much light all of a sudden? Or that the most effective structure for an apple tree is more like a Christmas tree than an umbrella?
We are happy to tend yearly to your backyard fruit trees or your small orchard. We can even help you tame those unkempt fruit trees for more longevity and aesthetics. We also love giving people the knowledge to prune their own trees properly.
Aesthetics
We believe that trees are some of the most beautiful forms nature can take. With that in mind, what better palette could we have as artists? We won't trim your shrubs into Mickey Mouse, but we will carefully and tastefully reduce the vegetation in your hedgerow so it still looks natural but no longer scratches your car. We will remove some interior branches in that maple tree off your deck to let in more dappled sunshine and to expose the beautiful arc of a particular limb or the distant hillside in a vista.
Tree Health and Safety
Trees have evolved over the millennia to "self-prune" in heavy winds or ice loads, by which a branch with a weaker connection will break off leaving the remaining tree with less surface area for the wind or ice to have an effect. If this didn't happen, trees would not survive as they would snap at the trunk or became uprooted. With the trained eyes and skilled discernment of an experienced Arborist, we can reduce or remove those very branches so they are less likely to break on a day when it's not windy and your car is not parked underneath it.
AirSpade
We use a compressed air-powered tool, or AirSpade. It facilitates excavation, soil management, and tree health-care within a tree's critical root zone. Unlike mechanical excavation techniques, air-spading efficiently removes or loosens soil without damaging a tree's delicate root system.
Vertical Mulching
Vertical mulching is the process of making many holes in the soil of the root zone of a particular tree with the purpose of creating many entryways for air, moisture, and nutrients to reach the roots of a given tree. This process improves the overall health and vigor of any tree. We back fill the soil holes with a mixture of mulch, biochar, worm casting, and pumice. This mixture helps to reduce compaction, increase air in the soil, help water reach the deeper roots, and provide natural nutrients.
Radial Mulching
Radial mulching uses the same tools and mulch mixture but instead of holes we make radial trenches going out from the trunk.
We specialize in European elm scale, pinon scale, and growth regulators to help in drought conditions.
Successfully planting a tree in New Mexico takes a lot more than just digging a hole and adding water. It takes an understanding of the soils and tree and root growth characteristics, knowledge of how the nursery grew it, how to prepare the roots, where best to put it, and usually a lot more water and love than you'd think. Trees are extremely hardy plants but are on a different time line than most. Early stresses or improper planting may not show up in the health of the tree until 5 to 10 years later!
Transplanting
The process of taking a tree from one place and replanting it somewhere else, even large ones, is not as unreasonable as you might think. We used a specialized tool called an Air Knife to blow the soil away from the roots so as not to damage them more than is needed to remove the tree from its original location. This method has been proven to be the least stressful and is highly effective on larger trees.
Choosing the Tree
Every species of tree has different characteristics and every nursery treats their trees differently. Some trees are messy. Others need a lot of water or do better in shade. Some nurseries do not remove girdling roots before selling trees to you, causing decline years after the tree has been planted. This is why it can be very helpful to have a Certified Arborist involved in the planting of your trees.
Preparing the Site
Did you know that most trees don't have a "taproot"? Unless it's growing in very sandy soil, most tree roots are within a couple feet of the surface. This common misconception. The techniques used in removing trees at nurseries can cause even experienced landscapers to dig holes too deep, thus planting the tree too deep.
Installing the Tree
Removing the wire basket, burlap, or other container is critical, as well as exposing the roots to make sure there are no roots that have encircled the bottom of the tree while growing in a container (girdling roots). Many times it's even advisable to remove all the soil from the root ball and prune the root structure, depending on how it grew. Planting a tree with the flared part of the trunk under the soil can cause major health problems down the road so it's essential to get it just right, as well as adding amendments and LOTS of water to the soil when filling in the hole.
Monitoring
To get the most life out of your tree, we can't overstate the importance of making sure it is stabilized properly, watered regularly, pruned to promote healthy growth characteristics, and monitored for distress signs early on.
We offer a maintenance/follow-up service for trees that we plant. It includes bi-annual check-ups with light pruning and yearly new mulch.
Also called Fire Break Thinning, this process involves creating a fire break around your property so that when large fires come to Santa Fe and surrounding areas, your property will be better prepared to defend it. We have many years of wildland fire experience. We have recommended standards for property protection but will also work with our clients to accommodate their individual needs.
Soil Injections:
Pinon Scale, European elm scale, and (Cambistat) plant growth regulators. Cambistat helps significantly with reducing drought tolerance support by reducing the water needs of the tree. There is also early evidence of it helping aspens resist leaf splotch (a fungal infection that is cost prohibitive with proper fungicide equipment).
Trunk Injections:
Protections against boring insects (2 year protection) like pine beetle, locust borer, and Emerald ash borer. We also do trunk injections for heavy chlorosis issues, usually for maple trees.
Could your trees use some maintenance?
We would love to see how we can help. Drop us a line today at (505) 819-3649 or email us to schedule an estimate.